In earlier times fear of the consequences of expressing dissent from established opinions and beliefs was one of the chief sources of social inertia. Where excommunication, torture, and death followed dissent, it is not surprising that men feared to be dissenters. In contemporary society under normal conditions men have much less to fear in the way of punishment, but may accept the traditional and conventional because they fear the consequences of being different, even if those consequences are not anything more serious than a personal snub.
While men fear to dissent because of the disapproval to which they may be subjected, dissent, the novel and strange in action and opinion are themselves feared by most men because of the unknown and unpredictable consequences to which they may lead. Men were at first afraid of the steam-engine and the locomotive. Men still fear novel political and social ideas before they can possibly understand what they have to be afraid of. The fact that thought so continually turns up the novel and the strange is, according to Bertrand Russell, precisely the reason why most men are afraid to think. And fear of the novel, the strange, the unaccustomed is, as in the case of many other instincts, a perfectly natural means of protection that would otherwise have to be sought by elaborate processes of reason. In what we call prudence, caution, and care, fear undoubtedly plays some part, and Plato long ago pointed out it is only the fool, not the brave man, who is utterly unafraid.[1]
[Footnote 1: Protagoras.]
Psychologists may be said to differ largely as to the utility of fear. They are nearly all agreed that in the forest life which was man's originally, fear had its specific marked advantages. Open spaces, dark caverns, loud noises were undoubtedly associated very frequently with danger to the primitive savage, and an instinctive recoil from these centers of disaster was undoubtedly of survival value. But there is an increasing tendency to discount the utility of fear in civilized life. "Many of the manifestations of fear must be regarded as pathological, rather than useful.... A certain amount of timidity obviously adapts us to the world we live in, but the fear paroxysm is surely altogether harmful to him who is its prey."[1]
[Footnote 1: James: Psychology, vol. II, p. 419.]
Fear and worry, which is a continuous form of fear, in general hinder action rather than promote it. In its extreme form it brings about complete paralysis, as in the case of terror-stricken hunted animals. When humans or animals are utterly terrified even death may result. This fact that fear hinders action, sometimes most seriously, seems to some philosophic writers, especially Bertrand Russell, a key fact for social life. "No institution," he writes, "inspired by fear, can further life."[2] And in another connection: "In the world as we have been imagining it, economic fear will be removed out of life.... No one will be haunted by the dread of poverty.... The unsuccessful professional man will not live in terror lest his children should sink in the scale.... In such a world, most of the terrors that lurk in the background of men's minds will no longer exist."[3] "In the daily lives of most men and women, fear plays a greater part than hope. It is not so that life should be lived."[4]
[Footnote 2: Bertrand Russell: Why Men Fight, p. 180.]
[Footnote 3: Russell: Proposed Roads to Freedom, p. 203.]
[Footnote 4: Ibid., p. 186. (Italics mine.)]
Love and hate. All human relations are qualified by the presence, more or less intense, of emotion. Human beings are not merely so many items that are coldly counted and handled, as one counts and handles pounds of sugar and pieces of machinery. A man may thus regard human beings when he deals with them in mass, or thinks of them in statistical tables or in the routine of a government office. But human beings experience some emotional accompaniment in their dealings with individuals, especially when face to face, and experience more especially, in varying degrees, the emotions of love or hate. These terms are here used in the general sense of the receptive, positive, or expansive attitude and the cold, negative, repellent, and contractual attitude toward others. These may both be intense and consciously noted, as in the case of long-cherished and deep affections or antipathies to different individuals. They may appear as a half-realized sense of pleasure in the mere presence and poise of a person, or a curious sense of discomfort and irritation at his appearance, his voice, or his gesture. These attitudes, even when slight, color and qualify our relations with other individuals. They may, in their larger manifestations, play so large a part, that they must be considered separately, and in detail.