It is true there is a legitimate and honest fear, like that of the young soldier who, upon being asked after his first battle how he felt, replied: "I was afraid I would be afraid, but I was not afraid." It is right and proper that one should fear to do a mean or cowardly thing, to injure another, or to commit any kind of wrong. This fear, however, instead of weakening personal character, imparts to it new and manly force.
To walk straight up to the thing feared will often strip it of its terror. In one of the old fables we read that when man first beheld the camel its huge size caused him to flee in dreadful fear. But later, observing the animal's seeming gentleness, he approached him less timidly, and then, seeing the almost spiritless nature of the beast, he boldly put a bridle in his mouth and set a child to drive him. We can in like manner conquer fearthoughts of the human mind.
Fear has well been called our most ancient enemy. Primitive humanity were unprotected against more powerful animals, and in those early days they had good reason, doubtless, for manifesting (great fear; but it is difficult to justify the wide-spread fear that exists to-day.
Thousands of persons can say truthfully: "I have all my life feared things that never happened." The danger of this fear attitude is that it frequently attracts that which is dreaded most, and the words of Job are literally fulfilled: "For the thing which I greatly feared is come upon me and that which I was afraid of is come unto me." We are told that one of the bravest of African chiefs was driven into a cold sweat of agonizing fear merely by the constant ticking of a watch.
If worry is due to lack of self-reliance, fear is an acknowledgment of inferiority. It does not stand still, and unless throttled will gradually overwhelm its victim, making him at last "Like one, that on a lonesome road Doth walk in fear and dread, And having once turned round walks on, And turns no more his head; Because he knows a frightful fiend Doth close behind him tread."