If it were the community-habit-of-thought that fear was an unnecessary thing and an evil thing, and not respectable and not Christian, many of these fears would not exist, owing to the proneness of all persons to imitation and their acceptance of community-of-habit-thought as law and gospel. Fear is a very insidious thing. It will enter the smallest opening, and ferment, and increase, and permeate whatever it attacks, if it be permitted foothold in the least degree.
We have too little time in life personally to investigate all of the causes of things that are pertinent to our living and working, or to learn the reason for their leading to observed results. We are indebted to Professor Mosso, Dr. Hall, Dr. Scott and other painstaking scientists, for observing the habits of our enemies, and for giving the results of their observations in such agreeable forms as are the intimate and frank analyses of fear given in Professor Mosso's book and other treatises on the subject; but what we are most interested in is, how to kill or how to escape fearthought within ourselves and, ultimately, how to protect our children against the evil.
To digress somewhat, and as an excuse for using the terms of parable and homely experience instead of the terms of science: It is said that the use of alum for the settling of impurities out of water was an old housewife's remedy for a very long time before any scientist studied the chemical change that effected the result.
The old housewives knew by experience, as well as did the doctors, that alum would "settle" water, but it was left to the latter to say why it did so. We are, therefore, mainly indebted to a chance discovery, and to the preservation of the formula by housewives, for our ability to purify water by means of alum.
In the same manner we have discovered, perhaps by accident, that certain suggestions will purify our minds, by eliminating special fears by which we have been dominated. We also have learned by experiment that all fear is eliminable by use of sufficiently powerful suggestion made to fit the particular fear experimented against. I know that the deterrent passions can be eradicated; and, easier than not. Others know this also, and are living lives of beautiful strength, freedom and happiness, who once were slaves to fearthought; and many such there already are, and their number is increasing very rapidly under the influence of the observation of unfailing, profitable results in consequence.
If we know that anything can be done, it is not vitally essential that we should know why it is possible.
Experience, in conveying the suggestion, has taught that there is some way to reach, and to dispel, any special fear.
Science will some time, undoubtedly, be able to tell us just how to treat each form of fear in a scientific manner, but in the meantime we know that it is possible to cure all of the separate forms of fear by rooting out the basic fear—the fear of death—and by conveying the all-powerful suggestion that all fear is needless and unprofitable.