Regular readers will recognise in this article a continuation of the series previously entitled “Healthy Brains.” The author of “The Children All Day Long,” is an intimate disciple of one of the greatest living psychologists, and she has a message of the first importance to all who realise that true health depends as much on poise of mind as on physical fitness. We regret that in the previous article, “Imagination in Play,” the following misprints occurred:—P. 475, line 4 from top, “movement” should be “moment”; p. 475, line 5 from bottom, “admiration” should be “imagination.”—[Eds.]

Some people are given to excusing their own uncharitable thoughts by saying, “I suppose I ought not to have minded her rudeness; I am afraid I am too sensitive.” In the same way, people say, “Oh, I couldn't sleep in the house alone” (or let a child go on a water-picnic, or nurse a case of delirium or do some other thing that suggested itself), “I have too much imagination.” In both cases the claim, though put in deprecating form, is made complacently enough. The correlative is: “You are so sensible, dear; I know you won't mind,” which is a formula under cover of which many kindnesses may be shirked and many unpleasant duties passed on.

The sensible, practical people who listen to these sayings sometimes attach importance to them, so that a habit has grown up of describing morbidly neurotic people as “over-sensitive” and cowardly ones as “too quick of imagination.” Ultimately, this leads to the thought that both sensitiveness and imagination are mental luxuries too costly for ordinary folk to grow, and that it is safest to check, crush or uproot them when we discover them springing up in others or in ourselves.

Is not this attitude of mind due to a misunderstanding? Imagination is an organ of activity; it can be kept in the highest possible condition of health by having plenty of exercise; it should be working continually against resistance. A rabbit's gnawing tooth, if the opposing tooth be broken, may grow inwards and cause the creature's death, but the same activity of growth, if working under suitable conditions, enables him to go on living and gnawing at his food year after year without wearing his tools away.

The problem, then, in economy of effort is: How shall we use whatever force of sensitiveness and imagination we have, so as to get its maximum efficiency of usefulness and its minimum pain and inconvenience?

For many ages man has been dominated by fear. His way to freedom, now, is to step out through his cobweb chains and go right forward with courage and in faith. So we are told with relentless and almost tiresome reiteration. It is the fashion, one might almost say, to have cast off fear, and the one thing an honest “modern thinker” is afraid of is being afraid. (To less honest ones it is the thought of being thought afraid that is a very real and present fear.)

But, if this standpoint is right, is not fear at least a vestigial organ, a survival of a mental activity which served its purpose in times gone by? Is it not even truer to go further still and say, as each particular fear serves its purpose it may safely be discarded, but that, as far as our present knowledge goes, other grades of sensitiveness, finer shades of imagination of the type we have called fear, must take its place, to be discarded in their turn for yet other apprehensions?

For if we lost the kind of perception that we associate with fear, if our imagination closed itself automatically to the suggestion of all sorts of ugly possibilities, should we not find ourselves soon in the midst of difficulties akin to those of the hero of the German tale of the man who felt no pain? We accept the evidence of pain as a guide to action; when we have decided on action we proceed to get rid of the pain as expeditiously, safely and permanently as we can.

The same thing seems true of fear. Over and over again we laugh at ourselves for fearing something that either never happened at all or happened in such a way as to be softened out of all likeness to the monstrous terror we had created. On the other hand, when misfortune falls heavily because of our lack of imagination in not foreseeing possible consequences of particular actions or events, we lament and complain: “If I could only have guessed! If I had only known!”

Fear pure and simple—the imagination of possible trouble—is a stage we can hardly yet afford to do without. But when it has roused our attention to a danger, its work is done. Let us practise turning it into action; taking due precautions against accident, guarding against hurting a neighbour's feelings, watching some possibility of evil tendency in ourselves. Then, and not till then, may we let it drop. It may pass; it has done its work. It is no longer our responsibility to foresee, it is our privilege to lay down the fear and live happily and at peace.

Even the dread perceptions of eternal laws come under the same method. “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom,” the beginning: the end is faith and love.

E.M. Cobham.