Horace Fletcher

“ But all along the line it is the same thing—a paralyzing impression upon the centers of life which can produce, through the agency of the nervous system, a vast variety of morbid symptoms in every tissue of the body.
We have very seldom reflected upon the fact that fear runs like a baleful thread through the whole web of our life from beginning to end. We are born into the atmosphere of fear and dread, and the mother who bore us had lived in the same atmosphere for weeks and months before we were born. ”

“ Mind is the great machine behind [34] all other machines and out of which all accomplishment comes. Fearthought and what grows out of it, under the class names of anger and worry, are like rust and sand in the journals, and wear out the bearings of the machine. They are also like the impurities in water that cause foaming in a boiler and prevent the accumulation of energy. They are productive of nothing but wear and waste, wear and waste, as long as they are permitted to encumber the splendid man-machine and its source of power. ”

“ I will draw the picture of a sick room in charge of physicians and nurse, by whom this enlighted sanitation has been ignored or unheeded. It is a chamber of fear, soon, in all probability, to be the chamber of death. The room is darkened, for they are afraid of the light, that emblem of God's wisdom which should shine into all rooms, except when it is disagreeable to the patient. The ventilation is insufficient, for draughts, you must know, are very dangerous. ”

“ Education can do much, but it is useless to expect the total eradication of fear without the aid and guidance of the religious principle. Fear is the cry of the wounded selfhood for something he has suffered or lost, or is about to lose. "Perfect love casteth out fear"—the perfect love of God and the neighbor. He who is in bondage to the senses has everything to dread. He alone is free from all apprehensions whose heart and mind are stayed upon the living God. ”

“ The mind of man is constantly at work, silently pervading every tissue of his body by its vital influence, repeating itself in every function, throbbing in the heart, breathing in the lungs, reflecting itself in the blood, weaving its own form into every act of nutrition, realizing its own life in every [225] sensation, and working its own will in every motion. The power of the mind over the body indeed! There is no power in the body, but in the mind, for the body is the mind, translated into flesh and blood. ”

“ Appreciation of ever-present blessings—the sun, the birds, the perfume of the flowers, the mist, the constant changes in the aspect of nature, the love of friends, the hurdles that are met and cleared at a bound, and even the obstructions that Providence places in the wrong road, make them all seem to chant in chorus,—"No matter what has been; no matter what is; all can be and shall be well."
Optimism is life.
[139]
Fearthought inspires Pessimism. ”

“ Whoever permits or nurses fearthought within himself, sows the seed of suicide.
Whoever robs a child of the freedom of mind with which nature prefers to endow it, whether it be through pre-natal suggestion or through suggestion given after birth, is more a thief than one who robs it of its patrimony of goods or lands. ”

“ During the time that has passed since the power and glory of Hellas began to wane, mankind has had experience with the forces of nature and [219] the efficacy of machinery to teach the great universal law of compensation, which is also the law of happiness. This great law prescribes that there shall be no balance without support or motion, no poise without alertness, no life without growth, and no happiness without service. ”

“ Life is delightful as it is; but if I had to wait even a thousand years or even an hundred years more for my promotion that way, I think I would rather choose a more common and less agreeable way"; and so on, governed by the interest and the effect upon the children. I impressed on them the real beauty of the storm, and taught them appreciation, to take the place of fear.
It is needless to say that that family no longer dreads the storm cloud. The suggestion reversed their way of looking at storms, and they then found great beauty in them and ceased to fear them. ”

“ Whoever teaches a child to be fearless, builds greater than she can ever know, for fearlessness in one inspires courage in many; and as courage inspires strength and causes action, there is no end to what may grow out of the fearless influence of the frailest and physically weakest of women, and any young mother, in the quiet and seclusion of a modest home, can set in motion vibrations of strength and fearlessness that may result in the building of a great city or the invention of some world-emancipating tool of progress. ”

“ No one can realize the keenest enjoyment of life until he has grown to feel—appreciate—that this life is an important stage of an evolutionary process, in which the dawning of spiritual possibilities opens up the realm of divine existence to him, and introduces to his consciousness that appreciation of God which gives birth to love, growth and happiness. ”

“ Appeal to honor, self-respect, love, logic, ridicule, and to fear itself, may be had in so worthy a cause as the vanquishing of the arch-enemy of growth and happiness.
Old soldiers sometimes admit that their courage in battle has been the result of their fear of seeming to be cowards. When the far-reaching and poisonous effect of the evil of fearthought is properly understood, and the possibility of its elimination generally believed in, people will be afraid to be afraid—afraid of ridicule and criticism, as well as afraid of evil and unhealthful effects. ”

“ When we have constructed a true psychological pathology, we shall understand clearly why and how it is that fear can turn the hair gray in a single night; that a mother's milk can be poisoned by a moment of terror; that the heart may be paralyzed by a sudden joy or sorrow; that dyspepsia, paralysis, and many other diseases are produced by mental worry and fret and the brain-fag of overwork and anxiety. ”

“ The truth of the matter is, that there is a limit to actual pain within the power of any one to endure, if the element of fearthought-of-more-pain is eliminated, so that the absorbing heroism of the patriot—almost courting torture for the honor of his cause—puts the element of fearthought out of the case, and leaves only the actual sensation to be suffered. Pain is undoubtedly intended as a warning of disordered conditions, and not as a punishment, and, having performed its mission, is relieved by a kind paralysis before the shock is too severe for human endurance. ”

“ It is true that the easy way to attain good is to cease to have evil, but, it is a poor way to cease to have evil to nurse it in the memory as a thing difficult not to have.
If there is to be repetition of anything, it is better that it should be of such suggestions as "Appreciation" and "Love."
The mind is as amenable to the force of habit as are any of the physical members of the body. The soul is much more amenable to suggestion than either, for it is much more impressionable. ”

“ Remove this dread, and half of the terror of death is removed with it.
In this connection, the suggestion should be urged, that separation—as in death—is unessential as compared with the privilege of having known a beloved one, and that appreciation and gratitude should always outweigh regret in relation to an inevitable change.
All of the observed processes of nature teach that every normal change is for the better, and the change called death is as normal as the change called birth. The full term of human life is but a pin-point in the great span of evolution. ”

“ We are afraid of failure in business, afraid of disappointments [228] and mistakes, afraid of enemies, open or concealed; afraid of poverty, afraid of public opinion, afraid of accidents, of sickness, of death, and unhappiness after death. Man is like a haunted animal from the cradle to the grave, the victim of real or imaginary fears, not only his own, but those reflected upon him from the superstitions, self-deceptions, sensory illusions, false beliefs and concrete errors of the whole human race, past and present. ”

“ The Greeks cultivated self-control and the harmonic conditions growing out of it as an end, and not as a preparatory means to growth. They prepared a weedless and wormless soil within the mind, but in it planted poppies, breathed of their poisonous perfume, and slept the sleep of indifference, which leads to the sleep called death. ”

“ Science will some time, undoubtedly, be able to tell us just how to treat each form of fear in a scientific manner, but in the meantime we know that it is possible to cure all of the separate forms of fear by rooting out the basic fear—the fear of death—and by conveying the all-powerful suggestion that all fear is needless and unprofitable. ”

“ I have shown that forethought becomes strong-thought as soon as fearthought, or weak-thought, is separated from it; that the condition of harmony which is created by the eradication of fearthought, is the normal condition in civilized nature; that growth is immediate and strong within the harmonic atmosphere thus created; that happiness is the certain result; and that fearthought and its various expressions are the basic deterrents to growth and happiness in man. ”

“ It is impossible to love and to hate at the same time. It is impossible to obey the eleventh commandment and disobey any of the ten at the same time. Is it not better practice of suggestion, in order to form habit-of-thought, to repeat the eleventh commandment eleven times, than to repeat each of the ten once and the eleventh only once? ”

“ The underlying cause of all weakness and unhappiness in Man, heredity and environment to the contrary notwithstanding, has always been, and is still, weak habit-of-thought. This is proven by the observed instances in which strong habit-of-thought has invariably made its masters superior to heredity, and to environment, and to illness, and to weakness of all kinds, and has redeemed them from non-success and misery, to the enjoyment of success, honor and happiness. ”

“ Each day, the tendency to import, which is the only part of the process of eradication that is in any way real, will become less strong, and, with even the weakest attempts to discourage it; but if you are sufficiently in earnest to say, "Begone, you tempter," and thereby slam the door in his face, you will accomplish freedom at once.
The self-infliction of fearthought is a shoveling-in process—all that you have to do to become free from it is to stop shoveling. It is easier to stop importing fearthought, and anger, and worry, and suspicion, than it is to import them ”

“ Happiness, the evidence, fruit and reward of growth, rests in self-respect first, and, incidentally, in the measure of respect held by others.
No one is respectable who is not doing his best.
When a man finds fault with the material with which he has been furnished—with his form, with his face, with his mind, with his muscle, with his equipment of wealth, or other means or tools of growth, at the time of his being fully born, he puts blame upon, and thereby blasphemes, his Creator, as well as discredits his progenitors. ”

“ Logic is the most rational weapon, but ridicule is sharper. Logic may not cure a robust woman of the woman-habit-of-thought that a mouse is a fearsome thing, but reference to the fact that it is ridiculous for a five-foot [98] woman to be afraid of a two-inch mouse may effect the result, especially when it is known that the mouse is more afraid of the woman, according to his capacity for fear, than it is possible for the woman to be afraid of the mouse. ”

“ We have learned that all of the deterrents we have been able to discover and classify are phases of fearthought; that fearthought is no creation of the present, but is sought in the future and nourished on the life-blood of the present—an excrescent and altogether parasitic abnormality, unnecessary to the thing it feeds on.
We have discovered, in our search for deterrents, that, if encountered in the now, they are easily routed. We have also discovered that the longest life is but a succession of nows. ”

“ Sometimes the victim of the misery-habit practices the habit only within the family. This is especially severe on the family, and is much more difficult to treat. The family is at once [166] the seat of the greatest liberty, and the home and breeding-ground of the greatest tyranny. The family is supposed to be under the holy protection of the divine principle of love, but if that principle is not a possession of the family, there is no protection whatever from most inhuman practices, but instead a license to the cultivation of most discordant passions. ”

“ Fearthought is the element of friction, as expressed in anger; it is the predatory element, as expressed in waste of energy—the result of worry; and it is also the weed element, as shown by the uselessness of it in any form. It is, however, permitted to encumber, muddy and prey upon divinely ordained forethought, as weeds encumber good soil, as mud clouds pure water, and as savage and venomous things prey upon the comfort and life of animals useful to Man, and even upon Man himself.
Man's place in the process of evolution is that of assistant only. ”

“ It has also been proven that none are so ill-favored as to be exempt from regeneration by the influence of optimistic thinking, and none so plain, nor even so ugly, as judged by the world's standards of beauty, but that the radiance of pure thought will make them more beautiful than their brothers of nobler mien and more symmetrical physique, [20] but whose thoughts are poisoned by fear and by selfishness.
Happiness is not dependent upon wealth, and wealth does not necessarily bring happiness, but both are dependent upon good-habit-of-thought ”

“ All time—all eternity—is made up of a succession of nows. If you are free in the present now, you may more easily be free from temptation in the succeeding nows until emancipation shall be complete and the very atmosphere of your freedom shall exorcise all evil before it can come near enough to attract your consciousness. ”

“ It is fortunate for the present generation that such shadows of suggestion do not hopelessly oppress it. There are many churches now where appreciation, and love, and purity, and the delights of unselfishness are offered as the attractions towards religion, and where the teachers in them stand for examples of pure thinking, pure living, and spontaneous altruism, practiced as a result of natural impulses that are both agreeable and profitable, and not to save from hell or to fit for a remote heaven. ”

“ Separation—as in death—can be made to gladden love by supreme self-sacrifice to the beloved one who is preferred by death, and thereby made to disarm that underlying fear of all fears—the fear of death. ”

“ That while happiness is possible to all under present conditions, indications point to the possibility, within the assured possession of surplus wealth-of-means, that Altruism may soon "have an inning," during which conditions will be so rearranged that dire poverty and unhappiness will be impossible to any but the perverse. That normal, civilized human nature is good nature, and that if conditions are intelligently arranged most men will eagerly mold themselves into good men to fit the conditions. ”

“ For example; egotism is the tree of evil, either selfishness or fearthought is the tap-root, and anger and worry in all their phases are the surface roots of the tree. The tree is known by its fruits, which are, separation, paralysis, disease, unhappiness and death. ”

“ In the height of his happiness and prosperity, Job permitted himself to brood in silent fear over the possibility of losses and misfortunes, and he had at last to exclaim, "The thing which I greatly feared has come upon me."
Sudden and great fears are not frequent. The fears of every day, the constant apprehensions and anxieties of life, which are really fears of impending evil, prey upon our vitality and lessen our power of resisting, so that any passing disease may be photographed on our minds and seen upon our bodies. ”