The Conquest of Fear

What It's About

The Conquest of Fear is a personal, philosophical and religious guide to overcoming fear. King doesn't offer a set of rules or a quick fix. Instead he describes what he worked out for himself while facing the threat of total blindness. He argues that fear is the great common enemy of human life, and that it can only be conquered by changing how we understand God, the world and ourselves. The book's eight chapters move step by step, from fear and the "Life-Principle" through God, the modern mind and the world as it is, to the fear of death and the idea of abundant life. It draws on Christian thought, and its emphasis on the power of right thinking links it to the New Thought movement. King is open that his ideas are not original to him, and he writes with modesty, offering his experience as something that might help others rather than as a system.

Key Concepts

King's central idea is the "Life-Principle", a good and harmonious power at the root of existence, which he identifies with God. Fear, in his view, is a false god: a habit of mind that has no rightful place in a universe governed by good. He holds that fear is largely a mental habit that can be unlearned. He treats the fear of death, which he considers the deepest of all, as the last to be overcome. The book's answer is a lived confidence in the goodness of God and the abundance of life, rather than mere reassurance.

About the Author

Basil King (1859–1928) was a Canadian-born Anglican clergyman who served as a rector in Halifax, Nova Scotia, and later in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Failing eyesight and ill health forced him to retire from the ministry around 1900, and he turned to writing, becoming a popular novelist in the United States. His later writing grew increasingly spiritual in outlook.