The fears of little children[72] are largely excited by immediate sensible experiences—darkness, solitude, sharp noises, and so on. Sensitive persons often remain throughout life subject to irrational fears of this sort, and it is well known that they play a conspicuous part in hysteria, insanity, and other weak or morbid conditions. But for the most part the healthy adult mind becomes accustomed and indifferent to these simple phenomena, and transfers its emotional sensibility to more complex interests. These interests are for the most part sympathetic, involving our social rather than our material self—our standing in the minds of other people, the well-being of those we care for, and so on. Yet these fears—fear of standing alone, of losing one’s place in the flow of human action and sympathy, fear for the character and success of those near to us—have often the very quality of childish fear. A man cast out of his regular occupation and secure place in the system of the world feels a terror like that of the child in the dark; just as impulsive, perhaps just as purposeless and paralyzing. The main difference seems to be that the latter fear is stimulated by a complex idea, implying a socially imaginative habit of mind. Social fear, of a sort perhaps somewhat morbid, is vividly depicted by Rousseau in the passage of his Confessions where he describes the feeling that led him falsely to accuse a maid-servant of a theft which he had himself committed. “When she appeared my heart was agonized, but the presence of so many people was more powerful than my compunction. I did not fear punishment, but I dreaded shame: I dreaded it more than death, more than the crime, more than all the world. I would have buried, hid myself in the centre of the earth: invincible shame bore down every other sentiment; shame alone caused all my impudence, and in proportion as I became criminal the fear of discovery rendered me intrepid. I felt no dread but that of being detected, of being publicly and to my face declared a thief, liar, and calumniator....”[73] So also we might distinguish, as in the case of anger, a higher form of social fear, one that is not narrowly personal, but relates to some socially derived ideal of good or right. For instance, in a soldier the terror of roaring guns and singing bullets would be a fear of the lowest or animal type. Dread of the disgrace to follow running away would be a social fear, yet not of the highest sort, because the thing dreaded is not wrong but shame—a comparatively simple and non-rational idea. People often do what they know is wrong under the influence of such fear, as did Rousseau in the incident quoted above. But, supposing the soldier’s highest ideal to be the success of his army and his country, a fear for that, overcoming all lower and cruder fears—selfish fears as they would ordinarily be called—would be moral or ethical. CHAPTER VIII EMULATION