The truest peace, of which courage is a sublime bloom, is a growth solely of honorable living and robust self-respect.
Health is of the following realities: body, mind, soul—the deeper self. Health is soundness. A sound human is a triune wholeness. Physical soundness with weak intellect is often the athletic field of superstitions innumerable. Intellectual greed in an unsound body may breed the direst fears of life. A decayed soul is always a House of Fear. The ideal of human existence is—The white life in the sound mind in the vibrantly whole body.
It is because there are so many people who are in some sense sick, that fears abound in every direction. But—it is because so many fears are permitted and actually nursed as boons that so many sick people abound in every direction. If all our fears could be removed absolutely, we should no longer require physicians. This world would be a paradise in every respect. I do not know anything wrong with it that cannot be traced to a fear.
The causes of fear are weak reason, uncontrolled imagination, want of self-control, and ill-health. And the first three items are really phases of the last.
The ability to master and destroy fear depends, it would now seem, upon the following factors of our life:
The General Tone of the Individual; The Soul's Power of Will; The
Development and Balance of the Reason.
Reason is demanded to distinguish between right and wrong causes for personal effort in self-protection, and to utterly ignore all wrong causes.
Will-power is demanded to banish fears and to utilize reason's dictates.
But the sway of reason and the force of action are always immensely assisted by a vigorous general tone of the personal life. Now appear, in view of these considerations,