is a sad fact that many people have been argued into long nervous
illnesses by would-be kind friends whose only intention was to argue
them out of illness. Even the kindest and most disinterested friends
are apt to lose patience when they argue, and that, to the tired
brain which they are trying to relieve, is a greater irritant than
they realize. The radical cure for nervous fears is to drop
resistance to painful circumstances or conditions. Resistance is
unwillingness to endure, and to drop the resistance is to be
strongly willing. This vigorous "willingness" is so absolutely
certain in its happy effect, and is so impossible that it should
fail, that the resistant impulses seem to oppose themselves to it
with extreme energy. It is as if the resistances were conscious
imps, and as if their certainty of defeat--in the case of their
victim's entire "willingness "--roused them to do their worst, and
to hold on to their only possible means of power with all the more
determination. Indeed, when a man is working through a hard state,
in gaining his freedom from nervous fears, these imps seem to hold
councils of war, and to devise new plans of attack in order to take
him by surprise and overwhelm him in an emergency. But every sharp
attack, if met with quiet "willingness," brings a defeat for the
assailants, until finally the resistant imps are conquered and
disappear. Occasionally a stray imp will return, and try to arouse
resistance on what he feels is old familiar ground, but he is
quickly driven off, and the experience only makes a man more quietly
vigilant and more persistently "willing."

Perhaps one of the most prevalent and one of the hardest fears to
meet, is that of insanity,--especially when it is known to be a
probable or possible inheritance. When such fear is oppressing a
man,--to tell him that he not only can get free from the fear, but