are able to perform preternatural feats of strength. For the same
reason, the exhaustion following fear will be increased as the
powerful stimulus of fear drains the cup of nervous energy even
though no visible action may result.... Perhaps the most striking
difference between man and animals lies in the greater control
which man has gained over his primitive instinctive reactions. As
compared with the entire duration of organic evolution, man came
down from his arboreal abode and assumed his new rôle of
increased domination over the physical world but a moment ago.
And now, though sitting at his desk in command of the complicated
machinery of civilization, when he fears a business catastrophe
his fear is manifested in the terms of his ancestral physical
battle in the struggle for existence. He cannot fear
intellectually, he cannot fear dispassionately, he fears with all
his organs, and the same
organs are stimulated and inhibited as if, instead of its being a
battle of credit, or position, or of honor, it were a physical
battle with teeth and claws.... Nature has but one means of
response to fear, and whatever its cause the phenomena are always
the same--always physical.[9]

[Footnote 9: Crile: _Origin and Nature of the Emotions_, p. 60 ff.]

* * * * *

The moral is as plain as day: Learn to call up fear only when speedy
legs are needed, not a cool head or a comfortable digestion. Fear is a
costly proceeding, an emergency measure like a fire-alarm, to be used
only when the occasion is urgent enough to demand it. How often it is
misused and how large a part it plays in nervous symptoms, both mental