(Of the still more serious dangers of repression and of its relation to various forms of insanity, this is hardly the place to speak.[11] It ought not to be necessary to appeal to alarming instances in order to make us attend to a suggested warning.)

 [11] See Bernard Hart’s illuminating treatment of the whole subject in
 The Psychology of Insanity, Cambridge Manuals of Science.

Now if we decide to regard all fear as a suggestion of precaution, the emotional part of it to be laid aside as soon as it has fulfilled its function of arousing interest and directing action, it is easy to see the psychological justification for insurance.

Of course pecuniary insurance is but one instance of such sequences of action, though it happens to be a rather obvious one.  In a different field, most of us know the delightful feeling of relief experienced after consulting a doctor about some symptom that has perhaps been troubling us for a long time.  “May I safely do this?  Ought I to refrain from that?” and such perpetually recurring irritations to the attention are replaced by the knowledge that it is now the doctor’s business to decide whether this or that is “serious,” and that as long as we carry out his orders we may lay aside all worry about the matter.

So in the case of fire insurance, what we are really buying with our annual premium is freedom from haunting questions as to the loss that would ensue if our house or shop or office were burnt down or damaged.  Whenever the thought comes, it may, as far as the money loss is concerned, be dismissed.

We see then that instead of keeping the suggestion of such misfortunes before us, as some people might allege, the act of insurance substitutes for vague and recurrent fears a formal and periodical recognition of possibilities, a recognition, too, that contains within itself a precaution against some of the results of the misfortune should it ever occur.  What we buy, at the cost of a fixed number of pounds or shillings of money and a few minutes of time once a year, is the right to put the dangers out of our consciousness altogether and yet leave no residuum of repressed fear to split up our personality or give us indigestion.

If we choose, for some reason or other, to let our imagination dwell on the objective side of the possibility we have insured against, we shall find a pleasure in thinking of what can be done by many people working together.  If we need help to meet some misfortune, it is ours as a right, not doled out to us through others’ pity.  And every year that we have made no claim we have the delight of knowing that we are helping those who need.

The art of working together is yet in its infancy.  But if even the present standard of method devised for money insurance were to be adopted in the deeper matters which we so often allow to trouble us, what an advance in mental development we should have made and what new possibilities of safe action would be opened up!

 E.M.  COBHAM.