resistance, and keeps us quiet and free, so that if an emergency of
any kind arises, we are prepared to act promptly and calmly for the
best. If the amount of human energy wasted in the strain of nervous
fear could be measured in pounds of pressure, the figures would be
astonishing. Many people who have the habit of nervous fear in one
form or another do not throw it off merely because they do not know
how. There are big and little nervous fears, and each and all can be
met and conquered,--thus bringing a freedom of life which cannot
even be imagined by those carrying the burden of fear, more or less,
throughout their lives.

The fear of what people will think of us is a very common cause of
slavery, and the nervous anxiety as to whether we do or do not
please is a strain which wastes the energy of the greater part of
mankind. It seems curious to measure the force wasted in
sensitiveness to public opinion as you would measure the waste of
power in an engine, and yet it is a wholesome and impersonal way to
think of it,--until we find a better way. It relieves us of the
morbid element in the sensitiveness to say, "I cannot mind what
so-and-so thinks of me, for I have not the nervous energy to spare."
It relieves us still more of the tendency to morbid feeling, if we
are wholesomely interested in what others think of us, in order to
profit by it, and do better. There is nothing morbid or nervous
about our sensitiveness to opinion, when it is derived from a love
of criticism for the sake of its usefulness. Such a rightful and
wise regard for the opinion of others results in a saving of energy,
for on the one hand, it saves us from the mistakes of false and
shallow independence, and, on the other, from the wasteful strain of
servile fear.