The Conquest of Fear | Page 5

my own needs. The ideas themselves come from many
sources. Some of these sources are, so deep in the past that I could no
longer trace them; some are so recent that I know the day and hour
when they revealed themselves, like brooks in the way. It would be
possible to say to the reader, "I owe this to such and such a teaching,
and that to such and such a man," only that references of the kind
would be tedious. I fall back on what Emerson says: "Thought is the
property of him who can entertain it; and of him who can adequately
place it. A certain awkwardness marks the use of borrowed thoughts;
but, as soon as we have learned what to do with them, they become our
own. Thus all originality is relative." The thoughts that I shall express
are my own to the extent that I have lived them--or tried to live
them--though the wind that bloweth where it listeth may have brought
them to my mind.
Nor do I think for a moment that what I have found helpful to me must
of necessity be helpful to everyone. It may be helpful to someone. That
is the limit of my hope. It is simple fact that no one can greatly help
anyone else. The utmost we can do is to throw out an idea here and
there which another may seize, and by which he may help himself.
Borrowed help has the awkwardness which Emerson attributes to
borrowed thoughts. It is only when a concept has lain for a time in a
man's being, germinated there, and sprung into active life, that it is of
much use to him; but by that time it has become his own. The kingdom
of heaven must begin within oneself or we shall probably not find it
anywhere.
These pages will contain, then, no recipe for the conquest of fear; they
will offer, with much misgiving and diffidence, no more than the
record of what one individual has done toward conquering it. This
record is presented merely for what it is worth. It may be worth nothing.
On the other hand, someone may find it worth something, and in that
case all that the writer hopes for will be attained.

III
As a matter of fact, in my own case the reaction against fear was from
the beginning more or less instinctive. With the first exercise of the
reasoning faculty I tried to argue against the emotion. I remember that
as a little boy I was afraid of a certain dog that barked at me when I
went to a certain house to which I was sent perhaps two or three times a
week. The house had a driveway, and from the minute of passing the
entrance my knees trembled under me. But even then, I recall, it
seemed to me that this terror was an incongruous thing in life, that it
had no rightful place there, and that, if the world was what my elders
told me it was, there must be in it a law of peace and harmony which as
yet I hadn't arrived at. I cannot say that when the dog barked this
reasoning did more than nerve me to drag my quaking limbs up to the
doorstep, whence my enemy, a Skye terrier, invariably took flight.
During a somewhat stormy childhood and boyhood, in which there was
a good deal of emotional stress, I never got beyond this point. Specific
troubles were not few, and by the time I reached early manhood a habit
of looking for them had been established. "What's it going to be now?"
became a formula of anticipation before every new event. New events
presented themselves most frequently as menaces. Hopes rarely loomed
up without accompanying probabilities of disappointment. One adopted
the plan of "expecting disappointment" as a means of cheating the
"jinx." I am not painting my early life as any darker than most lives. It
was, I fancy, as bright as the average life of youth.

IV
But, contrary to what is generally held, I venture to think that youth is
not a specially happy period. Because young people rarely voice their
troubles we are likely to think them serene and unafraid. That has not
been my experience either with them or of them. While it is true that
cares of a certain type increase with age the knowledge of how to deal
with them increases, or ought to increase, in the same progression.
With no practical experience to support them the young are up against

the unknown and problematical--occupation, marriage, sexual urge, life
in general--around which clings that terror of the dark which frightened
them in childhood. Home training, school training, college training,
religious training, social influences