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 ............