Disgust is sometimes associated with a certain vague fear of contagion, of infectious diseases one might catch from other people. In these cases of squeamishness, the stranger makes us shrink back as a possible carrier of germs. Of course, in dealing with persons who really suffer from some contagious disease, it is our duty to protect ourselves against infection as far as possible; for our health, too, is a talent given by God, of which we must make the most. But whenever a duty of charity requires that preoccupation to yield, it is charity that ranks supreme.

Apart from this obvious principle, what concerns us here is our duty of controlling the tendency to suspect all possible diseases in others, a suspicion which, with little or no basis in reality, serves unconsciously to encourage our inclinations towards fastidiousness and disgust. As long as there is no solid reason for it, we must not look upon our fellow man as a possible carrier of diseases, for this is a bad mental habit which hampers the free flux of love and fosters our tendency to egocentric self-isolation.

Fear of illness hinders freedom

In an even more general sense, the exaggerated fear of illness constitutes a notorious form of unfreedom. There is no merit in neglecting our health, but our preoccupation with it should be kept in bounds by our confidence in God, and in this respect as in others we should fear above all the danger of self-centeredness. The hypochondriac with his imaginary diseases also presents an example of egocentric unfreedom. So long as there is no manifest ground for anxiety we should not waste our time with apprehensions concerning a possible deterioration of our health.

Nor should we allow ourselves to slip into that perspective of generalized fear in which one regards the ambient world primarily as a source of possible dangers to one’s health—the expression of a cramped anxiety about the safety of the ego, which strikes at the very root of freedom. To overcome this vicious evil, we must keep well aware of the truth that our lives rest in the hands of God: “My days are in Thine hands” (Ps. 30:16).

Feelings of inferiority diminish freedom

Let us take now another type of unfreedom, different in character but equally an expression of the ego-spasm, and one very frequently to be met with. It is that which consists in being dominated by an inferiority complex. Feelings of inferiority must not be confused with humility: on the contrary, they proceed from a basic attitude essentially, though not completely or overtly, controlled by pride and egocentrism. He who is afflicted with them is primarily anxious to represent something and count for something; but he is bothered by fears that the account he really gives of himself does not answer his wishful picture of his own person.