to
delay his final decisions until he has really thought matters out. If he
does this, the actual facts of the case may, on reflection, prove far
less serious than the impulsive and diseased mind has supposed.

But it must follow that a man who can only trust his judgment to operate
after a period of time must be in the second class, compared with the
formed judgment which can flash into sane action in a moment. He must
always be a day behind the fair--a quality fatal to real success.

How can the victim exorcise from his mind this dread of the
unknown--this partly conscious and partly subconscious form of fear,
"which eats the heart alway"? Nothing can throw off the grip which this
acute anxiety has fixed on the brain, except a resolute effort of will
and intelligence. I, myself, would give one simple recipe for the cure.
When you feel inclined to be anxious about the present, think of the
worst anxiety you ever had in the past. Instead of one grip on the mind,
there will be two distinct grips--and the greater grip of the past will
overpower the lesser one in the present. "Nothing," a man will say, "can
be as bad as that crisis of old, and yet I survived it successfully. If
I went through that and survived, how far less arduous and dangerous is
the situation to-day?" A man can thus reason and will himself into the
possession of a stout heart.

If a man can still the panic of his own heart, he will need to fear very
little all the storms which may rage against him from outside. "It is
the nature of tense spirits," says Lord Rosebery, "to be unduly elated
and unduly depressed." A man who can conquer these extremes and turn
them into common level of effort is the man who will be master in the
sphere of his own soul, and, therefore, capable of controlling the vast
currents which flow from outside. He may rise to that height of calmness
once exhibited by Lord Leverhulme, who, when threatened with panic in
his business, remarked, "Yes, of course, if the skies fall, all the
larks will be killed."

Panic, therefore, whether external or internal, is an experience which
tests at once the body, the mind, and the soul. The internal panic is an
evil which can only be cured by a resolute application of the will and
intellect to the subconscious self. The panic of a world suddenly
convulsed in its markets is like a thunderstorm, sweeping from the
mountains down the course of a river to where some town looks out on the
bay. It com