Happiness as Found in Forethought Minus Fearthought

by Horace Fletcher

It has been observed that the rooting out of any particular phase of fearthought, weakens the strength of all of the other phases. For instance, suppression of anger and worry tends to suppress all suspicion, and even fear itself, while special attack upon the fearthought called envy will perceptibly diminish the tendency to jealousy and avarice. There seems to be such close relationship between all of the forms of fearthought, that whatever affects one, affects all.

Fear of death undoubtedly underlies all fearthought. Fear of poverty, fear of accident, fear of sickness, all reach further than these calamities, to the possibility of death resulting from them. In this way we can trace all expressions of fear, either directly or indirectly, through the different forms of selfness, to fearthought of death.

In Menticulture I suggested the elimination of anger and worry as the roots of all the evil passions. On page 17, however, I gave "fear" as the tap-root of the evil emotions, including anger and worry, and stated my reason for attacking the surface roots best known and associated together, rather than the tap-root itself. It was because I believed at the time Menticulture was written, with people in general, that fear was a constituent weakness of all consciousness, and only expressions of it were eliminable.

I find in my later experience in practice, however, and in conveying the suggestion to others, that fear itself is possible to be rooted out by the force of counter-suggestion of one sort or another, and that there is no mental habit or impression that cannot be counteracted by some other more powerful habit or impression, and that it is best to attack the bottom cause of all weaknesses at once, and thereby wage warfare upon their innermost citadel.

As fearthought is the parent of all the evil emotions, so is fear of death the first of all the causes of fearthought.

It is not a difficult matter to eliminate the fear of death. It is first necessary to do away with any dread of a lifeless human body. There are few who feel dread of the flesh of animals as they see it hanging in the stalls of the butchers. There is no more reason to have a feeling of fear in connection with the sight of dead human flesh than there is to feel uncomfortable in the presence of the flesh of a lifeless lamb or a lifeless chicken.

There have lived people who were as accustomed to seeing human flesh exposed in butchers' shops as we are accustomed to see the flesh of animals so exposed, and there is an engraving of a cannibal meat-stall in Huxley's "Man's Place in Nature," copied from an old book of travel to the coast of Africa, which Mr. Huxley offers authoritatively.

The subject may seem to be a grewsome one to many readers, and reference to the customs of cannibals may shock their supersensitive habits of thought, but the object is sufficient justification. Such may, however, soothe their injured feelings by remembering that our meat-selling and meat-eating customs seem as inhuman to many Buddhists as do the customs of cannibals to us.

If we value essentials impartially, soul and mind count above everything, and tissue which they once animated counts for nothing when they have left it, no matter what have been the associations, especially if dread of the dead tissue inspires emotions that are detrimental to the welfare of soul or mind.

My object in suggesting a systematic reversal of our feeling towards lifeless human flesh is because it is a basic cause of fear. Remove this dread, and half of the terror of death is removed with it.