We have to consider here only that simple primitive sorrow which is a painful emotion at regarding personal loss or failure. Such simple sorrow we see in the child who cries over spilled milk, in the man who expresses deep regret at the careless misstep by which he broke his leg. In this emotional reaction at the injurious the harmful is neither escaped nor repelled, as through fear and anger; the feeling disturbance is comparatively passive and purely reflective, and is not a spur to some immediate advantageous defensive or offensive activity. In sorrow we are pained emotionally at the trouble which has come upon us through our own agency or otherwise, but we do not struggle from it or against it, but there is purely helpless retrospection. Harm and loss which might provoke in one nature to fear or anger, in another lead only to inactive sorrow. The cognition form in sorrow means always sense of _personal_ loss. I may fear a thing, or I may be angry at a thing, but I can be sorry only for a person. I do not feel sorry for a broken chair, though I may feel sorry for having broken it. This view of one’s own personal agency in causing harm to one’s self and harm to others is very prominent in a large range of sorrow. In viewing any action which determined some evil, I say, “I am sorry I did it.” This is, however, a later mode of the emotion, which at the first cannot take account of any agency, but is simply an acute feeling of distress at the injury received. Thus the one who grieves over the spilled milk regards, not his own agency, but only his loss; he is sorry, not that he spilled the milk, but that his milk was spilled. Yet the sense of personal agency certainly forms a great part in much sorrow, and tends to intensify it. I may grieve over any harm that has come upon me, but my grief is intensified as I remember my own agency in bringing it about. I may feel sorry over the loss of my goods by fire, but if I lose them by my own careless act, my sorrow is redoubled. Strictly speaking, perhaps, the sorrows are distinct, I feel sorry for having done it and I am sorry at it done; yet they may be said to constitute a single psychic state. Sense of our own agency, however, in having produced harm to self is as likely to produce anger at self or even fear of self. Hence our intensest and purest sorrows are apt to be those occasioned by considering injuries occasioned by elemental forces. That harm which we did not help because we could not, the inevitable injury, this excites a keen regret and deep mourning. The pain in sorrow is as peculiar, searching, unanalyzable and undescribable as other simple emotion pains, and only conceivable through realization. This sinking, helpless pain over what has happened is clearly distinct from the sensation order of pains, and is in no wise a reflection from them. The pain I have at remembrance of some great loss which has befallen me is certainly very distinct from that which came from the loss itself.