The courage as well as cowardice of fools’ proceeds from not knowing what is or what is not the proper object of fear; we may account for the extreme hardiness of some people in the same manner as for the terrors of children at a bugbear. The child knows not but that the bugbear is the proper object of fear, the blockhead knows not that a cannonball is so. Fear is never more uneasy than when it doth not certainly know its object. Anger and love and the feeling of both or not operate separate compartments or in separate people. We cannot reject one and hope to experience the other. All of us have known fear. It is one emotion that seems to have real survival value. Without fear, we might walk into traffic, pick up a rattlesnake, jump off a cliff, or eat a poisonous mushroom. So, we cannot wish never to be afraid. Some people wish, however, that they did not experience fear so often or severely. Our instinctive emotions are those that we have inherited from a much more dangerous World, and contain, therefore, a larger portion of fear than they should. Instinctive responses are those which are natural or inborn, not learned. People find themselves thrown into an incomprehensible World…One lives in a whirlpool of instability, aloneness, suffering, and is haunted by the ultimate specter of death, and nothingness. One would like to escape from the burden of anxiety, but one would also like to know its meaning. Fear is a response to threat or danger. The same adrenal glands are involved, only this time the message from the pituitary is different: call out the adrenalin! Adrenalin has effects similar to those of noradrenalin, but also some additional ones.

You may have noticed that when you are frightened, you feel quite different from when you are angry. The whole body is activated now for defense or escape. If you cannot face and defend yourself against the threat, your body is ready to escape. All well and good if you were just an animal, running from a dangerous predator, because it would be just an instinctive response; however, as part of the human population, we have learned dozens of attitudes toward fear, event to the extent of prizing those people who do not seem to know the meaning of the word fear. A hero, we think, is someone who is never afraid. By this same reasoning, then, a person who feels fear is labeled a coward. And so fear goes, passed on from generation to generation. However, sometimes we have to stand firm, and face our fears, as long as there is no actual threat of violence. You never want to get hurt. Psychologically, it is nearly impossible never to feel fear. However, we have all learned society’s attitudes about it, so, in order not to appear spineless, people deny their fears, jump boldly into danger, and may die foolishly and needlessly. Stare the ugly horror right in the face; never a sidelong glance, nor half-look, for those are what show a frightful thing in its frightfullest aspect. Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for you are with me; your rod and your staff, they comfort me. The LORD is my light and my salvation—whom shall I fear? The LORD is the stronghold of my life—of whom shall I be afraid? For God did not give us a spirit of timidity, but a spirit of power, of love and of self-discipline.