The Nenana daily news. (Nenana, Alaska) 1918-1921, 1918-12-31
For I he Welfare
of the Community
Editorial Science Monitor, 1879
A Mad World

! Fear is the most prolific source
of all evil. Of course, if fear were
understood in it's full metaphysical
significance, it would be understood
to be the provoking cause of all
evil of every sort. But even from
/ the ordinary point of view of the
world, fear when it communicates
itself to numbers, is capable of
causing greater disaster than any
other phase of the human con-
seriousness. The pagan philosophers
realized that there was such a thing
as the fear of fear; in other words
as they stated it, the fear of death
was worse than death itself. Cen
turtles later Shakespeare appropriated
the idea, and put precisely the same
sentiment into the mouth of Isa-
bella, in Measure for Measure; :"
and, indeed, anyone who knows any,
thing at a" of history knows how
disease was spread upon the wings
of fear in the case of that awful
visitation in the Fourteenth Cen
fury known as the Black Death, and
again when a pestilence of a similar
nature swept London, in the Seven
teenth Century.
Some day the world will come to
see that what it calls contagion is
a mental contagion, and that what
it calls infection is the infection of
one mind from another. Orthodox
medical practice today largely recog-
nizes this, but it draws back from
the logical consequences of it's own
admission, and endeavors to shelter
itself in halfway house, which is
built partially out of mind and par
TALLY out of matter. Any person
who has watched the ravages of
such disease as cholera in the East
must know exactly what this means.
The European sahib, going about
doing his duty, and quite fearless
of consequences, moves through the
cholera camps with perfect i'm
munity from the disease. But the
native stricken by this disease, lies
down almost where he is overcome
by it, whether in his house or by
the roadside, convinced, in the sud-
denness of the shock and the con-
fusion of his fear, that the moment
has come from which it is useless
for him to attempt to escape.
In such conditions it is surely OBJ
vious that the sanest treatment is
to do everything possible to destroy
fear. Fear in Christian COM
munity should be self-condemned.
Some nineteen centuries of reading
the Johannine epistles should surely
have affected this if Christendom is
understanding what it reads 1t is
little to the point to say that fear
is uncomfortable, for any person
hn hnc hnl 10 IL
with causes which produce fear
knows that this is not the case.
Probably every man who has made
the sea his profession has been thru
periods of fear which he has had to
overcome in order to gain that
sereneness in danger, without which
he would be a liability instead Of
and asset aboard his ship. Prac-
tically every man who has ever
been into action on land can tell
You something eff the sickening SEN
sations or the first experience of
battle. But as time goes on, the
veteran rises superior to the fears
of the recruit, and daily takes his
life in his hands with a calmness
which shows that he has learned
something, at any rate, of the
dominion over fear. 1t is surely
obvious, then, that in an hour of
great fear, when the prevailing tone
of the human mind, in the midst
of the conflict of Armageddon, finds
expression in an epidemic, that a
Christian country should rather re.
sort to it's churches to relieve it.
self of it's fears, than close their
doors SO as to sound the top note
e A