In reasoning upon this subject, facts ought to supersede theory, and it should be our endeavour, at least, to he of ser vice to the community, by showing the public their errors from their own con duct. In this particular it is, unhappily, in our power to cite a recent instance of the fatal effects of uncontrolled fear. We allude to the loss of eighteen lives, in Oc tober, 1807, at Sadler's Wells, where the brutal conduct of two persons in a state of intoxication, insulting every person near them, excited alarm in some weak females, seated above them in the boxes ; which natural and necessary emotion was suffered, by indulgence, to confound their senses of seeing, hearing, and smell ing, to such a degree as to derange their ideas even to madness. In this state of fear they exhibited the most frantic ges tures, exclaimed fire in their delirium, and soon lost the power of delivering themselves from the supposed danger. The horror of being burned to death immediately spread; all ranks of persons, from the pit to the gallery, obeyed the dictates of fear, and each endeavouring to escape, pressure, and suffocation, and death followed. The performers, in full possession of their faculties, terrified at the scene before them, joined with the managers, by signs and intreaties, to ob tain quiet and silence, in vain. In vain did they urge that the stage could not he on fire and they not be sensible of in vain did they exclaim, even with speak ing trumpets, that the audience them selves might perceive that smoke or flame appeared in no part of the theatre. Still they fled to certain suffixation, still they precipitated themselves from the gallery to the pit, till the place was near: ly emptied.
Such is the simple narrative of this dreadful scene ; but how is it to be ac counted for ? Were we to argue from the precise oc currences of the scene just described, we must suppose that the perceptions of the soul are greatly confined or limited ; that confused or imperfect sounds, strik ing upon the drum of the ear, convey ideas to the former which it is incapable of separating and appropriating; but that, being rouzed to a sense of some sort of danger, resemblances are taken for origi nals. Thus, perhaps, some of the exe crations uttered by the rioters may have sounded like the word fire, to the female or females who repeated it, whose weak ness and want of resolution deprived them of the power of ascertaining, from every surrounding object, that the con ceptions of their tears were utterly un supported by filets. Nor was their fitcul ty of recollection sufficiently strenuous to remind them, the passages from the boxes of the theatre they were in were so capacious as to admit of the exit of every individual in ten minutes, in a manner that would not injure an infant ; that the whole of the stage being a vast tank of water, it was impossible that the engines behind the scenes should want a supply ; besides the total absence of alarm in the countenances of the performers, it might be supposed sufficiently indicated, that the only place concealed from their view was entirely free from danger. The
fears of thoSe who sat in the back part of the gallery were far more justly excited; they saw nothing but the stage, and might suppose that the boxes or pit beneath them was on fire, and their own screams prevented their hearing the intreaties for silence from the stage; it is, therefore, not altogether to be wonderCd at that they endeavoured to escape.
Dr. Cogan very truly observes, that an idea is the grand exciting cause of every passion and affection : it instigates the whole of our conduct ; it pervades and directs every internal operation of the mind ; it is clearly known by every one who has the power of thinking, but it de fies every definition. That this is the truth no one will dispute : hence it ap pears, that the Divinity has given us au invisible active spirit, possessing the means of perception, and even of fore sight, extending to a hint of what would be hurtful, or beneficial, or pleasant, on which it is intended reason, improved by education and experience, should act and bring to perfection.
Admitting these premises, it necessa rily follows, that man has the means of foreseeing what will prove injurious, or the reverse, and the power of turning those means to the full use intended. These we shall term the control or the passions; were they carried to the extent of which they are capable, half the pre sent unhappiness of life might be avoid ed, and an endless catalogue of dangers prevented.
We manage the horse, and command his passions ; nay, we teach him to face the fire and thunder of cannon ; though we know that, when untutored, his fears fascinate him to the spot where that ele ment surrounds and would destroy him : shall it then be said that the infant must advance into life with all its passions advancing in equal proportion ? have We reason given us to tutor the horse and neglect our own species ? Surely not. Let the latter, then, be taught, in the earliest period of existence, to fear nothing but moral evil ; let the child be led into the very jaws of dan ger, and taught the method of deliberate retreat, that he may not faint before sha dows, and magnify fancies into gulfs of destruction.
Parents, nurses, and ignorant teachers, lay the foundation of much misery, by ex citing fears of imaginary beings in the minds of infants. This method of fright ening them into propriety of conduct turns the thoughts of the child from con templating the appearance of natural ob jects, whose operations are easily com prehended, into a dark vacuum, where fancy finds floating spectres of horrid form and mein, which haunt them sleep ing, and pursue them in the dark through the remainder of their lives ; and to this cause we principally attribute the sudden magnifying of the soul's hints of danger, which finding nothing real to work upon, the thoughts are wrought into chaos and frenzy, confusing the organs of speech, depriving the muscles of the power of action, and sometimes the body of existence.