The Great Curse of Humanity. The Only Devil. Its Insidious Claims. Its Effect on Life.

“The thing that I feared hath come upon me.”—Job.

Through fear the human race has been converted into cowards and slaves.

In a former chapter we have suggested the origin or birth of this demon with its subsequent evolution of the ideas of good and evil, rewards and punishments, religions, right and wrong, etc.—Side by side with the above was the evolution of the conscience, which in turn became the greatest producer of fear known to the human race. The conscience, that Shakespeare says “doth make cowards of us all.” A modern teacher says “Conscience is the jaw of morality. It has spread far outside the Christian or any other religion and become an essential factor of modern civilization. Conscience is the most depressing element in human existence. Its entire business is to reduce spirit. Every inch of its energy is laid out against health. It taxes vitality. It claws with shame. It bites with disgrace. It murders with morbidness, both body and mind. It manufactures right and wrong. It discharges[40] poison or stimulant into the blood and nerves. … It has scared the race into trembling lest it leave them. It has made cowards of us all.”

In man’s effort to escape the thralldom of these twin curses,—fear and conscience—which so often drives humanity to self-destruction or loss of reason, and feeling his helplessness against these demons, he sought a means of propitiating them, and so constructed a system of religious belief. Believing that his Gods must be placated for his fancied transgressions, a form of worship was evolved, with ceremonies involving sacrifice of blood, gifts of money, and treasure for building magnificent temples, churches, abbeys and monasteries. Lavishing billions of dollars upon their architecture and art. All these were efforts to overcome fear, and appease a conscience, which was evolved through the influence of the shadow-world and the folk-lore of primitive man upon the progenitors of the race.

We have only to vibrate the unused cells of the brain to bring forth primitive savagery. Take the action of a mob—let a vibratory wave of passion be set up in the unused cells of the brain and the entity knows no law but primitive force. Fear is for the time forgotten in the lust for blood. This is the explanation of the so-called bravery of the soldier in time of battle. Although fear dominates him before[41] the clash of arms is reached, yet the moment he meets his antagonist the primitive lust for blood overcomes his fear and he becomes once more a primeval savage and fights to the death. The rationale of this is, that environment and mode of thought has put in vibration and attuned certain cells of the brain, by which he establishes communication with some reservoir of primitive savage vibration in the universe, and all the wild impulses of primeval instinct rush into and dominate him.

The forgotten “vices” of our ancestors, apparently repeated from generation to generation, mean no more than this, as we have suggested heretofore; environment and its engendered mode of thought simply fitting the brain as a receiver for the reception of specific vibrations. We treat as criminals those who should be really treated for disease. We are responsible for the slum conditions in our cities and country which set up the brain attunement that calls forth these vibrations of ancestral vices. This is HOW the slums breed vice and crime. And it is in this direction we should put forth our efforts to reform the criminal. Are we not responsible for our criminals? We most assuredly are. We are responsible for these slum conditions and environments which create and bring into play these specific brain cells and cell vibrations. We say “Natural born criminals.” Not always. They are made[42] so by environment. If the money spent in the effort to reform the vicious and criminal was applied to cleansing the slums and changing man’s environment, it would greatly reduce the necessity for jails, reform schools and asylums. We should enact laws to enable us to begin with the child in the public schools—compulsory if necessary. Not only educating, but seeing that they were properly clothed and housed and fed, and removed from their vicious surroundings, parents or guardians. In fact, we are the real criminals who permit such a thing as a crime producing slum or a “poor quarter.” The state can easily afford to do this in order to do away with the so-called vicious element or criminal class.

The present progress of invention in labor-saving devices call for a greater intelligence than the handling of the pick and the shovel, and this is being evolved; and this great living vibratory energy or force which created man and evolved his intellect and his will, man has in turn harnessed for his use, reducing the necessity for excessive manual labor; and he will have more time for the arts and sciences. The “man with the hoe,” will become the man with the electric plow and cultivator, and instead of hard, laborious work, these wonderful electric inventions will eventually reduce all labor to mild recreation and enjoyment. This wonderful electric force has now become a[43] servant and is willing and eager to give its restless energy to man. It is the power that Tennyson says is “closer to you than breathing, nearer than hands and feet.” It is your universal father ready to give whatsoever you ask; but man must study to know this power, and learn its natural movements in order to come into the full benefit of his rightful heritage of this primal force by which he was evolved into conscious existence.

The blight of fear has retarded the human race from coming into its heritage of knowledge concerning this primal substance and force of the universe—Electricity. Every effort of science to explain phenomena has been frowned upon and opposed by theology, which is the child of fear and conscience. Man has been kept in swaddling clothes which have prevented his growth to maturity. But thanks to the change of nurses during the recent centuries his clothes have been changed so frequently that he has had an opportunity to grow lusty, and all the efforts of nurses to keep him in leading-strings today are unavailing. He is outgrowing fear and superstition that has so long strangled science. And science is destroying fear by its revelations of the workings of natural law, which in the field of electrical discovery is making its most rapid strides.