THE RELIGION OF HEALTHY-MINDEDNESS
81
and a profounder sphere, in either of which he may learn to live more
habitually. The shallower and lower sphere is that of the fleshly sensa-
tions, instincts, and desires, of egotism, doubt, and the lower personal
interests. But whereas Christian theology has always considered
frowardness to be the essential vice of this part of human nature, the
mind-curers say that the mark of the beast in it is fear; and this is
what gives such an entirely new religious turn to their persuasion.
“Fear,” to quote a writer of the school, “has had its uses in the evolu-
tionary process, and seems to constitute the whole of forethought in most
animals; but that it should remain any part of the mental equipment of
human civilized life is an absurdity. I find that the fear element of fore-
thought is not stimulating to those more civilized persons to whom duty
and attraction are the natural motives, but is weakening and deterrent. As
soon as it becomes unnecessary, fear becomes a positive deterrent, and
should be entirely removed, as dead flesh is removed from living tissue. To
assist in the analysis of fear, and in the denunciation of its expressions,
I have coined the word fearthought to stand for the unprofitable element
of forethought, and have defined the word “worry” as fearthought in contra-
distinction to forethought. I have also defined fearthought as
the self-imposed
or self-permitted suggestion of inferiority, in order to place it where it really
belongs, in the category of harmful, unnecessary, and therefore not respect-
able things.”
1
The “misery-habit,” the “martyr-habit,” engendered by the
prevalent “fearthought,” get pungent criticism from the mind-cure
writers: —
“Consider for a moment the habits of life into which we are born.
There are certain social conventions or customs and alleged requirements,
there is a theological bias, a general view of the world. There are con-
servative ideas in regard to our early training, our education, marriage,
and occupation in life. Following close upon this, there is a long series
of anticipations, namely, that we shall suffer certain children’s diseases,
diseases of middle life, and of old age; the thought that we shall grow old,
lose our faculties, and again become childlike; while crowning all is the fear
of death. Then there is a long line of particular fears and trouble-bearing
expectations, such, for example, as ideas associated with certain articles of
food, the dread of the east wind, the terrors of hot weather, the aches and
pains associated with cold weather, the fear of catching cold if one sits in
1
H
ORACE
F
LETCHER
: Happiness as found in Forethought
minus Fearthought, Menticulture
Series, ii. Chicago and New York, Stone, 1897, pp. 21–25; abridged.
82
THE VARIETIES OF RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE
a draught, the coming of hay-fever upon the 14th of August in the middle
of the day, and so on through a long list of fears, dreads, worriments,
anxieties, anticipations, expectations, pessimisms, morbidities, and the
whole ghostly train of fateful shapes which our fellow-men, and especially
physicians, are ready to help us conjure up, an array worthy to rank with
Bradley’s “unearthly ballet of bloodless categories.”
“Yet this is not all. This vast array is swelled by innumerable volunteers
from daily life, — the fear of accident, the possibility of calamity, the loss
of property, the chance of robbery, of fire, or the outbreak of war. And it
is not deemed sufficient to fear for ourselves. When a friend is taken ill,
we must forthwith fear the worst and apprehend death. If one meets with
sorrow . . . sympathy means to enter into and increase the suffering.”
1
“Man,” to quote another writer, “often has fear stamped upon him
before his entrance into the outer world; he is reared in fear; all his life is
passed in bondage to fear of disease and death, and thus his whole mentality
becomes cramped, limited, and depressed, and his body follows its shrunken
pattern and specification. . . . Think of the millions of sensitive and re-
sponsive souls among our ancestors who have been under the dominion of
such a perpetual nightmare! Is it not surprising that health exists at all?
Nothing but the boundless divine love, exuberance, and vitality, constantly
poured in, even though unconsciously to us, could in some degree neutralize
such an ocean of morbidity.”
2
Although the disciples of the mind-cure often use Christian
terminology, one sees from such quotations how widely their notion
of the fall of man diverges from that of ordinary Christians.
3
1
H. W. D
RESSER
: Voices of Freedom, New York, 1899, p. 38.
2
H
ENRY
W
OOD
: Ideal Suggestion through Mental Photography, Boston, 1899, p. 54.
3
Whether it differs so much from Christ’s own notion is for the exegetists to decide.
According to Harnack, Jesus felt about evil and disease much as our mind-curers do. “What
is the answer which Jesus sends to John the Baptist?” asks Harnack, and says it is this: “ ‘The
blind see, and the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, and the deaf hear, the dead rise up, and
the gospel is preached to the poor.’ That is the ‘coming of the kingdom,’ or rather in these
saving works the kingdom is already there. By the overcoming and removal of misery, of
need, of sickness, by these actual effects John is to see that the new time has arrived. The
casting out of devils is only a part of this work of redemption, but Jesus points to that as the
sense and seal of his mission. Thus to the wretched, sick, and poor did he address himself, but
not as a moralist, and without a trace of sentimentalism. He never makes groups and
departments of the ills; he never spends time in asking whether the sick one ‘deserves’ to be
cured; and it never occurs to him to sympathize with the pain or the death. He nowhere says
that sickness is a beneficent infliction, and that evil has a healthy use. No, he calls sickness
sickness and health health. All evil, all wretchedness, is for him something dreadful; it is of
the great kingdom of Satan; but he feels the power of the Saviour within him. He knows
that advance is possible only when weakness is overcome, when sickness is made well.” Das
Wesen des Christenthums, 1900, p. 39.