There was a time when no such word as _panic_ existed, just as there was a time when no such word as _electric_ existed, and in this case, as in the other, before the word first sprang into life in somebody’s imagination, humanity’s whole awareness of the phenomenon which we describe as ‘panic’ must have been a different thing. The word marks a discovery in the inner world of consciousness,[22] just as _electric_[23] marks a discovery in the outer world of physical phenomena. Now it was said that the connection of the latter word, in its Greek form, with _amber_ would be informative if we had no other means of determining the electrical properties of that substance. Words like _panic_ are important, because we really have no other means of determining how the ancients, who lived before the days of literature and written records, thought and felt about such matters. The word enables us to realize that the early Greeks could become conscious of this phenomenon, and thus name it, because they felt the presence of an invisible being who swayed the emotions of flocks and herds. And it also reveals how this kind of outlook[24] changed slowly into the abstract idea which the modern individual strives to express when _he_ uses the word _panic_. At last, as that idea grows more abstract still, the expression itself may change; yet, just as the power to think of the “quality” of an article was shown to be the gift of Plato, so it would be impossible for us to think, feel, or say such things as ‘crowd-psychology’ or ‘herd-instinct’ if the Greeks had not thought, felt, said ‘Pan’—as impossible as it would be to have the leaf of a plant without first having a seed tucked into the warm earth. _Hero_, which originally meant a being who was half-human and half-divine, is a similar descendant from Greek religion which could not be extinguished from our vocabulary without restricting our outlook.