bodily need, the
need for absolute silence. This is why we sometimes get the opposite
result. The heart seems to stop beating, the breath ceases, the limbs
refuse to move, all because our ancestors needed to hide after they
had run, and because we are in a very real way a part of them.

=Old-Fashioned Fear.= There is one passage from Dr. Crile's book which
so admirably sums up these points that it seems worth while to insert
it at length.

We fear not in our hearts alone, not in our brains alone, not in
our viscera alone--fear influences every organ and tissue. Each
organ or tissue is stimulated or inhibited according to its use
or hindrance in the physical struggle for existence. By thus
concentrating all or most of the nerve force on the
nerve-muscular mechanism for defense, a greater physical power is
developed. Hence it is that under the stimulus of fear animals
are able to perform preternatural feats of strength. For the same
reason, the exhaustion following fear will be increased as the
powerful stimulus of fear drains the cup of nervous energy even
though no visible action may result.... Perhaps the most striking
difference between man and animals lies in the greater control
which man has gained over his primitive instinctive reactions. As
compared with the entire duration of organic evolution, man came
down from his arboreal abode and assumed his new role of
increased domination over the physical world but a moment ago.
And now, though sitting at his desk in command of the complicated
machinery of civilization, when he fears a business catastrophe
his fear is manifested in the terms of his ancestral physical
battle in the struggle for existence. He cannot fear
intellectually, he cannot fear dispassionately, he fears with all
his organs, and the same
organs are stimulated and inhibited as if, instead of its being a
battle of credit, or position, or of honor, it were a physical
battle with teeth and claws.... Nature has but one means of
response to fear, and whatever its cause the phenomena are always
the same--always physical.[9]

[Footnote 9: Crile: _Origin and Nature of the Emotions_, p. 60 ff.]

* * * * *

The moral is as plain as day: Learn to call up fear only when speedy
legs are needed, not a cool head or a comfortable digestion. Fear i