Of the illimitable years--a Mind--Man, whole!
--THE AUTHOR.





CHAPTER II.

FEAR AND REASON.

"In civilized life it has at last become possible for large
numbers of people to pass from the cradle to the grave without
ever having had a pang of genuine fear. Many of us need an attack
of mental disease to teach us the meaning of the word."--William
James.


We have all heard the seemingly discriminating remarks that fear
is normal and abnormal, and that normal fear is to be regarded as
a friend, while abnormal fear should be destroyed as an enemy.

The fact is that no so--called normal fear can be named which has
not been clearly absent in some people who have had every cause
therefor. If you will run over human history in your mind, or look
about yea in the present life, you will find here and there
persons who, in situations or before objects which ought, as any
fearful soul will insist, to inspire the feeling of at least
normal self-protecting fear, are nevertheless wholly without the
feeling. They possess every feeling and thought demanded except