416 PSYCHOLOGY. 



ine fear. Many of us need an attack of mental disease to 

 teacli us the meaning of the word. Hence the possibility 

 of so much blindly optimistic philosophy and religion. 

 The atrocities of life become ' like a tale of little meaning 

 ihough the words are strong ;' we doubt if anj'^thing like us 

 ever really was within the tiger's jaws, and conclude that 

 the horrors we hear of are but a sort of painted tapestry 

 for the chambers in which we lie so comfortably at peace 

 with ourselves and with the world. 



Be this as it may, fear is a genuine instinct, and one of 

 the earliest shown by the human child. Noises seem es- 

 pecially to call it forth. Most noises from the outer world, 

 to a child bred in the house, have no exact significance. 

 They are simply startling. To quote a good observer, M. 

 Perez : 



" Children between three and ten months are less often alarmed by 

 visual than by auditory impressions. In cats, from the fifteenth day, 

 the contrary is the case. A child, three and a half months old, in the 

 midst of the turmoil of a conflagration, in presence of the devouring 

 flames and ruined walls, showed neither astonishment nor fear, but 

 smiled at the woman who was taking care of him, while his parents 

 were busy. The noise, however, of the trumpet of the firemen, who 

 were approaching, and that of the wheels of the engine, made him 

 start and cry. At this age I have never yet seen an infant startled at a 

 flash of lightning, even when intense; but I have seen many of them 

 alarmed at the voice of the thunder. . . . Thus fear comes rather by 

 the ears than by the eyes, to the child without experience. It is nat- 

 ural that this should be reversed, or reduced, in animals organized to 

 perceive danger afar. Accordingly, although I have never seen a child 

 frightened at his first sight of fire, I have many a time seen young dogs, 

 young cats, young chickens, and young birds frightened thereby. ... I 

 picked up some years ago a lost cat about a year old. Some months 

 afterward at the onset of cold weather I lit the fire in the grate of my 

 study, which was her reception-room. She first looked at the flame in 

 a very frightened way. I brought her near to it. She leaped away 

 and ran to hide under the bed. Although the fire was lighted every day, 

 it was not until the end of the winter that I could prevail upon her to 

 stay upon a chair near it. The next winter, however, all apprehension 

 had disappeared. . . . Let us, then, conclude that there are hereditary 

 dispositions to fear, which are independent of experience, but which 

 experiences may end by attenuating very considerably. In the human 

 infant I believe them to be particularly connected with the ear."* 



* Psychologie de I'Enfant, pp. 73-74. In an account of a young gorilla 

 quoted from Falkenstein.by R. Hartmaun (' Anthropoid Apes,' International 



