The Fostering of Fear

Mortal mind loses no opportunity to discover itself, and one of its latest exhibits has been honored in the press reports by the announcement of "An Exposition of the Characteristics of Consumption." This was held in one of our large cities and it is said that the gathering of experts gave all "the latest theories respecting the white death a competent presentation and discussion."

It is an interesting coincidence that just at the time that "up-to-date knowledge of this disease" was being acquired by these well-meaning specialists, an experienced physician, who is ranked "high in his profession," should be declaring in a neighboring city, that the drug system can be of no assistance in the fight against what is very frequently but the initial phase of the dread disease referred to. It having become apparent that the drug treatment of this and many other maladies is wholly ineffective, the materialist is impelled to look further for cause in order to make further experiment toward its removal. In so doing, however, he meets with so many possible and conjectured occasions of ailment that to put them in battle array and then ask poor humanity to guard against them each and all, is to beset life's every path with terrors and make it a constant scare, a ceaseless struggle to avoid the ills of which our fathers, as all concede, were happily ignorant.

This perennial prospecting for the sources of disease is called "Advanced Medical Science," and it is in good form to doff your hat in its presence, but the humorous instinct is rather irreverent, and not infrequently one has occasion to smile generously when some "knight of the quill" ventures to intimate that all scientific statements being duly considered, the outlook is becoming altogether too boogerish to be comfortable, and propounds a query like the following, which we quote from an exchange.

"Pretty soon life will not be worth living. Surrounded and controlled by prohibitions and warnings against invisible enemies, we shall soon envy the inhabitants of Darkest Africa. They know they are safe when they have the right charm in the right place, but we, poor, civilized sufferers, can never know it. The awful germ lurks everywhere, and the most ordinary precautions of cleanliness may set him loose upon us.

"Our forefathers and foremothers lived long and happily and healthily without any knowledge of germs. The parlor was dusted without fear, and other things were done which modern science tells us can be done only upon our peril. Is it possible that their ignorance was their safety, and that our knowledge or imagination constitutes the only real peril there is?"

In theoretically locating the causes of disease in matter, the devotees of materia medica are logically led to pry into its abnormal conditions with the hope that through chemical or microscopic analysis these causes may be discovered. They seem, however, strangely indifferent to one of the most unfortunate results of this procedure; namely, that as the mentality of the people at large comes to be dominated by thoughts of disease, their susceptibility to it is correspondingly increased.

Elaborate descriptions and detailed reports of the progress of the affliction in the case of all prominent people, are sown broadcast through the daily press, and the inevitable outcome is that state of fearsome familiarity with abnormity which, as all mental students agree, conduces to its multiplication; so that in the end it is seen that well-meaning effort because of its false basis and unwise methods, but aggravates the ills it aims to relieve.

This fear-breeding philosophy and endeavor, Christian Science would replace with the demonstrable truth that "The procuring cause and foundation of all sickness is ignorance and sin. It is always a false sense mentally entertained, not controlled, which induces disease;" and that "the cause of disease obtains in the mortal mind," and its cure can obtain only in "the immortal divine Mind" (Science and Health, pp. 411, 174). Instead of delving into inert matter to discover the source of our ills, it finds the explanation of both sin and sickness in the supremacy of material sense,—the belief of that which is false,—and for this the one efficient remedy is the apprehension of Truth. It counsels not the diagnosis and elaboration of abnormity, but the acquirement of the mind of him who knew and proved the nothingness of these enemies of our health and peace.

Thus would Christian Science effect the death of fear and the dawn of faith by awakening man to his true possession,—"a conscious, constant capacity to understand God" (Science and Health, p. 209), in the exercise and dominion of which sickness and sorrow flee away, so that with Browning he can say:—

No Fear! or if a fear be born
This minute, it dies out in scorn.

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The Avoidance of Extremes

February 20, 1904

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