FEAR.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 9522, 21 April 1909, Page 2

FEAR.

— — ' ♦.' . ■ '„'. ITS ORIGIN. V (" Lipplnoott's Magazine.") The average man -would sooner, face a 2001 b human antagonist than a 501 b dog, which he could choke to death in three minutes. I have* seen a charging rani scatter half a dozen men, any one of whom could have mastered the brute in a moment, and not one of them was in ordinary matters' a coward. There are instances oh record of men who. with their bare hands, have held and baffled an ugly bull, but it was only the pressure of - # grim necessity that taught them their powers. Put a man against an animal, and ,the man looks round for weapons or. support, (whether he needs them Or not. There was a time when he did. - For man — to-day the most lordly of .animals — was once well-nigh -the most .humble of them all. He hds come up out of a state- -in which fear was the normal condition of existence— fear of violence, of the dark that gave opportunity for violence ; fear of falling, of animals, of being alone. And into the plastic grey cells of our brains are stamped these ancient terrors — a living record of the upward climb of man. The baby shows .this . record most clearly. In him the prints of heredity are not yet overlaid by- the tracks .of use and custom ; and, therefore, in hhn we may most easily read our past history. He is our ancestor as truly as he is our reincarnation , and ' his very shrinking gesture and frightened cry are chronicles of the younger world tales of the age of fear. They tell of the days when man was not the , master of the» earth, nor even a liighly considered citizen of the came, but a runaway subject of the -meateating .monaTchs, whose sceptre was! tooth and claw; a humble plebeian in the presence of the horned and hoofed aristocrats of woods and fields; They speak of the nights when our hairy sires crouched in the forks of trees, and whimpered softly, at the darkj whimperetf because the dark held so many enemies.; whimpered softly lest those enemies should hear.