It may be considered as plausible that if the first feeling was pain, the first emotion was also of the pain character. The first representation of an object as painful induced that reaction of mind which we term an emotion, and the painful emotion we call fear. That the first emotion to appear was fear, as fright, seems likely when we consider that the general alertness and defensiveness imperatively required in the struggle for existence is thereby most immediately and simply attained. The acquirement of the power to become frightened is plainly a most important requisite for self-preservation, and thus is indicated as a very early factor in conscious life. An animal being devoured by another may merely suffer pain without any perception of the object as pain-giving and to give pain; but if it attains this perception, there may be added to the stimulus of simple pain that of fright. The direct actual pain may be but small, and so inducing but feeble reaction, as when some less sensitive portion is being injured; but if there occurs a vivid representation of potential pain, fright happens and stimulates most strenuous endeavours, and so rids the animal both of the immediately and the prospectively painful. Thus emotion acts as a complement to simple feeling, and also secures practically anticipatory reaction. Animals which must receive actual injury before experiencing pain are clearly inferior to those which experience emotion-pain before the injury is actually received. Other things being equal, the most easily frightened have, in the midst of many destructive agents, the best chance of survival and of perpetuating their kind. ----- Footnote B: Originally appeared in part in _Philosophical Review_, i. pp. 241-256. ----- It is unnecessary to dwell at length on child life and savage life as illustrating the primitive quality and function of fear. The earliest experiences of the child with things are lessons of fear. The burnt child dreads the fire, and thus is enabled to preserve himself from threatened injury. Fear is a primary and most important motive to action in a very wide range of the lower mental life. Those who have observed animals and man in a state of nature are always greatly impressed with the constant and large part which this emotion plays in their consciousness. With the timid and weaker species, like the rabbit and squirrel, it is likely that a majority of their cognitions prompt to fear or are prompted by fear, and with some persecuted races of savages the same may be said. The necessity and value of anticipatory reaction being acknowledged in the struggle of existence, we plainly see a primitive motive thereto in fear, and the earliest emotional life which we can clearly interpret likewise seems to be fear.