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Unfortunately, multitudes of people are still held down by some form of our primitive heritage. The perpetual presence of fear stunts their growth, strangles their normal expression and warps their development. Fear is stamped upon their brains from birth upward. How many mothers ignorantly try to force their children to go to sleep by frightening them, telling them that if they do not go right to sleep a great big bear will come and eat them up! How much sleep would a grown person get in a situation which seemed as real to him as such a picture suggested by his mother is to the child? Yet the majority of parents continue to people the darkness with all sorts of cruel monsters in order to frighten children into obedience. If they only knew how injuriously a child's physical and mental development is affected by such a brutal system of terrorization they could not, would not, be so cruel. The lives of many children, especially those who are sensitive, are ruined by it. A great medical authority says that at least eighty per cent, of morbid children could have been saved from their defect by the application of common-sense principles of scientific and physiological hygiene, in which the main factor is suggestion inspired by wholesome courage.

Who can ever estimate the multitudes of people whose lives have been shortened by the fear of death! Who could measure the suffering caused among the early Puritans and their descendants by

the old conception of hell-fire! Who could count the victims of superstition and fear!

Terror of impending misfortune, fear of accident, of financial reverses, fear of what others will think or say of us, fear of disability to do what we undertake, fear of disease, all sorts of fears and worries, cloud the happiness and dim the lives of most of us. The very faces of the people we meet tell the sad story of the presence of fear, worry and anxiety. How seldom we see one who really enjoys the present moment! Some fear, some foreboding, something which he thinks is likely to happen to destroy his peace of mind, is forever suggesting itself and haunting him.

It is not, as a rule, the cares of to-day, but the cares of to-morrow that weigh us down. For the needs of to-day corresponding strength is given. For the morrow we are wisely told to trust. It is not ours yet. The things we worry and fret most over are those of to-morrow, the evils we anticipate; and most of these, the things that cause our unhappiness and shorten our lives, never really happen. They are the things which we thought might happen, probably would happen the sorrows, the losses, failures, which we feared would come. It is these, not real things, that have terrified us and robbed us of our strength.

When we look back over our lives, how few of the evils we anticipated really materialized! Many have threatened, but, somehow, a way has been

opened out of our difficulty that we did not dream of. We have only wasted our vitality, grown prematurely old and wrinkled and bent, anticipating troubles and worrying about calamities that never arrived. Many a time in the writer's life he has come to a point when it seemed as if nothing could avert a threatened trouble, when it seemed as if all were lost. But something beyond his control straightened out the tangle and solved the puzzle which seemed insoluble. The storm which threatened shipwreck passed over; the sun shone out again more brightly than before, and everything in his life became tranquil and serene.

How many wrinkles would be erased from our faces and how the lost elasticity would come back to our step, the buoyancy to our minds, if we could only eliminate from our lives the shadows of the things which have not actually happened to us, but which we fear may happen!

If those who are inclined to fear and worry ever stopped to think of the uselessness of it all, they would be ashamed to be guilty of such folly. Did you ever ask yourself the question, "Is it really worth while to use up precious creative force in mere anxiety and fear, when I could produce something of value with it? Is it worth while to exhaust myself worrying over things I cannot possibly remedy except by hard work, a clear head, and the use of my best judgment? Is it worth while to permit the continuance of this torture

which clogs my brain, impairs my judgment, kills spontaneity, chills my enthusiasm, when what the situation needs most is the vigorous use of just these very qualities ?"

If you have done the best you could during the day, quit worrying, quit blaming yourself all the time for what you did as well as for what you did not do.

Have you ever done a better day's work for having worried over it? Have you ever got through the next day's work sooner, or any more easily, because you were anxious about it the day before? On the contrary, you know that your anxiety only whittled away your energy and drained your vitality, so that in a desperate pinch when you needed them most you found yourself stripped of efficiency.

The secret of all strength and happiness is being in conscious union with our divine Source. When we come to the realization of our at-one-ment with the great, creative, sustaining Principle of the universe, life will take on a new meaning. Then there will be no room for worry, no cause for fear. The consciousness that literally "I and my Father God are one" helps to establish a sense of security, certainty, an assurance that we are not playthings of chance, puppets of accident or fate; and just in proportion as we realize our at-one-ment with our Maker, do our lives become efficient, poised, serene, happy.

SUCCESS AS A TONIC

Success is a powerful stimulant, and more success is a greater stimulant. Our ability, our strength are multiplied by our successes, just as they are depleted by our failures. Whatever increases our self-confidence increases our ability, whatever destroys self-confidence kills ability.

A

GREAT surgeon in the army of Napoleon

said that after a victorious battle which had raged bitterly for thirty-six hours the moral exaltation of the French soldiers, their realization of triumph was so uplifting, so tonic, that they were literally insensible to pain, to hunger, to exhaustion, even to mortal wounds.

There is no more interesting phase of psychology than that relating to the influence of success on the human mind. Success is one of the greatest tonics known. It redoubles our energy and determination to climb higher. It stimulates us to the development of powers and resources which, perhaps, we had not hitherto dreamed we possessed. Each success increases our belief in ourselves, renews our courage, and reinforces our ability. Every time we win out we feel an added sense of power. And what can give greater satisfaction than the consciousness of power, the sense that one is a real force in the world, that one carries weight

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