There Is No Devil But Fear

( Originally Published 1908 )

Theology and Medicine

MARTIN LUTHER the German, John Calvin the Frenchman, and John Knox the Scotchman lived at the same time. They constitute a trinity of strong men who profoundly influenced their times; and the epoch they made was so important that we refer to it as "The Reformation."

They form the undertow of that great tidal wave of reason, the Italian Renaissance. And as the chief business of the Hahnemanian School of Medicine was to dilute the dose of the Allopaths, and the Christian Scientists confirmed the Homeopaths in a belief in the beauties of the blank tablet, so did Luther, Calvin and Knox neutralize the arrogance of Rome, and dilute the dose of despotism. Ernest Renan thought that Martin Luther put progress back five hundred years, "by effecting a compromise with the Catholic Church, supplying the people something just as good, at less cost."

Yet the great Renan must have known that fanaticism is a disease of the mind, just as alcoholism is a disease of the body, and the rational cure for both is the diminishing dose.

That is, you are weaned from one thing by the substitution of something less harmful.

The cure by violence and revulsion, sometimes works, but it is unreliable and often unsafe.

Mankind can be released from the power of weakness only by slow degrees.

Christian Science has eliminated the doctor, reducing the rank of priest to that of reader, and thrown away the bell, candle, and curse, but it still finds it expedient, if not absolutely necessary, to have its " Book" and " Church."

And behold one great Life Insurance Company has instructed its agents by circular thus:

" Christian Scientists as a class are extra good risks and should be solicited." Then comes Dr. Hughson Harding, the celebrated neurologist of London, and says, " Christian Science by lessening nerve-tension, and increasing the self-reliance of the patient, brings about a normal flow of the secretions, and thus doubtless increases the average length of human life in a very perceptible degree. "

Renan's idea that humanity could have been jumped from the hypnotic dazzle of Rome into the clean, calm sunlight of reason at a bound, if Luther had not interposed "with something just as good, " is not reasonable. Mankind must get used to the light by degrees.

And if Protestantism is " a compromise with truth," as Diderot and so many others have averred, let us just remember that life itself is a compromise, and that progress is only possible thru courteously giving the rights of the road and making way for vehicles, even though you do not exactly love the occupants nor admire their millinery.

NATURE intended that each animal should live to an age approximating five times the number of years which it takes to reach its bodily maturity. Man reaches his height and maximum strength at twenty, and should therefore live to be a hundred.

The brain, being the last organ developed, and growing until man is past seventy, should sit secure and watch every organ decline. As it is; the brain, with over one-half of the individuals who live to be seventy, loses its power before the hands and feet, and death reaps something less than a man—all thru too much exercise for the brain, or not enough.

Glancing once more at Dr. Harding's remark, it is very evident that if the sum of human happiness can be increased, life will be much extended, and the danger of dying at the top obviated.

Of all the mental and physical polluters of life, nothing exercises such a poisonous effect as fear.

Fear paralyzes the will, and either stagnates the secretions or turns them loose in a torrent.

Jealousy, cruelty, hate, revenge, are all forms of fear.

Abolish fear, and every man and woman is an orator and an artist. The criminal and the untruthful person are obsessed by fear until the genial current of their life is turned awry.

A man, like a horse, is safe until he gets in the fell clutch of fear.

When the Shah of Persia was asked the average length of human life in his country, he replied, "Some die old, some die young—only God can tell how long anybody will live. "

Luther died at sixty-three, Calvin at fifty-three and John Knox at fifty-seven. Luther and Knox were in prison, and Calvin only escaped by flight. All were under sentence of death; all lived under the ban of fear. And all preached a religion of fear. All were literally scared to death and all have literally scared to death thousands upon thousands of other people.

Now if you were asked what factor in human life had contributed most to fear, would you not be compelled in truth to say, theology ?

Theology, by diverting the attention of men from this life to another, and by endeavoring to coerce all men into one religion, constantly preaching that this world is full of misery, but the next world would be beautiful—or not —as the case may be, has forced on men the thought of fear where otherwise there might have been the happy abandon of nature. Next to theology in point of harm, is medicine, which is the study of the abnormal, and the constantly iterated thought that the "family physician" was a necessary adjunct to life itself; which thought has bred in mankind the fallacy of looking to the doctor for relief from pain, instead of to ourselves. Should we not understand the Laws of Life sufficiently, so to be as well and as happy as birds and squirrels ?

The third great engine of human misery has been the law. Seventy per cent of the members of all our lawmaking bodies are lawyers. Very naturally lawyers in making laws favor laws that make lawyers a necessity. If this were not so, lawyers would not be human.

Until very recent times, and in degree I am told it is so yet, laws are for the subjection of the many and the upholding of the privileges of the few. The few employ a vast lobby, while all the many can do is to obey, or be ground into the mire. All the justice the plain people have, they have had to fight for, and what we get is a sop to keep us quiet. The law, for most people, is a great mysterious malevolent engine. of wrath.

A legal summons will yet blanch the cheek of most honest men, and an officer at the door sends consternation into the family. The District Attorney prosecutes us—we must defend ourselves. "And if you have no money to hire a lawyer, you are adjudged guilty and for you justice is a by-word," says Luther Laflin Mills, the eminent lawyer.

And here is the argument: The fear of death, as taught by the clergy, the fear of disease, as fostered by the doctors, and the fear of the law, as disseminated by lawyers, have created a fog of fear that has permeated us like a miasma, and cut human life short one-third, causing the brain to reel and rock at a time when it should be the serene and steadfast pilot of our lives.

"What then," you ask, "Shall we go back to savagery ?"