The Conquest of Fear | Page 3

new social order. By an
elaborate system of book-keeping called Social Security, a whole
nation was to win freedom from want and freedom from fear.
But while we were building our smug little house of Social Security,
the whole world was crashing around us. Instead of achieving local
security we find ourselves now in the midst of world-wide insecurity.
Far from having eliminated the economic causes of fear, we now find
these causes multiplied many times. To the fear of losing our money is

now added the fear of losing our sons. To the fear of losing our jobs is
added the fear of losing our lives. To the fear of depression and
inflation is added the fear of losing the very freedoms for which the war
is being fought.
At last we see, or are on the point of seeing, that materialism breeds
worse fears than it cures; that economics and sociology create more
social problems than they solve; that science makes it possible to
destroy wealth and lives much faster than it can build them. It took
years of science to achieve the airplane and to eliminate people's fear of
flying. Now, suddenly, the airplane has become the greatest source of
destruction and of fear on the globe. Cities which were decades in the
building are blasted out of being in a night. Millions of people must
regulate their lives in fear of these dread visitors.
This is the background against which the conquest of fear presents its
philosophy of courage and of hope. It is a philosophy diametrically
opposed to the dominant beliefs and practices of our materialistic age.
One hesitates to use the words spiritual and moral because they have
become catch words. Nevertheless, King's philosophy is a spiritual and
a moral one, and the reader will gain from it a clearer concept of what
these words really mean.
When I remember my reactions to the first portion of this book, I can
readily picture the impatience and even scorn of many intellectuals and
pseudo-intellectuals. Because of its emphasis on the religious nature of
the universe and on the spiritual power of the individual, it may seem to
them naïve. Because of its consistent condemnation of Mammon, of
materialism and the economic-sociological interpretation of life, it may
seem to them old-fashioned. Actually, the book is highly sophisticated
and is more novel to-day than the day it was written because since that
time we have strayed twenty years further from the truth.
One day I was having luncheon with a man who, during the course of
the conversation, remarked: "I want to tell you how much I enjoyed
your latest book,--" As almost any writer would, I pricked up my ears
expectantly.

"Yes," he went on, "I got a great deal out of your recent book, but the
book which helped me more than any I have ever read is a book called
THE CONQUEST OF FEAR, by Basil King. Do you happen to know
it?"
"Know it!" I exclaimed. "I not only know it, I am just on the point of
writing an introduction to a new edition of the book. Would you mind
telling me how it helped you?"
He thereupon related how, at a certain period of his life, he had left an
excellent position to take a new one which seemed more promising. It
soon developed that the difficulties of this position were such as to
make his success seem almost hopeless. He became obsessed with the
idea that the people with whom he had to deal were "out to get him."
His fears of the job and of his associates grew to the point where a
nervous breakdown seemed inevitable.
One day his daughter told him that she needed a book in her school
work which he remembered having packed in a box that had been
stored in the attic and not yet opened. When he opened the box, the first
book which he picked up was THE CONQUEST OF FEAR. It was
evidently one of those books which had somehow come into the
possession of his family, but which he had never read.
This time, however, he sat down in the attic and began to read it.
During the course of the next year or so he read it carefully not once
but four or five times. "It marked the turning point in my life," he told
me. "It enabled me to conquer the fears which were threatening to ruin
me at the time, and it gave me a philosophy which has stood me in
good stead ever since."
A philosophy which marked the turning point in his life and which has
stood him in good stead ever since! THE CONQUEST OF FEAR
offers such a philosophy not only to individuals suffering from