But with the greater independence of walking and running there is apt to come also a new timidity. The new-born infant can easily be frightened; Dr. J. B. and Mrs. Watson found that the things which alarm it most are loud noises and the sensation of being dropped.[6] It is, however, so completely protected that it has little occasion for the rational exercise of fear; even in real dangers it is helpless, so that fear would not be of any use to it. During the second and third year, new fears develop. It is a moot point how far this is due to suggestion, and how far it is instinctive. The fact that the fears do not exist during the first year is not conclusive against their instinctive character, since an instinct may ripen at any age. Not even the most extreme Freudian would maintain that the sex instinct is mature at birth. Obviously children who can run about by themselves have more need of fear than infants that cannot walk; it would therefore not be surprising if the instinct of fear arose with the need. The question is of considerable educational importance. If all fears arise from suggestion, they can be prevented by the simple expedient of not showing fear or aversion before a child. If, on the other hand, some of them are instinctive, more elaborate methods will be required. Dr. Chalmers Mitchell, in his book “The Childhood of Animals”, gives a large number of observations and experiments to show that there is usually no inherited instinct of fear in young animals.[7] Except monkeys and a few birds, they view the age-long enemies of their species, such as snakes, without the slightest alarm, unless their parents have taught them to feel fear of these animals. Children well under a year old seem never to be afraid of animals. Dr. Watson taught one such child to be afraid of rats by repeatedly sounding a gong behind its head at the moment when he showed it a rat. The noise was terrifying, and the rat came to be so by association. But instinctive fear of animals seems quite unknown in the early months. Fear of the dark, also, seems never to occur in children who have not been exposed to the suggestion that the dark is terrifying. There are certainly very strong grounds for the view that most of the fears which we used to regard as instinctive are acquired, and would not arise if grown-up people did not create them.