Subsection 5. Fear as a cause.

Fear is sorrow’s first cousin—or rather its sister, its “faithful Achates” and constant companion, a helper and a principal agent in bringing about this affliction; like sorrow, it is both a cause and a symptom. In a word, I may justly say of them both what Virgil says of the Harpies:

No more dreadful monster, no fiercer plague Or wrath of the gods ever rose from the waters of Styx. A sadder monster, a more cruel, deadly plague, Or vengeance of the gods never came from Styx or Hell.

This foul fiend, fear, was formerly worshipped as a god by the Spartans, as were most of those other tormenting emotions. Sorrow was among them, under the name of the goddess Angerona: such was their dread of these passions, as Augustine notes from Varro in The City of God, book 4, chapter 8. Fear was commonly worshipped and depicted in their temples with a lion’s head. And as Macrobius records in Saturnalia 1.10, Angerona had her festival on the Kalends of January. In the temple of Volupia, the goddess of pleasure, their augurs and pontiffs offered her an annual sacrifice, so that, favourably disposed towards them, she might banish all cares, anguish and vexation of mind for the coming year.

Fear causes many distressing effects: people flush, turn pale, tremble and sweat; sudden cold and heat run through the whole body; the heart palpitates, they faint, and so on. It overwhelms many who must speak or appear in public assemblies or before some great personage. Cicero confessed that he always trembled at the beginning of a speech, and Demosthenes, that great Greek orator, did so before Philip. It confounds voice and memory, as Lucian wittily shows in Jupiter the Tragedian: when Jupiter must address the other gods, he is so afraid of his audience that he cannot get a word out readily and has to enlist Mercury as his prompter.

Many are so overwhelmed and stunned by fear that they do not know where they are, what they are saying or what they are doing. Worst of all, it tortures them for many days beforehand with continual terrors and suspicions. It obstructs the most honourable undertakings and leaves their hearts aching, sad and heavy. Those who live in fear are never free, resolute or secure, never cheerful, but constantly in pain. As Vives truly said, “No misery is greater than fear”: no greater misery, no rack or torture equals it. Always suspicious, anxious and worried, they droop like children, without reason or judgement, especially when confronted with something terrifying, as Plutarch puts it.

It often causes sudden madness and almost every kind of disease, as I have sufficiently illustrated in my Digression on the Power of Imagination, and shall discuss more fully in my section on Terrors. Fear makes our imagination conceive whatever it pleases, invites the devil to come to us, as Agrippa and Cardan maintain, and tyrannizes over our imagination more than any other emotion, especially in the dark. We see this borne out in most people, as Lavater says: “They imagine what they fear.” What they fear, they conceive and invent for themselves. They think they see goblins, hags and devils, and often become melancholy as a result.

Cardan, in On Subtlety, book 18, gives an example of someone made melancholy in this way for the rest of his life by the sight of a frightening apparition. Augustus Caesar did not dare sit in the dark “unless someone sat beside him,” says Suetonius; “he never lay awake in darkness.” And it is strange what women and children will imagine if they cross a churchyard at night, lie down or remain alone in a dark room: how suddenly they sweat and tremble!

Many people are troubled by future events, by foreknowledge of their fortunes and destinies, as were the emperor Severus, Hadrian and Domitian: “Because he knew the last day of his life,” says Suetonius, he was “deeply anxious”—greatly tormented in mind because he foresaw his end. There are many such cases, which I shall discuss more appropriately elsewhere. Anxiety, compassion, pity, indignation and similar fearful branches growing from these two stems of fear and sorrow I deliberately pass over. Read more about them in Charles Paschal, Dandini and others.