_FEAR AS PRIMITIVE EMOTION_[B]
It may be considered as plausible that if the first feeling was pain,
the first emotion was also of the pain character. The first
representation of an object as painful induced that reaction of mind
which we term an emotion, and the painful emotion we call fear. That the
first emotion to appear was fear, as fright, seems likely when we
consider that the general alertness and defensiveness imperatively
required in the struggle for existence is thereby most immediately and
simply attained. The acquirement of the power to become frightened is
plainly a most important requisite for self-preservation, and thus is
indicated as a very early factor in conscious life. An animal being
devoured by another may merely suffer pain without any perception of the
object as pain-giving and to give pain; but if it attains this
perception, there may be added to the stimulus of simple pain that of
fright. The direct actual pain may be but small, and so inducing but
feeble reaction, as when some less sensitive portion is being injured;
but if there occurs a vivid representation of potential pain, fright
happens and stimulates most strenuous endeavours, and so rids the animal
both of the immediately and the prospectively painful. Thus emotion acts
as a complement to simple feeling, and also secures practically
anticipatory reaction. Animals which must receive actual injury before
experiencing pain are clearly inferior to those which experience
emotion-pain before the injury is actually received. Other things being
equal, the most easily frightened have, in the midst of many destructive
agents, the best chance of survival and of perpetuating their kind.
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Footnote B:
Originally appeared in part in _Philosophical Review_, i. pp. 241-256.
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It is unnecessary to dwell at length on child life and savage life as
illustrating the primitive quality and function of fear. The earliest
experiences of the child with things are lessons of fear. The burnt
child dreads the fire, and thus is enabled to preserve himself from
threatened injury. Fear is a primary and most important motive to action
in a very wide range of the lower mental life. Those who have observed
animals and man in a state of nature are always greatly impressed with
the constant and large part which this emotion plays in their
consciousness. With the timid and weaker species, like the rabbit and
squirrel, it is likely that a majority of their cognitions prompt to
fear or are prompted by fear, and with some persecuted races of savages
the same may be said.
The necessity and value of anticipatory reaction being acknowledged in
the struggle of existence, we plainly see a primitive motive thereto in
fear, and the earliest emotional life which we can clearly interpret
likewise seems to be fear.
It is sufficiently easy to see the general function of fear and its
primitive character, but we find it very hard to make a satisfactory
analysis, and to show the exact steps of its evolution. It is obvious,
however, in the first place, that fear, like other emotions, is purely
indirect and secondary experience; it pre-supposes previous painful
experience of the feared object. Pain experienced in connection with
cognition of object is the basis of all fear. Animals that have not felt
pain from man do not fear him. But fear while thus based on previous
direct experience is always hindered by simultaneous direct experience,
as, for example, sensation. Thus when we, whip in hand, say to a child
crying from fear, “I will give you something to cry for,” we imply the
law that direct pain and sensation tend to supplant indirect feeling as
emotion. This common expression emphasizes the essential
representativeness of emotion, its imaginary nature, as also the
supplanting power of direct real experience. The sight of the whip
inspires fear in the child who has been whipped, but this fear is in the
course of a punishment wholly eliminated by the direct pain endured. The
direct experience is thus the basis of every fear, but only as it is
cognized, and not felt.
The great difficulty in analysing fear is in clearly apprehending the
mode in which previous experience is utilized. If we could study in
ourselves the genesis of a simple emotion, we should doubtless be
enabled to see the steps by which experience reacts upon itself so as to
give a reflex form like the emotion of fear, but this is hardly
possible. However, cognition is evolved at the instance of pain, and all
objects are viewed, not for themselves, but in their feeling
significance. Cognition is embedded in feeling, and at first is a mere
tone of feeling. Things are not at first known for themselves but solely
as sources of present pleasure and pain. Things are perceived in and
through the feeling which has stimulated the perception. The immediate
feeling value of the object is given by the very origin and process of
cognition. When an animal is pained by contact with a sharp rock, and
this pain stimulates cognition of the rock, this is solely on the pain
account. Repeated experiences enable the percept to arise at stimulus of
less and less pain, and so the proper reaction is accomplished more and
more economically.
We may say that the order of evolution is this: first, a pain; second, a
cognition of pain-giver—“it hurts”—third, emotion about pain-giver, as
fear thereof—“I am afraid of it.” Primitive and normal cognition always
implies emotion as impelling self-preservative action. Knowledge which
does not spring into emotion and action is abortive. At first the known
is always startling.
The original pain-impelled cognition brings in the painful emotion,
primitive fear. And as knowledge has brought in fear, so fear reacts on
knowledge, and fearfulness incites to knowing even when the pain from
object ceases. Thus before any actual experience of an object it may be
known and felt about. Thus that habit of objectivity is formed, of
alertness, of a fearful sensing and perceiving, which is noticeable in
many animals. A cognitive-emotive, emotive-cognitive life is formed and
developed. It is a tremendous stride onward to be able through fearful
cognition to wholly pre-perceive and anticipate the injurious, instead
of having to suffer it in part before being enabled to get away.
Now primitive fear and all primitive emotion plainly utilizes the past
experience as interpreting the future; emotion is about a known potency.
Yet it is often stated that emotion is but a summation of revivals of
past experience. Having often been burnt by fires that I have
coincidently been looking at, it sometimes happens that I see a fire
which has not yet harmed me, but still the mere sight affects me with
what I call the emotion of fear, which, in closest analysis, means
merely the revival of the burning pains associated with this seeing in
the past. “I am afraid” equals “I re-experience the pains of burning” by
suggestion. Pains faintly re-occurring constitute the painful fear.
There is in this mass of re-awakenings no real cognition of experience
and no feeling about it as such, no psychosis _at_ the experienceable.
And it is certainly true that when a fixed sequence of experiences tend
to recur together, there will follow upon the cognition, revival waves
of pain before any actual increase of pain is really inflicted in the
given case. These waves stand for, and are the echoes of, the former
real pain sequences of cognition. Thus the perception of a great mass of
ice will often cause a shivery feeling, a painful sensation is revived
as correlated with former cognition experiences. Even the image or
representation, the purely and consciously ideal cognition, may bring in
painful feeling, as when I say, “It makes me shiver to think of it.”
Here the painful sensation-bringing idea is cognized as such, but the
representation here is the occasion of a direct painful sensation, and
evidently does not imply fear or other emotion.
While not arising from actual injuries, revivals strengthen both
cognition and volition. They have recurred before further hurtful
experiences with the fire which originally incited them. These revival
pains of previous sequences to the cognition, which are carried along
with the present cognition, are real enough in themselves, yet they are
objectively anticipatory of actual injury. The whole order of previous
experience is by the nature of mind and nervous system re-enacted before
the actual injuries are inflicted. It is always a race between mind and
nature, but it is a prime function of mind to anticipate practically the
movements of nature. Mind by its revival forms accomplishes this, but if
it lags in its work the real injuries are mercilessly inflicted by slow
but sure nature. When the sequence of revival is quicker than the
objective sequence, the reactions anticipate objective order, and thus a
manifest economy is achieved. But pain revivals of this kind are not
fear, nor is there a real pre-perception. Since the revival forms are,
to the observer’s point of view, incentive to anticipatory reaction,
psychologists must often, especially with low organisms, mistake them
for fear; the animal is often, doubtless, merely suffering revival pains
when it appears to be fearing pain. Thus we may suspect that organisms
which seem to fear shadows or real objects are often merely suffering
revival pains brought up in conjunction with the cognition, and not
really fearing as result of perceiving feeling quality inherent in the
object. Manifestation of pain must often be mistaken for manifestations
of emotion, and there is as yet no accurate objective determination for
fear or other emotions.
Revival pains are not representations of pains as in some way coming
from object. Emotion requires representation, and cannot occur in any
presentation or re-presentation chain. True pre-perception is not merely
perceiving the thing before its effects in feeling are experienced, but
it is a _representing_ the feeling quality of the object before, in any
given case, this quality is directly experienced. This obviously rests
on past experience, but the connecting of object with pleasure-pain
experience is at all times, as before intimated, equally a problem.
Emotion and representation are built not of revivals, but upon them
perceived as such. At some critical moment, in some rather early period
in mental development, a consciousness which was pain _plus_ sense of
object, realized, under the pressure of struggle for existence, the
feeling quality of the object, and there arose with the knowledge of
object as pain-giver the painful emotion. And as soon as object is not
merely cognized, but cognized as pain-giver, it may be feared. The
moment that object was known as a pain agent, then fear of the object
came, and thus true anticipatory action arose. We are said, indeed, to
fear objects, to fear men, animals, etc., but, in truth, the fear is
never of the object as such, but only in view of its pain agency. The
cognizing the experienced and experienceable as such seems then a
peculiar and distinct process in fear and in all emotion, a _genus_
apart which cannot be constituted by interaction of simple elements. The
growth of mind is largely in multiplying and enlarging the signs of
experience.
The connecting once achieved of object with pain, it becomes
increasingly easy to cognize the feeling value of objects, and before
full and extreme pain experience therefrom to pre-react through emotion.
Thus emotion saves both direct pain and injury. As it becomes a
permanent tendency, and an impulse of consciousness to proceed from all
pure feelings to cognition of object, so also to cognition of object in
its feeling quality, and thus by inherent tendency it ultimately comes
about that there is attaching of pain to various objects cognized, even
when there is no immediate experience of pain to be connected therewith.
Finally the precedent inciting pains to cognition become such minor
factors, and knowledge arises with such apparent spontaneity, that
emotion as involving pain significance becomes dominant rather than the
immediate pain. An order of consciousness becomes established in which
the notable event is emotional cognition of experience values as
bringing in permanent emotion rather than an order of pleasure-pain
inciting cognition with evanescent emotion. But at the first it is
evident that fear was but a slight event in a consciousness which was
mainly absorbed in immediate pain experience and some sense of object.
It is so habitual and instinctive for us to perceive all things as
having feeling value, that it is most difficult to appreciate the
standpoint of a consciousness which is just attaining emotion life.
The preliminary elements to simple primitive fear, as expressed by any
such phrase as, “it hurts,” are at least four: pain, cognition of
object, cognition of the pain, cognition of the pain agency of object.
These operations, as being at first successive, do not necessarily
imply, however, sense of time. The consciousness of a pain is certainly,
at first, consciousness of pain really past, yet not consciousness of it
as past. The pain stands as immediately antecedent act to the
consciousness which is cognition of it, but sense of experience is not
thereby sense of experience in time. The sense of time-relations of
experiences is wholly subsequent to the simple sense of experience. All
experience is, of course, in time, but far from being of time.
An organism, which has suffered knowingly from an object, and so feared,
attains at length the power of fearing antecedent to any real injury.
This seems to be brought about somewhat in the following manner: If I in
any way, as by a pin pricking, rouse a sleeping animal to a cognition of
an object which has often injured it, and which it has often feared,
immediately there would re-occur the original concomitants of the
cognition in the previous cases; there would be pain, cognition of pain,
ascription to object, and fear, all merely revivals, and happening most
probably before any actual injury, etc., received in the present case.
Now these revivals, as before insisted, do not and cannot in themselves
alone form a new fear. This is only constituted when the revival pains
are known as such, when they are not merely presented in consciousness,
but represented as belonging to past experience of thing, and so to be
experienced. The thing is thereby truly _interpreted_ for its feeling
value. Not merely pain, as being experienced, is connected with thing,
but as having been experienced, and to be experienced. Thus only arises
that sense of the experienceable, that real _apprehension_ for the
future, which is so valuable an acquisition in the struggle for
existence. Feeling quality comes thus to be assigned as real and
permanent property of things, and every cognition comes to imply
representation of feeling value, and so to be a basis for emotion. But
all sense of experienceability is founded on sense of experience; the
sense of things as possibilities of sensation and feeling is based on
actual relatings of feelings to objects in simple direct experiences.
Fear is in itself pre-eminently a painful state, and we have to inquire
as to the origin and nature of this pain. The statement of the problem
in general form is, how does that which does not yet please or pain, but
is only cognized as about to do so, give immediate pleasure or pain?
We have already expressed the opinion that fear is based on more than
mere pain revivals; there must be true representation, the revival must
be appreciated as representation of past experience, and indicative of
future. The painful agitation consequent on prospect of pain seems,
indeed, to include as pain element more than revival pain, but it is
only seeming. Where does the pain come from which a person feels at the
mere prospect of pain unless from the past? The pain is, of course, not
the identical pain feared. Again, one cannot see how a cognition in
itself, entirely empty of feeling, can cause a pain, except as acting as
a link in a chain of association whereby conjoined past pains are
revived. So far as fear is pain, it is, we may be told, revival, for
representation of pain is not pain, and cannot cause pain. The pain
which arises from cognition of pain to be experienced appears in a
strict analysis to be wholly re-occurrence stimulated thereby, and not
any new and peculiar mode of pain at pain. That this is the case is
apparent from the fact that we can only have the pain of fear so far as
we have experienced pain. Poignant pains experienced are the basis of
poignant pain in fear. The knowledge that you are soon to re-experience
an intense pain leads to an intense dread, in which the intense pain is
revived from former experience. There are, to be sure, in the phenomena
of fear in highly developed consciousness, complex pains which cannot be
ascribed to revivals, reflexes upon consciousness of the great tension
and agitation thereof, pain of loss of self-possession and self-power,
and other modes which proceed from consciousness of consciousness, but
this does not bear upon the question how mere cognition of pain, as to
be experienced, can in itself give pain; how there arises from mere
apprehension a pain which is more than and distinct from the revival
pains.
But, however we may be puzzled to see how mere cognition of
experienceable pain develops a peculiar pain which is the essence of
fear, yet we must acknowledge its production to be a fact. We may say,
indeed, that the bare thought of pain even when conveyed by the printed
word—the abstract sign of an arbitrary vocal name—is not without a tinge
of a peculiar fear-pain which does not wholly consist of revivals. When
preparing to go out into the storm on a very cold day I have pain in
anticipation of the pain I am to receive from the bitterly cold wind.
Now I may have preliminary shiverings, and there may be recurrent
painful sensations as I look intently at the raging elements, pains
which return from actual experiences which I have before undergone and
at the time knowingly connected with wind and snow. But all these
revivals, while the basis of my fear, do not give the distinct pain
quality of the fear. The pain which I do experience when I actually step
into the biting blast I know at once to be entirely distinct in quality
from that which I before felt at the anticipation, the real pain, of
fear. Again, when I say, “I was deeply pained to hear of it,” and when I
say, “The noise pained me greatly,” I indicate that difference between
purely mental distress and sensuous pain, between pain at representation
and pain referred to presentation, which is to be emphasized in all our
study of emotion. With a man in the hands of hostile Indians the
tortures of fear are quite distinct in quality from the tortures
actually endured. The agony of fear is a _genus_ apart from the agony of
physical pain.
Again, if the pain in fear were derived from revivals, then the nature
of the pain in different states of fear would be as different as the
sensations feared. But as a matter of fact the pain in fear of cold,
fear of heat, of famine, of punishment, etc., is substantially of the
same quality. I may fear one more than another, but the real mental
agitation and pain which constitute the fear are in all cases
essentially the same. If the pain in fear were sensation revivals, then
fear of cold and fear of heat would be quite diverse and contrary in
quality of pain value, but we all know that the dread of a cold day and
of a hot day are in themselves essentially the same in nature. As far as
the states are pure fear and have a pain quality, the conscious activity
in both is entirely similar.
Further, if the pain in fear were wholly of revival nature, not only
should we expect fear of different sensations to be correspondingly
distinct, but we should also expect the pain in fear to never exceed in
amount and intensity the pain feared as indicated by measure of past
experience. But we know that our fears are often much more painful than
pain feared and than our experience of past pain. The pang of fear, of
sudden fright, is often more acute and intense than any direct pain we
have ever experienced. The terrible convulsions of fear which we see in
the insane give evidence of pain which could not have been reflection
from direct experience. That excessive and sudden fear which turns men’s
hair gray in a few hours and transforms their whole physical system is
plainly not any revival from the individual’s past experience. As
revealed by its effects it is often, perhaps, greater than the whole
amount of pain they have ever suffered. Where, in the direct-experience
form, pain is greater in the fear than the real pain suffered, we
express the fact by the common phrase, “more scared than hurt.” In all
such cases the pain in fear is not the revival of past experiences of
the object feared.
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.