Page:The stuff of manhood (1917).djvu/91

 every land, more even in civilized lands than in uncivilized, the element of fear enters into the small external characteristics of our daily living.

And in the matter of opinion. We speak of public opinion as though it were a free and stable and trustworthy thing. But the public opinion of one generation contradicts the public opinion of another generation. The public opinion of one section of the land denies the public opinion of another section, in the same way in which two sections of society in one community think in opposite ways. Why? Not because all the individuals of these particular generations, or sections, or portions of the community really and independently have thought the thing out for themselves, but because, held under the atmospheric constraint of fear, they are unwilling to break away from what is determined for them by the opinions in the midst of which they live. There is a good deal of pacifist opinion and a great deal more of militarist which is not free and personal at all, but simply herd intimidation. And a great deal of race prejudice and international suspicion is nothing but the miasma arising from cowardice or that bullying selfishness which is essentially cowardly.

And a great deal of religion is of the same character. The predominant element in many of the non-Christian religions is fear. It is so in all of the earlier or animistic religions, where