MENTAL DIFFERENCE AND DISORDER. 235 



a chimpanzee at the London Zoological Gardens was ( especi- 

 ally alarmed at the sight of a horse and cart ; ' while Darwin 

 mentions the terror of a chimpanzee at the sight of a human 

 coal-heaver. 



The fear of threatened danger even though unreal of 

 some punishment, merely pretended by man, obviously in- 

 volves an excitable or fertile, if not morbid, imagination. In 

 danger real or supposed and in the supposed quite as much 

 as in the real the horse is apt to lose its ordinary trust in 

 its rider, and is likely to seek safety also real or supposed 

 in ignominious flight (Low). The same course of action 

 is followed, under similar circumstances, by the dog. 



But on the other hand fear, alarm, terror, horror, in their 

 major degrees at least, frequently paralyse all power of self- 

 protective action, creating a dangerous immobility of body, 

 with an accompanying fixity of stare. This condition is 

 often described as a kind of fascination, of which the main 

 features are powerlessness of mind and body, with the gaze 

 helplessly fixed on some dreaded object generally some 

 powerful enemy, such as a serpent. The spell-bound animal 

 is otherwise said to 6 lose its head' or ' wits' in some serious, 

 sudden, unexpected emergency, in which presence of mind 

 and readiness of action are all-important. To terror in the 

 victim is due the power of the rattlesnake to c charm ' the 

 said victim, to hold it as if spell-bound, fixed in its position 

 and gaze, insusceptible of flight or motion. Pierquin gives 

 the case of a cat in whom alarm at the sight of a dog pro- 

 duced a semi-stupor. Fear causes stupefaction in certain 

 antelopes (Campbell). Such is the dread of armed men, or 

 even of man's firearms, in certain baboons, that the mere 

 sight of a gun, or of the act of aiming one though the 

 weapon be unloaded begets sometimes paralysis of thought 

 and action with its consequences. 



In a minor degree, fear may beget stupidity or mental 

 confusion, leading to injudicious or useless action ; for in- 

 stance, to attempted flight from enemies where escape is 

 obviously impossible. Or bewilderment may produce a kind 

 of self-destruction. Thus cockroaches, grasshoppers, and 

 spiders, fleeing from, and pursued by, the foraging ant of 



