Fear is, in the main, the peculiar pain coming from consciousness of experienceable pain, but in general in all complex consciousness it is marked by dissolution and weakening of mental force. There is a shrinking of will, and a clouding of cognition, a general unsettling of all mental elements, a commotion or agitation which destroys the organic consensus of consciousness. But any excessive functioning of some element in consciousness, of emotion life, as fear, or of any other form, is unbalancing and detracts from normal activity of the whole. Fear, however, in its normal measure and form arose and was developed as a desirable stimulant; where it becomes paralyzing in its force, it is pathological in quality. Also where fear is pathologically intense it tends to disappear in sensation feared. Cognition becomes so weakened that sense of representativeness is lost, the thing feared is no longer brought before the mind in its potential quality, but is immediately apprehended as present in its influence—though really objectively absent—hallucination is produced, and fear naturally reverts to its earliest and direct form in immediate experience. As cognition is still further weakened the sense of object as giving pain is lost and fear in any form entirely disappears. The pain is not felt which before was feared to be felt. Fear thus in the general order of its disappearance repeats the order of its appearance and growth.
Fear always includes some sense of object. The apprehension of something evil to happen is the basis of all fear, but the thing, or, subjectively speaking, the objectifying, may be extremely vague. We may fear that some harm is to befall us, but what and how, we know not. We must suppose that in early stages this bare objectifying of approaching pain was a regular incipient form, that an indefinite fear preceded every case of defined fear. We, as a rule, attain a full objectifying with such ease and rapidity that this form does not often appear.
A complete fear movement, then with reference to cognition includes four stages: first, a very general sense of object as about to give pain; second, an increasing definition of object up to the maximum of clearness, thus marking the highest efficiency of the fear function; third, a decreasing definition of object till, fourth, a purely indefinite objectifying is again reached. Every fear, if it attains a normal life, will rise, culminate, and decline in this way. Even in man, where the full development of single simple psychoses rarely proceed undisturbed, there is yet observed a general tendency toward these stages. I awaken in the night at a sudden noise with slight and vague fear; suspicious sounds increase my fear and I listen and look more intently till I see clearly and quite fully crouching near the bed a dark body which I make out to be an armed burglar; as he approaches with his pointed weapon fear will most likely become so intense that I see less and less clearly, and a shot might terrify me into vague but very intense fear. If the object is discerned to be not a burglar but a chair, the fear quickly lapses. At a certain point of maximum clearness either a weakening or an intensifying of fear weakens cognition. Too much or too little pain is equally injurious to the knowing activity. Low psychisms examine and clearly define only that from which they have something to fear or hope.
The qualitative relation of the pain of fear to the pain feared varies greatly with the evolution of mind. Fear-pain could not have originated as a substitutionary function for the real pain except by being at the first somewhat less in quality than the pain to be endured, otherwise there would be no economy in the function. The progress of this function is to secure at less and less expense of fear-pain the suitable reaction. The function of fear being to escape a greater direct pain by a less indirect one, the progress of the function is in diminishing the amount of fear-pain for required effectiveness. The small original gain in the ratio is increased by small increments till in the highest minds proportion of fear-pain to pain feared might be represented by 1⁄∞. The pain in the usual fear which commonly induces me to step from the track before an approaching train, or which enables me after reading some advice on the subject to take precautions against the cholera, is evidently in infinitesimal relation to the pain feared. When fear is unsuccessful, as in anticipating a visit to the dentist, we, of course, suffer a double pain, both the fear-pain and the pain feared.
Often we must observe that the pain of fear is equal to or greater than the experience feared, and we have to ask how this disadvantageous excess could have been evolved. Often the pain of anticipation turns out to be far greater than the pain anticipated. However, a little reflection assures us that the excess of fear in many cases is only in appearance. We do not fear too much upon the judgment we have formed as to the coming pain, but we have by error of judgment assigned too much value to the pain. When a person being initiated into a secret society trembles with fear at being told to jump from a precipice, when he really is to jump but a few feet downward, his fear was perfectly just according to his judgment. If his belief is perfectly assured, the mortal fear will make him offer the most strenuous resistance and most likely secure his release from the ordeal. In all such cases the feeling is right enough, but the estimate of future experience is inaccurate. When an animal is terrified at its own shadow the fear is justly proportioned to the estimate of danger, which, however, happens to be erroneous. In the evolution of mind in the struggle for existence, more and more accurate calculations of possible injury are attained, and fear becomes more and more rational. Educated men fear only what is worthy of fear; they fear many things that lower minds do not, and do not fear many things they do. The true excess of fear is where we fear against judgment, as when, knowing the safety of travel by rail, I am yet constantly in fear while aboard a railway train. When I still continue to fear, though I know the fear to be groundless, this is a true hypertrophy of fear. We constantly observe those who are fearful and timid against their own reason. When dangers known are compared with dangers obscure or unknown—and perceived to be unknowable—the fear of the unknown often prevails against the fear of the known, and we prefer with Hamlet to fear the ills we have than fly to others we know not of.
I must in conclusion express my conviction that while the physiological and objective study of fear and other emotions is of very considerable value, yet it is only introspective analysis which can reveal the true nature and genesis of fear and all emotion. What fear is and what is the process of its development can only be determined by the direct study of consciousness as a life factor in the struggle for existence. This I attempt in the present chapter, with the main result that fear, as indeed every emotion, does not consist of pain or cognition-revivals in any form, but is a feeling reaction from the representation of the feeling potency of the object.
CHAPTER VIII
THE DIFFERENTIATION OF FEAR
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.
While 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 inversely 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.