The purely stubborn man will be the first to go under.  He will say, and may be perfectly right in saying, that there is no real cause for anxiety.  He will prepare to run slap through the storm, and refuse to reef a single financial sail.  He forgets that the mere existence of panic in the minds of others is in itself as hard a factor in the situation as the real value of the properties on the market which are being stampeded.  The atmosphere of the business world is a reality even when the views which produce it are wrong.  To face a panic one must first of all realise the intrinsic facts, and then allow for the misreading of others.  It is the plastic and ingenious mind which will best grapple with these unusual circumstances.  It will invent weapons and expedients with which to face each new phase of the position.  “Whenever you meet an abnormal situation,” said the sage, “deal with it in an abnormal manner.”  That is sound advice.  But a business panic is, after all, a rare phenomenon—­something a man need only have to face once in a lifetime.  It is the panic in the mind of the individual which is the perpetual danger.  How many men are there who let this perpetual fear of financial disaster gnaw at their minds like a rat in the dark?  Those who only see the mask put on in the daytime would be astonished to know the number of men who lay awake at night quaking with fear at some imagined disaster, the day of which will probably never come.  These are the men who cannot keep a good heart—­who lack that particular kind of courage which prevents a man becoming the prey of his own nervous imagination.  They sell out good business enterprises at an absurdly low price because they have not got the nerve to hold on.  Those who buy them secure the profits.  One may pity the sellers, but cannot blame the buyers.  Those who have the courage of their judgment are bound to win.  These pessimists foresee all the possibilities, and just because they foresee too much, it may be that they will spin out of the disorder of their own minds a real failure which a little calmness and courage would have avoided.

The moment a man is infected with this internal panic-fear, he ceases to be able to exercise his judgment.  He is convinced, let us say, that the raw material of his industry is running short.  He sees himself with contracts on hand which he will not be able to complete.  Very likely there is not the remotest risk of any such shortage arising, but, in the excess of his anxiety, he buys too heavily, and at too high a price.  His actions become impulsive rather than reasoned.  It is true that in the perfectly balanced temperament action will follow on judgment so quickly that the two operations cannot be distinguished.  Such decisions may appear to be precipitate or impulsive, but they are not really so.  But the young man who has the disease of fear in his brain cells will act on an impulse which is purely irrational, because it is based on a blind terror and not on a reasoned experience.