Page:The stuff of manhood (1917).djvu/93

 *tions imposed upon them from without, so that once they were away from home and free to do as they pleased and had no longer the help and uplift of their surroundings, their environmental religion collapsed and they went in an entirely different way.

And I think if only we would go deep enough in our own lives, and be honest enough with ourselves to gain a clear insight into our motives and impulses, we would discover how large a part fear has played in us,—fear, of course, in all the wide range of its aspects, that shades off on the one side into arrant cowardice and on the other side into a mere hesitancy of character and timidity, but fear nevertheless. Some of us are even now cloaking the things that lie deepest in our hearts, because we are afraid to give expression to them. We go into communities, into circles, into conditions where what has been natural and real to us is unnatural and abnormal, and we hide our colours and conceal our principles. And we do things we ought not to do or we do not do the thing we know we ought to do simply because of fear.

I had an experience a little while ago when this diagnosis was confirmed to me. In a visit to one of our colleges, among the boys who came around to talk quietly was one whom I knew as one of the leading men in the life of the institution. He played on the eleven; he was presi