Do you know your particular fears? And what do you usually do with them? You run away from them, don't you, or invent ideas and images to cover them? But to run away from fear is only to increase it.
Like one, that on a lonesome road Doth walk in fear and dread, And having once turned round walks on, And turns no more his head; Because he knows, a frightful fiend Doth close behind him tread.
Fear is the destructive energy in man. It withers the mind, it distorts thought, it leads to all kinds of extraordinarily clever and subtle theories, absurd superstitions, dogmas, and beliefs.
If men as individuals surrender to the call of their elementary instincts, avoiding pain and seeking satisfaction only for their own selves, the result for them all taken together must be a state of insecurity, of fear, and of promiscuous misery.
As you know from school, it's when you have not prepared for the test that you have the fear of failing. And if you have prepared, even if you fail, you've done your best.