Part 17

Ignorance is not bliss.

Ignorance can no longer be accepted as an excuse for the toleration of fear.

Thought precedes every emotion and every act of life. It must have no element of fear in it, if it is to lead up and on.

Habit-of-thought asserts itself on all occasions. Habit-of-feeling is the truer description, for the reason that it is the emotional self and not the thought-self that first responds to surprise.

Habit-of-thought or habit-of-feeling can be trained to respond to surprise with "I must not be afraid," as easily as it is permitted to respond with the cowardly dictum, "I am afraid."

If one have the habit-of-fearthought in any form or degree, surprise may cause it to inspire rash action which may end in disaster. More lives are lost through jumping into danger under the impulse of fearthought, than are ever saved by it. Calm forethought is the better friend in a case of peril than quaking fearthought.

I must not be afraid!

* * * * *

Fearthought is a dissembler.

Fearthought is a very dangerous enemy, because it habitually masquerades in the garb of forethought.

Many earnest persons who desire to cultivate only the best thought, believe that fearthought is forethought, and invite and nurse it as such.

The lexicographers even, have failed to separate fearthought from forethought, and hence it does not appear in the dictionaries under its specific descriptive appellation.

* * * * *

Let fear be disguised no longer. It is a child of ignorant or perverse imagination. It is fearthought only. It is always irrational and illogical. It has no element of good nor of protection in it. Separated from forethought, fearthought causes only paralysis and death, and neither energizes nor saves life. It is the devil. It is the result of false premises or impressions, but can be counteracted by logical premises and right impressions.

Fearthought is a masquerader.

* * * * *

The timid are the most impressionable, and can be cured of fearthought by intelligent, persistent, counter-suggestion.

Impressibility is as powerful an aid to good or right suggestion as it is to bad or false suggestion. Differently used, an element of weakness becomes an element of strength. In a matter of mind-accomplishment no one need say "I can't," for mind is what it most earnestly wishes to be.

Limiting weaknesses there are, at present, but these are generally found in asylums. A crusade against fearthought would, within one generation, make asylums unnecessary.

Average intelligence can be cleared of fearthought. A crusade against fearthought would immeasurably raise the average of intelligence.

Let no one deprecate himself or his fellows as to his or their possibilities. The timid may become courageous; the weak may become strong; the sick may become well, and the unhappy may become happy, by the reversal of the attitude of their energy toward life's problems.

Courage is a birthright.

* * * * *

Fearlessness of death insures the strongest love of life.

No one can know what it is to appreciate life at its best until he has ceased to have any suspicion of dread of death.

No one can realize the keenest enjoyment of life until he has grown to feel--appreciate--that this life is an important stage of an evolutionary process, in which the dawning of spiritual possibilities opens up the realm of divine existence to him, and introduces to his consciousness that appreciation of God which gives birth to love, growth and happiness.

When fearthought is entirely eradicated from the mind by the elimination of the basic fear--the fear of death--man begins to feel the responsibility of growing his best, of ripening in natural manner, and of dropping into the lap of Mother Earth only when he has instilled into himself the richest and sweetest juices of an appreciative and altruistic life.

Fear not Death if you would know and love life.