1.  A disagreeable thing may be so disastrous in our viewpoint as to cause fear.  This fear may be expressed as flight, which is a normal reaction, or it may be expressed by a sort of paralysis of function, as the fainting spell, or the great weakness which makes flight impossible.  Fear is a much abused emotion.  People speak glibly about taking it out of life, on the ground that it is wholly harmful.  “Children must not experience fear; it is wrong, it is immoral; they should grow up in sunshine and gladness, without fear.”  A whole sect, many minor religions, take this Pollyanna attitude toward reality.

As a matter of fact fear is a (I almost said the) great motive force of human life.  Fear of the elements was the incentive to shelter; fear of starvation started agriculture and the storage of food; fear of disease and death gives medicine its standing; fear of the unknown is the backbone of conservatism, and fear of the rainy day is the source of thrift.  Fear of death is not only the basis of religion, but of life insurance as well.  Fear of the finger of scorn and the blame of our fellows is the great force in morality.  And no amount of attempted unity with God will ever take the place of the injunction to fear Him!

2.  While fear then is back of the constructive forces of life it works hand in hand with another emotion that is also greatly disparaged by sentimentalists,—­anger.  The disagreeable, by balking an instinct, by obstructing a wish or purpose, may arouse anger.  The anger may blaze forth in a sudden destructive fury in an effort to remove the obstacle, or it may simmer as a patient sullenness, or it may link itself with thought and become a careful plan to overcome the opposition.  It may range all the way from the blow of violence to burning indignation against wrong and injustice; it is the source of the fighting spirit.  Without fear, purpose would never be born; without anger in some form or other it would never be fulfilled.

3.  But while fear and anger work well in succession, or at different times, when both emotions are awakened by some disagreeable situation or thing, when there is a helpless anger, when the instinct to fight is paralyzed by fear, when doubt arises, then there is deenergization.

Thus a hostile situation, an intensely disagreeable situation, may be met with energy:  viz. planning, constructive flight, destructive action, or it may be met with a deenergization, confusion, paralysis, hopeless anger.  It may cause an intense inner conflict with high constant emotions, fatigue, incapacity to choose the proper action, and the peculiar agony of doubt.

This last type of reaction is a very common one in the housewife.  For the situation is never clear-cut for decision—­there is the ideal implanted by training, education, social pressure, and her own desire to live in conformity with this ideal; there is opposing it disgust, anger, weariness, lack of interest that her house duties bring with them.  This conflict leads nowhere so far as action is concerned, for she can neither accept nor reject the situation.