Page "belles_lettres" Paragraph 208

3,

I want, therefore, to discuss a second and quite different fruit of science, the connection between scientific understanding and fear.

There are certainly large areas of understanding in the human sciences which in themselves and even without political invention can help to dispel our present fears.

Lucretius has remarked: `` The reason why all Mortals are so gripped by fear is that they see all sorts of things happening in the earth and sky with no discernable cause, and these they attribute to the will of God ''.

Perhaps things were even worse then.

It is difficult to reconstruct the primeval fears of man.

We get some clue from a few remembrances of childhood and from the circumstance that we are probably not much more afraid of people now than man ever was.

We are not now afraid of atomic bombs in the same way that people once feared comets.

The bombs are as harmless as an automobile in a garage.

We are worried about what people may do with them -- that some crazy fool may `` push the button ''.