by being variously understood than those that convey bad suggestion.
These latter should be defined in such a manner as to clearly suggest
their badness; in fact, war should be waged upon them by every possible
means.
* * * * *
EGOTISM.
"Egotism" is _separation from God_. The fruit of egotism is selfishness.
SELFISHNESS.
In the list of the deterrents, selfishness holds bottom place.
Self-forethought, self-carefulness, self-culture, and self-respect, are
in no way related to selfishness, but are provision of strength towards
useful purposes. Selfishness is the mark of animal origin. We will
therefore define it as _relic of animalism remaining in man_.
Selfishness is the opposite of altruism. While a suggestion of
altruism is found in some animals, especially in dogs, it is not an
animal characteristic. Selfishness is the predominant animal trait and
therefore excuses the otherwise unkindly comparison.
FEAR.
Fear is also a relic of animalism, and a child of selfishness--a
deformed child of an ill-formed parent. It is not a physical condition,
but simply an expression of fearthought. We will therefore define
"fear" as _an expression of fearthought_.
FEARTHOUGHT.
"Fearthought" is _the self-imposed or self-permitted suggestion of
inferiority_. It is both a _cause_ and an _effect_ of selfishness. It
is the "tap-root of evil."
"Fearthought" was coined by the author in order, if possible by
suggestion, to separate from divinely ordained forethought any element
of apprehension or weakness that might be masquerading under the name
of forethought in the minds of the unthinking.
WORRY.
"Worry" is _fearthought in contradistinction to forethought_.
ANGER.
"Anger" is _the brutal and self-inflicting expression of
disapproval_--brutal, because it is ungodly, unchristian and
unaltruistic; _self-inflicting_, because the ill-effect of it reacts
upon the person enangered.
There can be no "righteous anger." Disapproval there must be, because
man has been endowed with the faculty of _Divine Selection_, and
thereby shows a divinity denied to all other living things whose
preferences are called in Science "natural selection." Disapproval in
the interest of harmony--_Divine Selection_--and disapproval in the
creation of discord--anger--are, the one holy, and the other unholy,
uses of the faculty of selection.
There may be, then, _righteous disapproval_, but there never can be
"righteous anger."
ENVY.
"Envy" is _anger of non-possession_.
"Envy" is sometimes wrongly used to express appreciation, as, "I envy
you your good fortune," but we will give it the one meaning of "anger
of non-possession."
JEALOUSY.
"Jealousy" is "the homage that inferiority pays to merit";[3] or,
_recognition or confession of inferiority_; or, _fearthought_.
TAP-ROOT.
"Tap-root" is "the chief root." It is the main support of the tree, of
nearly the size of the trunk, and without which the tree must fall and
die. The tap-root strikes deep into the soil, while the surface-roots
reach out along the surface. For example; egotism is the tree of evil,
either selfishness or fearthought is the tap-root, and anger and
worry in all their phases are the surface roots of the tree. The tree
is known by its fruits, which are, separation, paralysis, disease,
unhappiness and death.
TROUBLE.
Trouble does not really exist. Fearthought of trouble is as near as
one ever gets to the condition, for the reason that whatever has come
has already ceased to exist, except in the memory. The reason for so
fine a distinction is made clear under the caption of "The Impotence
of Pain," and is emphasized in order to place merited responsibility
on fearthought. What is called "trouble," however, can be defined as
_unwelcome conditions_, but, if analyzed, the chief elements of the
"conditions" will be found to be _fearthought of still more unwelcome
conditions_. The tap-root, then, of trouble is fearthought.
PESSIMISM.
Pessimism is _fearthought_. Pessimism is the devil.
NERVOUSNESS.
Nervousness is generally an _effect_ and not a _cause_. It is the
immediate or reflex result of fearthought.
TEMPERAMENT.
Like "nervousness," so-called, "temperament"--habit-of-feeling--is
generally an effect and not a cause; and is frequently used as an
excuse for self-indulged weaknesses.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] _Menticulture_ is the title of a book by the present author, whose
mission is to declare a theory of the possible and very profitable
eradication of the germs of all evil, and consequent unhappiness,
which are commonly assembled under the class names of "anger" and
"worry",--"anger" representing the aggressive, and "worry" representing
the cowardly passions.
[2] Note: The motto of Optimism is, as elsewhere stated, "_All can be_,
and therefore _shall be_, well."
[3] NOTE--I take this apt definition of "jealousy" from that excellent
periodical--the organ of the League of American Wheelmen--"The Bulletin
and Good Roads." Many good suggestions in menticulture accompany the
excellent suggestions relative to good roads in this paper. Good
thoughts are good roads to good action.
THE VALUE OF SIMILE.
Christ taught almost entirely by parable.
Apropos of the value of simile is an experiment about which I have
recently heard.
An experimenter wished to measure in some way the strength of certain
vibrations and their effect upon vibratory things. A large steel comb,
such as is used in music-boxes to produce sounds, was constructed. Each
tooth was made as nearly as possible just like every other tooth. They
not only seemed to measure alike, but when set in motion the vibrations
seemed to be alike to the sense of hearing.
There was also constructed a huge tuning-fork, large enough to be
struck with a bar of iron, and whose vibrations, when it was struck,
came forth in big undulating waves like the pealing of a temple bell.
The object of the experiment was to observe, through the effect of
powerful vibrations on the teeth of the resonant comb, a possible
difference, too slight to be measured by calipers or by striking the
teeth separately. The sound-waves, coming alike to all, would affect
all alike unless there should be a difference in the receptivity of
the teeth owing to differing density of metal, size, or some other
condition not measurable by other means. By listening attentively near
to the comb, the effect of the vibrations on the separate teeth could
be heard.
The tuning-fork was placed about forty feet away from the steel comb,
and was struck a heavy blow with the iron bar. Only three of the twelve
teeth vibrated in response. The others were not in sympathy. _They did
not hear the sound._
I did not see the experiment, but it will serve to illustrate the
value of simile.
All knowledge is measured by comparison. The most effective teaching
is done through parable or simile. A so-called magnetic orator or
writer reaches his hearers or readers by aid of apt simile. In this
the orator has the advantage. If one simile does not convey the
point he wishes to make, he tries another and yet another until he
has detected sympathetic signs of approval in the majority of his
audience. If there are present a hundred listeners, it may require
ten stories or ten similes to reach the entire hundred, as there may
be ten kinds of interest or sympathy present to be reached. Farmers
and gardeners may not be familiar with the terms that describe the
experience of the mariner; mechanics may not understand the language
of the counting room or of the various exchanges; and men may not
appreciate the special accomplishments, sympathies, weaknesses or
foibles of women. Each individual is a separate tooth or string in the
instrument called society. Heredity and environment have tempered and
shaped each individual differently from his fellows. Truth is always
the same, but the vibrations that carry it must be regulated to suit
the conditions and understandings of each person, or group of persons,
to be harmonized by it.
In an attack upon offensive and evil things, offensive similes are
best employed. It is an application of the principle that a thief can
best catch a thief. The object of this little book is to wage war upon
fearthought and its brood of evil children. This is the excuse for
writing under such offensive captions as "Don't Be a Sewer," and "Thou
Shalt Not Strike a Woman," and also such ungrammatical caption as "I
Can't _Not_ Do It."
It is the opinion of the author that we are in the habit of taking
evil too seriously. Evil is usually ridiculous, and while it thrives
under the stimulation of serious consideration, it cannot stand
ridicule. Shrewd politicians know this, and hence depend more upon
the political cartoon to kill the political enemy, than upon all the
reading matter possible to be printed.
What the terms "God," "Appreciation," "Mother," "Love," "Altruism,"
"Egociation," "Forethought," "Happiness," etc., stand for, should
be reverenced and glorified; while the devil, egotism, selfishness,
fearthought, anger and worry, and all of their various expressions,
should be ridiculed out of respectability.
There is no intent to make vulgar excuses for the method of
presentation of the simple and aged truths which are the subject of the
present book. For the same reason that I have asked my readers to agree
with me as to the meaning of terms in connection with the discussion,
I ask them to allow me to state my reasons for the method of the
presentation, if it should seem unusual and, perhaps, undignified.
ANALYSIS OF FEAR.
Professor Angelo Mosso, the eminent physiologist of Turin, Italy, who
has experimented with the condition and results of fear to a greater
extent than any one else that I know of, has published a volume
entitled "Fear."[4]
Professor Mosso writes of much regarding fear that we can all
corroborate from personal experience as to the uncomfortableness of
the emotion, and also informs us of much that is instructive as to the
baleful effects of the mischief it produces upon the tissues of the
body. He states that, unconsciously or consciously, the effect of fear
is found to be disarrangement, which allows or causes inflammation,
fever and other unhealthy conditions that are favorable to the nesting
of the microbes of special diseases, such as are sometimes found in the
air or in the water that we take in, and which are ever waiting for a
chance to nest and breed.
An eminent English physician has also communicated to a leading
English magazine a belief that fear directly attacks the individual
molecules of the body and causes a disarrangement, a relaxing, a
letting-go condition of the molecules in their relation to adjoining
molecules, and that the relaxed condition is that in which disease
originates. He states that there are means of communication within the
body that are as direct and distinct as are the wires that convey the
electric fluid from point to point, and that they connect the brain or
nervous centers with each pair of molecules. By these means the sense
of fear travels, weak or strong, in response to every pulse of its
activity.
Within our visible experience, we know how completely the emotion of
fear, or any of its various expressions can upset the stomach, suspend
the appetite and even cause instant death. So evident are the bad
effects of fear, that it is necessary only to refer to them before
suggesting a remedy; but there are some powerful illustrations that
are interesting, and which will be found under the caption of "Baleful
Effects of Fear."
In this connection, what we are most interested in is, how to rid
ourselves of the habit of fear. Fear is not a physical thing. It is the
result of fearthought, and, being fearthought, has no more substance
than other thought.
In animals it is an attribute of instinct, and is a wise provision of
protection. In the human young, it is not so. In the helplessness of
human foetal existence and infancy, we find a perfectly clean, but
wonderfully impressionable, thought-matrix, into which are to be
impressed the suggestions whose sum constitutes the intelligence in men
which takes the place of instinct in animals.
Fear is no constituent part of the composition of this thought-matrix.
Susceptibility to fearthought, as it is susceptible to any and all
suggestions, is the nearest approach to inherent infliction of fear
that the unfolding soul is burdened with. If the race-habit-of-thought
were indelibly pock-marked by fear, and stamped its roughness on the
thought-matrix of all mankind, there would be no one free from it; but,
as many are born into, and live, a life of great strength and courage,
free from any taint of fearthought, this assumption is disproved,
and is as absurd as would be the assumption that man must always do
whatever, and only what, his ancestors did.
All of the fear-impressions received are the result of either pre-natal
or post-natal suggestion. It is within the power of parents and nurses
to keep the delicate susceptibility of their charges free from the
curse of fearthought; or to cause or allow it to be scared and bruised
by the claws of the demon.
President G. Stanley Hall, of Clarke University, Editor in Chief of the
_American Journal of Psychology_, and Dr. Colin A. Scott, Professor of
Psychology and Child Study at the Cook County Normal School, Chicago,
Ill., U. S. A., have rendered greatest service to humanity by searching
out and analyzing fears in children, exposing the absurdity of them,
showing the sources from which foolish fears are derived, and thereby
dragging from ambush the worst enemy of mankind, whose strength is
developed by means of secret toleration, but can easily be overcome if
uncovered.
The method of securing information was by means of the _questionaire_,
the answers to which, although unsigned and unidentifiable, and
savoring of exaggeration or romance, furnish splendid texts in a
crusade against the toleration of the habit-of-fear in a civilized
community. One can scarcely imagine, before reading the answers to the
fear _questionaire_, the unreasonable and absurd fears that warp the
lives and ruin the health of many of the people among whom we move,
and by whom, in some measure, we and our children are unconsciously
influenced.
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.
FOOTNOTE:
[4] Messrs. E. Lough and F. Kiesow, pupils of Professor Mosso,
translated the fifth Italian edition of "Fear" into English, and
Longmans, Green and Company published it in 1896.
BALEFUL EFFECTS OF FEAR.
In the last chapter I stated that the bad effects of fear were so well
known to every one that it was not necessary to dwell upon them, but
second thought suggests stating a few special cases that have been told
me by physician friends who are interested in the lay experiments I am
making.
In the Southern States of the United States of America, where the
black race comes into closest touch with Caucasian civilization under
conditions of free expression, is probably the best place to study fear
and its opposite, chivalrous courage.
Dr. William E. Parker, of the Charity Hospital of New Orleans, was once
called to attend a big negro who had been brought in by the ambulance,
and whom the students in charge of the ambulance had frightened nearly
to death by telling that he was badly wounded in the stomach, and would
probably die.
The negro was big and burly and black, and yet, livid with fear.
Both pulse and temperature indicated serious trouble within, and the
convulsive tremors that shook him from time to time revealed a state
of collapse that might end in death at any time. There was no outward
flow of blood, but the probable inward flow seemed more dangerous in
consequence.
The account of the case, as related by the students, told of a shooting
affray, in which the negro had been hit in the abdomen, as evidenced by
a bullet-hole in his clothing.
Dr. Parker began an examination by ordering the clothing of the patient
removed, and during which a bullet, much flattened, fell upon the
floor. This bullet had done no serious injury, of course, but there
might have been two shots and two bullets, one of which had penetrated
the body, and hence the bullet that fell upon the floor caused no
special attention, till search had been made in vain for a hole in the
skin. Complete examination revealed the fact that the negro had been
hit, but that the bullet had struck a button, causing a bruised place
behind the button, but had lodged in the clothing, in harmless inertia.
As the doctor held up the bullet, and told the patient of the slight
extent of his injury and the wonder of his escape, good, warm blood
returned to the livid countenance, the pulse and the temperature
assumed their normal condition, a grateful sparkle lit up the almost
glassy eyeballs, and the broadest possible grin spread over the face of
the erstwhile dying man.
The negro got down from the operating-table, arranged his clothing,
and, after apologizing for the trouble he had caused, and after
thanking the doctor and the students for their attentions, went out
into the street as well as ever. He had been, half an hour before, at
death's door.
Dr. Henry A. Veazie, one of the student-heroes of the yellow-fever
epidemic of 1878, who had splendid opportunity to witness the effects
of fear during an epidemic, asserts that fear is a certain cause of
attack of yellow fever.
I will say, parenthetically, in the way of right information relative
to the South, that there has been no epidemic since 1878--twenty years;
that it has been proven that yellow fever does not originate in any
part of the United States, and that it is very effectively barred out
at quarantine, or, if accidentally admitted, that it is easily killed
by present means of treatment, and that an epidemic is no longer
mentioned as a possibility--only as quite a remote memory--in New
Orleans, or elsewhere in the South.
Doctor Veazie's story is corroborated by an able brochure on "The
Influence of Fear in Disease," by the much-beloved, the late Dr.
William H. Holcomb, of New Orleans; and, so helpful are the suggestions
contained in it, that I have secured the privilege from the Purdy
Publishing Company, of Chicago, of reprinting largely from it, and have
added the matter copied as "Appendix A," to this volume.[5]
Doctor Veazie also called my attention to the unusual fatality
attending what are called "frog-accidents." Train-handlers and yardmen
employed on railroads are very liable to these "frog-accidents." The
frog is that part of a switch where the rails come together, forming
a "V." In running about recklessly, as a train-man generally does, he
sometimes catches the sole of a boot in the "V," and wedges it in so
tightly that the foot cannot be withdrawn. If a locomotive, or a car,
happen to be coming towards him, and cannot be stopped in time, cutting
off of the foot or the leg by the wheels upon the rails is a certain
result.
If it were done instantly, and without a foreknowledge of the owner
of the leg or foot, the chances of recovery would be almost assured,
because of the present skill of surgery and the efficacy of known
antiseptics; but with the few moments of foreknowledge of the impending
accident, the poison of fearthought has time to so unnerve the system,
relax the tissues, and itself disease the body by shock, that the
wounding usually results in death.
There is probably no situation in which a person can be placed where
the conditions are more horrible than to be wedged between the rails,
and to see an eighty-ton locomotive rolling on to him with irresistible
weight. Being condemned to be hanged cannot be as fearful, for the
reason that the condemned has been led gradually to contemplate the
possibility of death by this means, and has come to expect it with a
certain amount of complacency. The terror of the "frog-accident" comes
with the suddenness of its possibility and the helplessness of the
situation. It is like an ice-water bath thrown on a sweating person.
It is the icy hand of death come to clutch at the throat of warmest
hope and fondest affections. As such, it must be fearful; but, to the
person habituated to _fear_ fear, through knowing the deadly effect
of it, the emotion can be prepared for, greatly modified and possibly
counteracted, by a prearrangement with the emotional self--that which
Hudson calls the "subjective mind."
To be effective in case of surprise, the preparation must come from the
habit-of-feeling, "_I must not be afraid; I must not be afraid._" No
matter what the surprise, the emotional self must instantly assert,
through habit, "_I must not be afraid_."
I have not had experience with "frog-accidents" to test the efficacy of
my theory of schooled suggestion, but I have been subject to surprises
that have been quite as fearful. As it happened, the incident I speak
of was not perilous, but it had all the appearance of being so to
me, when I was awakened from sleep, in a hotel in New York City, by
suffocation, to find my room full of smoke that poured in through the
transom and through the cracks of the door which was my only means of
escape.