INSTINCT 421 



either run, or remain semi-paralyzed. The latter condition 

 reminds us of the so-called death-shamming instinct shown 

 by many animals. Dr. Lindsay, in his work ' Mind in 

 Animals,' says this must require great self-command in 

 those that practise it. But it is really no feigning of death 

 at all, and requires no self-command. It is simply a terror- 

 paralysis which has been so useful as to become hereditary. 

 The beast of prey does not think the motionless bird, insect, 

 or crustacean dead. He simply fails to notice them at all ; 

 because his senses, like ours, are much more strongly 

 excited by a moving object than by a still one. It is the 

 same instinct which leads a boy playing ' I spy ' to hold 

 his very breath when the seeker is near, and which makes 

 the beast of prey himself in many cases motionlessly lie in 

 wait for his victim or silently * stalk ' it, by rapid ap- 

 proaches alternated with periods of immobility. It is the 

 opposite of the instinct which makes us jump up and down 

 and move our arms when we wish to attract the notice of 

 some one passing far away, and makes the shipwrecked 

 sailor frantically wave a cloth upon the raft where he is 

 floating when a distant sail appears. Now, may not the 

 statue-like, crouching immobility of some melancholiacs, 

 insane with general anxiety and fear of everything, be in 

 some way connected with this old instinct ? They can give 

 no reason for their fear to move ; but immobility makes them 

 feel safer and more comfortable. Is not this the mental 

 state of the ' feigning ' animal ? 



Again, take the strange symptom which has been de- 

 scribed of late years by the rather absurd name of agora' 

 'phobia. The patient is seized Avith palpitation and ter- 

 ror at the sight of any open place or broad street which 

 he has to cross alone. He trembles, his knees bend, he 

 may even faint at the idea. Where he has sufficient self- 

 command he sometimes accomplishes the object by keep- 

 ing safe under the lee of a vehicle going across, or join- 

 ing himself to a knot of other people. But usually he 

 slinks round the sides of the square, hugging the houses 

 as closely as he can. This emotion has no utility in a 

 civilized man, but when we notice the chronic agora- 

 phobia of our domestic cats, and see the tenacious way 



