often a thrill of satisfaction—even if it be later followed by remorse—in doing
the forbidden or the unconventional.
The problem here as in the case of many other instincts is one of guidance rather
than of repression. Out of the gang impulse we may develop our athletic teams,
our debating and dramatic clubs, our tramping clubs, and a score of other
recreational, benevolent, or social organizations. Not repression, but proper
expression should be our ideal.
6. FEAR
Probably in no instinct more than in that of fear can we find the reflections of all
the past ages of life in the world with its manifold changes, its dangers, its
tragedies, its sufferings, and its deaths.
Fear Heredity.—The fears of childhood "are remembered at every step," and so
are the fears through which the race has passed. Says Chamberlain: "Every ugly
thing told to the child, every shock, every fright given him, will remain like
splinters in the flesh, to torture him all his life long. The bravest old soldier, the
most daring young reprobate, is incapable of forgetting them all—the masks, the
bogies, ogres, hobgoblins, witches, and wizards, the things that bite and scratch,
that nip and tear, that pinch and crunch, the thousand and one imaginary
monsters of the mother, the nurse, or the servant, have had their effect; and
hundreds of generations have worked to denaturalize the brains of children.
Perhaps no animal, not even those most susceptible to fright, has behind it the
fear heredity of the child."
President Hall calls attention to the fact that night is now the safest time of the
twenty-four hours; serpents are no longer our most deadly enemies; strangers are
not to be feared; neither are big eyes or teeth; there is no adequate reason why
the wind, or thunder, or lightning should make children frantic as they do. But
"the past of man forever seems to linger in his present"; and the child, in being
afraid of these things, is only summing up the fear experiences of the race and
suffering all too many of them in his short childhood.
Fear of the Dark.—Most children are afraid in the dark. Who does not
remember the terror of a dark room through which he had to pass, or, worse still,
in which he had to go to bed alone, and there lie in cold perspiration induced by
a mortal agony of fright! The unused doors which would not lock, and through
which he expected to see the goblin come forth to get him! The dark shadows