fear, according to the analysis we have made, includes representation of object in its feeling value, predominant tone of mental pain, and will recoil. fear in its primitive form, as we have seen, was a sudden and transitory phenomenon in consciousness, a simple thrill of feeling awaking will to spasmodic violent effort in the struggle for existence. all states of fear in early psychical history were practically alike in quantity, quality and intensity. every fear is like every other fear in its pain tone and will effort. every object and event considered as painful is equally feared; there is no distinction of more or less fear, nor any qualitative differentiation. very young children manifest equal fear disturbance and seemingly identical in nature on all fearful occasions. prospect of vaccination, of a scratch, of the pulling of a tooth, of a whipping, of an amputation, produce equally paroxysms of fear, waves of painful emotion, which discharge themselves in muscular contortions. the lowest animals likewise appear in all cases frightened to the same degree and in the same way. it must be said, however, that this period of simple undifferentiated fear is undoubtedly very brief, and embraces in the individual and the race but a comparatively small number of phenomena; but a careful study, even by the method of approximation will, i believe, show it to be a definite initial phase.
109while this primitive undifferentiated fear, which acts with the same force and quality in all instances, confers upon the organism which possesses it a great superiority over those which do not possess it, in the race for life, and thus marks a great advance in psychical progress, yet it is manifestly uneconomical in its action in that there should be precisely the same amount and quality of reaction in all cases. so when a considerable number of organisms had attained the power to fear, competition would inevitably lead to some differentiation, and this doubtless first in the direction of greater economy. the animal which could fear much or little, according to the degree of actual injury threatened, would have a great advantage in the struggle for existence over his fellows. the amount of pain in prospect is definitely gauged, and the fear pain becomes proportioned thereto, and so the will effort and muscular exertions. fear in its earliest form sets the whole motor apparatus going at the highest rate, the whole organism is at the highest pitch of activity, and life and death struggle happens at every apprehension of pain, no matter how small the reality. later, through discrimination, animals become capable of either a slight scare or a great fear, according to circumstances. the fear force is gradually rationalized and made less spasmodic and so more adaptive. the fear pain becomes proportioned to the real amount of pain and so to injury actually imminent.
this mode of evolution by decrease rather than increase of intensity may seem peculiar. fear, however, certainly originates as a simple outburst of considerable strength relative to the individual organism, and the first step in fear growth is a development in the representation-of-object element in fear which tends to reduce the essence of fear as pain-emotion. spasmodic primitive fear in becoming intelligent loses intensity in the essential feeling aspect. other things being equal, the intensity of fear is 110inversely as the definition of its object. the dimly and uncertainly known is always thereby more fearful than the well known and familiar. however, as regards primitive psychism, we must remark that all phenomena are very large in relative quantity to individual capacity, but very small in absolute psychological quantity. a fear which convulses a very small mind would make but a very small disturbance in a mind of very great capacity. an amount of fear which would absorb completely one consciousness capacity, would require comparatively little force in a mind of greater calibre. the lowest minds are possessed by their fears, higher minds possess them, do not “lose their heads,” i.e., both cognition and will co-exist as stable controlling elements. primitive consciousness is constantly at saturation point, phenomena occur only in linear consecutive order, and every phenomenon is a feeling-willing which absorbs the low conscious capacity. it may then, perhaps, be regarded that the evolution of fear is not through absolute decrease in intensity, but an increase of conscious capacity, whereby greater definition of object becomes possible and coincident with fear-pain of original quantity. the complete determination of this question must then await a fuller analysis, but the relation to individual capacity in the evolution of fear remains apparent. whatever may be the absolute quantity and intensity of the fear phenomenon, its relative quantity and intensity changes very greatly.
the number of adaptive degrees of fear which are ultimately evolved and of which any very high mind is susceptible, is quite beyond our present means of psychological analysis. we have no phobometer to register all the gradations, other than the popular usage of language, but between “i was scared just the least bit,” and “i was scared stiff,” or “scared to death,” there is certainly a vast number of intermediaries. terror is an intensive term denoting strong fear, and a terrible fright is a redundancy 111for extreme fear. by the use of adjectives and various qualifying phases we roughly denote a number of fear degrees, but scientific precision is wholly lacking. such expressions as “i have very little fear of him,” “i fear him a little,” “i fear him greatly,” “i fear him very much,” convey a meaning indeed, but no exact measurement is indicated.
terror is often used as a term not merely for fear in general, but for fear which paralyzes by its force. the individual is often “rooted to the spot” by terror, he loses all power of motion and becomes as an inert mass. with animals even of the lower grades this is doubtless often a pathological manifestation. we find that predatory animals are often furnished with apparatus to inspire benumbing fear in their victims. various means, as inflation of size, strident noises, etc., are employed with great effect. on the other hand, we find that predacious animals seek to reduce the stimulus of fear in their victims by quieting and alluring methods. both hypertrophy and atrophy of fear are disadvantageous, and we should see then in paralyzing terror an instance of over-development of useful function which produces the direct opposite of the normal fear. fear, the great means of salvation to all weaker organisms, is also in its highest intensities taken advantage of by enemies. hence the due graduation and restraint of fear becomes one of the most important lines of mental evolution for the organism preyed upon, but the over stimulation or undue weakening of the fear function in its prey becomes a most important object and advantage for the predacious animal. this evolution is often by the individual disadvantageous variation when this is advantage to some other organism; and, as living beings are soon divided into the two classes, those who flee and those who pursue, the destroying and preserving of the chief psychological defence becomes a leading form of psychic growth of a pathologic character. fear in its 112origin was certainly a stimulant to action and not sedative. however, so far as fear effects an unconscious mimicry of death it often reaches thereby negatively to conservative action, and paralyzing fear is thus explained by the general law of advantage in the struggle for existence. we can then trace a double evolution of fear, on the one hand as leading to action, on the other to inaction, but the former will, i think, be found to be the primitive form. the primary and main function of fear in all life is in a duly modulated energizing in view of approaching injury, and the depressing mode is secondary and exceptional.
again, we must remark upon the sense of personal weakness, or, objectively stated, the sense of overwhelming power, as entering into fear. i cannot agree with mr. mercier that this is a mark of all fear. in its origin and early gradations fear, as we have noticed it in the immediately preceding paragraphs, requires no other cognition than that of pain to come. self-measurement of power in relation to that of pain giving object is certainly too complex to be primitive, nor do the simplest forms of fear as we observe them in ourselves and judge of them in lower organisms pre-suppose any such process. primitively every perception of painful event fills consciousness with the impetuous self-conserving fear revulsion. there is neither time nor capacity for estimating one’s own strength or weakness in relation to opposing power. by the very low intelligence only the immediately imminent is apprehended, and action is always immediate, short, and decisive. in fact, it is now probable that originally painful events are really actualized by the mind, and the fear is thus at the event as actual, rather than as ideal, as represented as to be. certain it is that mind, in its hurry to get ahead of natural harmful agencies in their action, must in its earliest pre-apprehensions have no room or time for dynamic interpretations.
of course the whole value of sense of one’s own superior 113power is in fear, thereby securing the contingency of the painful event, but sense of contingency upon one’s own efforts no doubt first occurs at a considerably advanced stage, much beyond that of simple fear. primitively mind regards events as being, or about to be, with no sense either of their certainty or uncertainty. early mind cannot appreciate certainty, for it knows not uncertainty, it has not yet accomplished the prevision to which certainty and uncertainty may attach; it cannot say, “i fear this will happen,” or “i fear that will not happen,” but only “i fear or do not fear the thing happening, the event coming.” the world of the earliest psychical life is simply factual, and the fears are simple and wholly undifferentiated. fear certainly antedates the perception of contingency and of one’s own agency in producing contingency. even in the ordinary fears in human consciousness sense of personal power in relation to pain-giver is actually subsequent to the fear phenomenon and reacts upon it, but is not constitutive of it in its first impulse.
fear is first graduated by the increasing discrimination as to the amount of pain and injury to be inflicted, and later it is graduated by the sense of the painful event as more or less contingent, either in the natural course of things, or as determined by the individual’s strength in warding off impending evil. taking chances and risks is learned, and becomes often very advantageous. fear is also greatly diminished and modified by acquiring a sense of one’s individual power in overcoming or resisting pain given. the rabbit, often chased by a clumsy dog, evidently fears him less and less. man, both by his increasing knowledge of natural contingencies and by his increasing power over elemental and animal pain-giving forces, fears less and less. the inevitable evil, sure to come, and sure to overcome, is that which strikes intensest fear, as we often see in criminals led to execution.
the discrimination between the animate and the inanimate 114also differentiates fear. when this distinction is fully achieved, the attitude of mind toward each in fear is plainly distinct. the thing, perceived as having psychic powers, and capable of purposive evil and self-directive of its movements, awakens thereby a complex of feelings which rapidly develops beyond our present powers of analysis to follow them. for the present sketch of the early natural history of fear it is sufficient merely to remark this differentiation as one of prime value in the struggle for existence.
however, as we have before suggested (p. 106), the nature of fear, purely in itself considered, does not depend on the nature of the object feared; thus fear of cold and fear of heat are perfectly alike as psychic facts, though having regard to very diverse physical facts. animistic mind, indeed, reacts to all objects differently from naturalistic mind, yet in its essential quality fear is identical in both. in fear of a storm, both as a purely physical manifestation and as the expression of the psychical nature of a deity, the fear act is by itself quite the same; the fear pain and the willing are quite the same, but on the more external, the representation side, they do greatly differ, the complication being greater in the latter instance, and introducing a complex of feelings. fear in the narrowest sense does not reach to the object to consider its nature, to regard its objective quality, for this is the base of very different feelings; but fear proper is engrossed in object purely for its immediate pain significance; it is given up to viewing personal pain infliction. i am inclined to think, then, that we shall find that mind is primarily neither animistic nor naturalistic. the only interpretation of object which is first made is as pain or pleasure given, and a personalizing and impersonalizing stage is decidedly later. we must remember that mind at first goes only so far as it is positively obliged to by the struggle for existence; and hence, though it is quite impossible 115for us to fully realize such a simple state, yet originally objects were discriminated merely as pleasure and pain sources. object at first was of the more vague sort, merely an indefinite locus for pleasure-pain; something painful or pleasurable is the discrimination, but attribution of sentiency or insentiency is not yet reached, for no interpretation of the sort is yet imperatively demanded. it is so ingrained in us to perceive beings as either living or non-living, that it is quite impossible to thoroughly conceive a state so primitive as to be unable to rise to this attribution or distinction. however, like the bare statement of a fourth dimension in space, the statement that pre-animistic mind exists or has existed, a way of looking at objects entirely without reference to their personal or impersonal quality—this is intelligible, and hypothetically required by a complete theory of the evolution of mind. in a dolce far niente of perfect sensuousness, even the adult man sometimes approximates this stage, and the actions of very young infants are best interpreted as expressions of a similar state. things for them seem entirely uninterpreted and unperceived, except as imparters of crass sensual pains and pleasures, as mere pleasure-pain potencies.
a very important differentiation of fear is brought about by the extension of the time sense. fear begins with a minimum of time sense; only the immediately impending, the absolutely imminent danger, suffices to awaken fear. but in the struggle for existence the advantage of being influenced for action by the more and more remote, in time, determines a rapid extension in time to feared events. with man actions are thus influenced by fears, which reach even beyond the present life. the cautious and prudent are those whose fears are far-sighted, and who, conducting themselves accordingly, maintain supremacy over the short-sighted and improvident. carpe diem is, from the point of view of 116evolutionary psychology, the cry of the retrogressive fool.
the time differentiation of fear is recognised in popular language in the term—dread. i am frightened in the night by a sudden noise; i am alarmed for the safety of a child awaking near a precipice; but i dread next week’s task. of course dread, like other popular psychological terms, is plastic, and often denotes fear in general, and is often used intensively, or to denote vague fear, still it is the most correct and distinctive term for fear of a more or less remote event. it would be most interesting to investigate the relation of distance in time of feared event to intensity of the fear, but we have as yet no standards for estimating in mathematical ratios either time or intensity psychologically considered. it is not, of course, physical determination of time as minutes, hours, etc., with which we are concerned, but only with variations in sense of nearness or remoteness of event. our sense of time is most variable, and fluctuates from many causes, so that hours sometimes seem minutes, and minutes at other times seem hours. however, there is, doubtless, other things being equal, some fixed relation between our sense of the nearness and remoteness of a fearful event and the intensity of the fear, but we may well doubt whether it can ever be reduced to any law of inverse squares like that of physical intensities. a criminal sentenced to die at the expiration of thirty days certainly has a marked increase in fear as time approaches, or rather, as he has sense of the time approaching, but a quantitative analysis is beyond our present powers.
a most important but tolerably late differentiation is the altruistic form of fear—fear, not of others, but for others. psychic life is at first wholly self-centred, there is no perception of things or interest in them otherwise than as bearing on the experience of the self. other selves are wholly unrecognised, and pain-giving effects 117to them are then unperceivable. in very young infants we see a close approximation to primitive selfish life. the exact point in the history of life when altruism is developed by the struggle of existence is not at present determinable, but we may well believe that it arose with the evolution of the sexes in separate individuals. fear for mate and offspring is obviously an essential advantage in the progress and perpetuation of the kind. pure altruism is not at first attained, and there is only the faintest gleam of appreciation of pain-states in others, and genuine feeling therefor. the sexual appetite is, like other appetites, purely selfish at first, and the animal fears the loss of what will satisfy in an individualistic way, quite as he fears that food may be taken away or destroyed. even in higher psychisms much that we readily interpret as altruistic is often mainly personal; it is not a true regard and emotion at pain and injury imminent to others, a manifestation of feeling at their experience as such, but mostly a feeling for their experience only so far as it involves our pleasure-pain. when sociality and interdependence of organisms is attained as a great advantage in the struggle of life, when personal experience is perceived as dependent upon experiences of others, then a feeling value attaches to the experienceable for others, yet selfishly at first. even parental oversight and care must originally have been selfish—the satisfaction of a personal craving, rather than the promotion of the well-being of another, considered for its own sake. real and pure altruism must, indeed, be accounted, even in human society, as a rare phenomenon, perfect self-forgetfulness being almost impossible even for the most developed consciousness, owing to the strength and persistence of an indefinite heredity of selfishness. fear for others is, then, in truth, merely an indirect fear for ourselves; and particularly so is this true in all lower consciousness. but we must acknowledge that elements of real altruism do enter and 118do grow in value and strength in the evolution of consciousness, and we must, if we adhere strictly to the principle of personal advantage as determining evolution, find a reason here for a singular and seemingly incompatible manifestation. regard for the good of others is not always indirectly regard for personal good, and self-sacrifice is certainly an element in psychic life, even in lower consciousness, where we often seem to see a distinct struggle between egoistic fear and altruistic fear, as in animals protecting their young. but we see the same in an animal defending food from being acquired by its enemies.
advantage for the race is certainly gained, but this wholly unconsciously; and it plays no part in the actual psychism of the individual. in a highly social, which is also in the most effective and advantageous mode of life, it is certain that the purely self-seeking will be at a disadvantage in general, whereas those who give themselves up to help others are by others so helped, that the final status of the individual is higher and better than if he had been wholly a self-seeker. however, he who, perceiving this law, sets out to be altruistic for his own ends, invariably suffers defeat in the long run, for entire disinterestedness can alone avail. but the problem of altruism, from an evolutionary point of view, cannot here be further remarked on; a fuller discussion would lead us too far afield. however, we are convinced that altruism springs up and grows like the other elements of psychic life, as functional in the largest way to the demands of life in the struggle for existence.
horror is a distinctive term for altruistic fear. when on a train, i am terrified if i perceive a collision imminent and inevitable, but as a mere spectator walking near the tracks, i am horrified by the prospect of a collision. one may be “in mortal terror,” but not in mortal horror.
our sense of the feelings of others towards us, whether they be egoistic or altruistic, determines a large class of 119reflex emotions which are often very subtle. if we perceive that some one is fearing us or fearing for us there is immediate reaction on our part. feeling response to feeling acts and reacts in a multitude of complex ways, as we cannot but observe when in the company of very “sensitive” people. the “sensitive” one is he whose emotional life is governed by his perception of the feelings of others toward himself, and he becomes wonderfully responsive to the least expressions of emotion toward himself. the delicate responsiveness of women, their intuitions, are merely quick perceptiveness of emotion expression. the fears of such are largely concerned with this dependence on the emotional attitudes of others toward themselves; they fear to incur displeasure, they fear loss of love, etc. thus psychical phenomena become more and more determined by psychical phenomena as interpreted and considered with reference to the self. panic is contagious fear, and has originated and been developed as securing mutual safety in societies of animals. however, there is less real fear on occasions of panic than is often supposed, for much of the expression which we read as fear inspired is really merely imitative, and does not signify any real basis of emotion. moreover, we must note that there is no direct contagion, but the perception of fear in others merely leads us to dimly body forth some fearful events as impending, which representation involves the full phenomenon of fear. there is also a discrimination as to those who shall impart fear; the fear of a child on shipboard will not start a panic, while the fear of a captain would. convinced that there is something worth fearing, we fear, and make frantic efforts to escape.
we have before mentioned (p. 89) the peculiar fear of fear. the latest and culminating differentiation of fear is awe, and the highest, most refined development of awe is in the feeling for the sublime. the sense of magnitude and mighty potency of injurious agents or agencies in 120themselves considered, and not as immediately affecting the individual or any individual, is the essential element in awe as a species of fear. this fear is then neither egoistic nor altruistic, but impersonal. we fear neither for ourselves nor others in standing awestruck at the foot of niagara, but a sense of overwhelming greatness and might stirs a thrill of emotion which is at bottom a sublimation of fear. the view which to a peasant or an animal would give terror, or produce no emotional effect whatever, with very rational and sensitive minds produces awe. awe does not, as early emotions and fear generally, lead directly to will, it is not a stimulant to action, and thus has not been evolved by the principle of usefulness for action which governs the general course of physiological and psychical evolution. it is evident that with awe and the sense of the sublime emotion has a value and end in itself. in the higher evolution of man we see that the psychic elements evolve no longer in a strict dependency for their value in securing advantage and success in the struggle for existence, but comfortable existence being practically assured, psychic development is pushed on in lines ethical, emotional and intellectual, for no practical end, but for their own intrinsic value. thus the feeling for the sublime is a purely independent development, which, indeed, is based upon man’s capacity to fear egoistically and altruistically, but is really exercised solely for its own sake. a consciousness which has had no common fear stage, could never arrive at awe. we stand in awe of persons who are totally beyond us in their superiority, who exist in a sphere of power and glory, which transcends even our understanding, and thus awe has a religious as well as ?sthetic side.
the chief differentiations then of fear we note as intensive dread, as altruistic horror, as impersonal awe. the chronological order of evolution may be denoted in this order—fright, alarm, terror, dread, horror.
