Fear of Fear

It is not strange that we should talk of fear whenever the fingers of some crisis tighten around our necks; and perhaps the crises most stubborn against our human devices are the disasters of nature when they come suddenly — floods, fires, earthquakes. We were rubbing our hands, scarcely able to believe that the last earth-quake had passed in peace and left us the blessing of standing on two feet.

Yes, it was not strange that we should be afraid; it would have been strange had we not been afraid. It was said of old, 'Only the brave can bear fear.' The very bearing of fear is a capacity we must acknowledge.

And fear, after all this, is not wholly an evil.

You ask me how?

Well, I credit fear with a great deal of merit, for I see our civilization as indebted to it.

Talk that seems irresponsible on the face of it, does it not?

But before we settle anything, let us contemplate fear — without fear!! Ancient man feared the attacks of wild beasts by night, and so he found his way to light.

He feared hunger, and so came the raising of livestock, and after it agriculture.

He feared nakedness and cold, and so industry had its begin-ning, and man became a weaver, a builder, a worker at everything that might shield him from one thing or another.

He feared his enemies, and so came weapons.

He feared boredom, so he

took to thinking, and expressing, and drawing, and playing upon instruments of music.

He feared annihilation, and so the philosophies of metaphysics arose. He feared sickness, and so there was medicine and there was remedy.

He feared himself, his weapons, his power to annihilate, and so arose the calls for peace, and peaceful coexistence, and the League of Nations, and the United Nations.

Man's fear of fear is a construc-tive instinct; we would do better not to despise it, and to spare it a kindly glance from our souls.

It is the foundation of the line of defense, always.

Blessed be fear!

The Coffee Cup and Optimistic Thinking

Nothing is more amusing to me than watching people turn their coffee cups over and beseech whoever they judge to possess the power of fortune-reading to tell them something.

These minutes, between the turning of the cup and the beginning of the reading, embody a marvelous pattern of opti-mistic thinking.

Yes, an amusing sight: one person — or, to be more exact, one woman — gazing with eyes in which eagerness sways, and another affecting gravity as she holds the thread of destiny hidden behind the windings of the dried coffee grounds.

This one talks, and that one's eyes all but leap from her head. If the news is of the kind 'a fistful of money,' 'glad tidings,' 'a

letter after three signs,' there is a broad smile that nearly swallows up the whole face. And if the cup holds enmities, and jabs, and a loss in some deal, there is a disappointment that would gladly smash the cup and its reader together.

A great philosophy is acted out in the drama of the coffee cup: that optimistic thinking is natural to people — but the reality of life is not always optimistic!

The New Crescent

We were a group of friends gathered into a trim automobile that went cutting along the street that skirts the sea.

The evening was in its first hour, and nature was a canvas over which a thousand artist's brushes danced. One of us had drifted away; he had given his eyes to the sky and to the sea and to every artist's brush dancing between them.

When his reverie had lasted long, we asked him jokingly what was out there, and he said: 'I am gazing at the new crescent. How like it is to a small boat cradled by an enchanted lake!'

One of us spoke up and said: 'The new crescent, you say? Where is it? Let me see it.'

And he put his head out of the window, searching for the crescent until he found it; then he took a franc from his pocket, contemplated it, and said in rapture: 'May you bring us a blessed month.' Before the new crescent I saw the whole human company narrowed down to two: a poet, and a merchant!