But we may perhaps regard anger, and fear as well, as modified from previous general emotion. We may, indeed, consider it likely that some general emotional phase preceded the special emotions, just as a general indefinite pain and pleasure preceded definite pains and pleasures. It may be considered as probable that emotion first appeared as a purely undifferentiated disturbance sequent on sense of the experienceable pain, this general emotion being neither fear nor anger, but the basis from which both develop. The psychic agitation we term emotional very likely began in a purely general form, yet it is hard to understand how peculiar forms develop therefrom. We are too far from such inchoate experience to readily come to any appreciation of its method or mode. We may be disturbed as to something imminent and know not whether to fear or be angry, but this in general means only a rapid alternation of fear and anger according as the mind runs back and forth between fear and anger-provoking elements. It is unlikely that we can trace in any such a purely undifferentiated emotion. At the best we but throw the difficulty farther back, for emotion _per se_ is then the _de novo_ form to which the principle of continuity does not seem to apply. If anger is a traceable modification of some more general emotion as combined with definite representation and volition modes, yet how the peculiar anger quality is achieved is still unexplained. On the whole it seems simplest and truest to assume the first impulse of anger as a perfectly new and diverse wave of emotion suddenly generated in answer to some extreme urgency in the struggle of existence.