The Conquest of Fear

Excerpt: ... struggles, and their source. We have already seen that fear is diminished in proportion as we understand that our trials are not motiveless, and perhaps this is the point at which to consider briefly what the motives are. II Struggle we may define as the act of wrestling with trial, so as to come out of it victoriously. It is a constant element in every human life. Furthermore, I am inclined to think that, taking trial as an average, the amount which enters into one life differs little from that which enters into another. There was a time when I did not think so. Some lives struck me as singled out for trouble; others were left comparatively immune from it. One would have said that destinies had been mapped with a strange disregard for justice. Those who didn't deserve it suffered; those whom suffering might have purified went scot free. Some were rich, others were poor; some had high positions, others humble ones; some had the respect of the world from the day they were born, others crept along from birth to death in restriction and obscurity. The contrasts were so cruel that they scorched the eyes of the soul. This is true, of course; and I am not saying that in the testing to which everyone is subjected all have an equal share of the opportunities for triumphing. I am speaking for the moment only of the degree to which the testing comes. As to that, I am inclined to feel that there is little to choose between one life and another, since each of us seems to be tried for all that he can bear. One is impressed with that in one's reading of biography. Only the lives of what we may call the favoured few get into print, and of those few it is chiefly the external events that are given us. Glimpses of the inner experience may be obtained from time to time, but they are rarely more than glimpses. Of what the man or the woman has endured in the secret fastnesses of the inner life practically nothing can be told. And yet even with the little that finds...