THE PRIMACY OF FEAR
The fear instinct is intimately related to the innermost
principle, characteristic of all life, namely the impulse of
self-preservation. When, however, the fear instinct becomes
deranged by being too intense, and especially when reaching
the extreme stage, the instinct becomes pathological, and its
functioning leads to degeneration, destruction, and death. Even
in its initiatory stages the fear instinct may become abnormal,
when associated with objects, situations, and sensori-motor
reactions which are otherwise normal and beneficial, or actually
requisite in the total economy of life activity of the particular
organism. Under such conditions the fear instinct is decidedly
pathological.[1]
In fact we may say that the fear instinct is the main source
of functional, psychopathic diseases. This also holds true of
the individual in his aggregate capacity. If the impulse of
self-preservation is at the basis of life, the fear instinct is its
intimate companion. We may unhesitatingly assert that the fear
instinct is one of the most primitive instincts of animal life. We
are sometimes apt to overlook the power of fear, because our life
is so well guarded by the protective agencies of civilization that
we can hardly realize the full extent, depth, and overwhelming
effects of the fear instinct. Fear is rooted deep in the nature of
animal life, in the impulse of self-preservation.
The fear instinct is the earliest instinct to appear in child
life. Preyer observed definite manifestations of the fear instinct
on the twenty-third day after birth. Perez and Darwin put its
appearance somewhat later. In my observations of child life I found
the manifestation of the fear instinct during the first couple of
weeks, Ribot and other psychologists regard the fear instinct as
“the first in chronological order of appearance.”
“The progress from brute to man,” says James, “is characterized
by nothing so much as the decrease in the frequency of the proper
occasion for fear. In civilization in particular it has at last
become possible for large numbers of people to pass from the cradle
to the grave without ever having had a pang of genuine fear. Many
of us need an attack of mental disease to teach us the meaning
of the word. Hence the possibility of so much blindly optimistic
philosophy and religion. (James refers here to the blind optimism
and cheerful metaphysical mysticism handed out to the uncultured
classes.) Fear is a genuine instinct, and one of the earliest shown
by the human child.”
The fear of the unknown, of the unfamiliar, of the mysterious,
is of the utmost consequence in the life history of children,
savages, and barbaric tribes, and even in the social life of
civilized nations. The fear of coming mysterious, unknown evil
is a source of great anxiety to the young, or to the untrained,
uncultivated minds. All taboos of primitive societies, of savages,
of barbarians, and also of civilized people take their origin,
according to anthropological research, in the perils and salvation
of the soul, or in the fear of impending evil. As an anthropologist
puts it: “Men are undoubtedly more influenced by what they fear
than by what they love.”
The civilized nations of antiquity used to be terrorized by
omens, by occurrences of an unfamiliar character, such as
storms, thunders, lightnings, comets, meteors, meteorites, and
eclipses. Affairs of states and wars were guided by superstitions
of fear. Whole armies used to throw away their weapons and run
panic-stricken at the appearance of meteorites, meteors, and
especially of comets. Even the ancient Athenians were influenced
by strange, meteorological phenomena. On the appearance of a solar
eclipse Pericles saved his ship by throwing his mantle round the
helmsman, telling him that that was all that an eclipse was, and
that there was no reason to be scared by the veiling of the sun
from us. The father of pragmatic history, the great Thucydides,
in his history of the Peloponnesian wars, puts the appearance of
comets among national disasters.
The fear of the mysterious, the unknown, and the unfamiliar is a
source of anxiety and distress in the young, or in the untrained
and uncultured minds. Fear may become fixed and morbid when taking
place in early childhood, when not inhibited by the course of
further development, and, all the more so, when kept up by further
events of life.
In most people the instinct of fear is controlled, regulated by
education, and inhibited by the relatively secure life led in the
herd, pack, group, and society generally. The instinct of fear,
however, is but dormant and requires the opportune moment such as
a social, mental epidemic, a “group-panic,” to become manifested
in its full intensity, giving rise to a morbid state of the
“group-mind,” or “herd-mind.”
There are again cases when even under ordinary conditions fear
becomes developed in the individual from early childhood either
by lack of inhibitory training or by accidents in early child
life. In all such cases the fear instinct becomes morbid, giving
rise in later life to various forms of mental disease known as
psychopathies, or recurrent morbid states.
We can, therefore, realize the full significance of the principle
laid down by one of the greatest thinkers of humanity, Plato,
that to learn “What to fear and what not to fear” is of the utmost
consequence to the individual, both in his private and social
activities.
Throughout the whole domain of the animal kingdom anything strange
and unfamiliar is an occasion for the awakening of the fear
instinct. The strange, the unfamiliar may be detrimental to the
organism, and the animal recoils from meeting it directly. There
must be exploration made before the reaction of approach can be
effected. We find the same tendency in children and savages who run
in terror of anything unusual.
On the whole escape is probably the safest course, since the
unfamiliar may prove of great danger. The well known saying
“Familiarity breeds contempt” has its significance in that the
familiar does not arouse the fear instinct, and can be approached
without risk. Reactions to a familiar object or known situation run
in well established, habitual grooves.
In man the sense of familiarity may be acquired by the use of
intelligence, by observations of various forms of unfamiliar
situations and strange objects. Reason, leading to the
understanding of the causes of things, turns the strange and
unfamiliar into the familiar and the known, and thus dispels the
terrors and horrors of the fear instinct.
The function of the intellect is to conquer the world by making
man at home and familiar in this “wild universe.” This is the
course of human progress. “The aim of knowledge,” says Hegel, “is
to divest the objective world of its strangeness, and to make us
more at home in it.” In the words of the ancient poet:
_Felix qui potuit rerum cognoscere causas,_
_Atque metus omnes, et inexorabile fatum,_
_Subject pedibus, strepitumque Acherontis avari._[2]
FOOTNOTES:
[1] See Chapter “Psychopathic Reflexes” in my volume “The Causation
and Treatment of Psychopathic Diseases.”
[2] Happy is he who knows the causes of things, who can trample on
fear, inexorable fate, and the horrors of death.