It is sufficiently easy to see the general function of fear and its primitive character, but we find it very hard to make a satisfactory analysis, and to show the exact steps of its evolution. It is obvious, however, in the first place, that fear, like other emotions, is purely indirect and secondary experience; it pre-supposes previous painful experience of the feared object. Pain experienced in connection with cognition of object is the basis of all fear. Animals that have not felt pain from man do not fear him. But fear while thus based on previous direct experience is always hindered by simultaneous direct experience, as, for example, sensation. Thus when we, whip in hand, say to a child crying from fear, “I will give you something to cry for,” we imply the law that direct pain and sensation tend to supplant indirect feeling as emotion. This common expression emphasizes the essential representativeness of emotion, its imaginary nature, as also the supplanting power of direct real experience. The sight of the whip inspires fear in the child who has been whipped, but this fear is in the course of a punishment wholly eliminated by the direct pain endured. The direct experience is thus the basis of every fear, but only as it is cognized, and not felt. The great difficulty in analysing fear is in clearly apprehending the mode in which previous experience is utilized. If we could study in ourselves the genesis of a simple emotion, we should doubtless be enabled to see the steps by which experience reacts upon itself so as to give a reflex form like the emotion of fear, but this is hardly possible. However, cognition is evolved at the instance of pain, and all objects are viewed, not for themselves, but in their feeling significance. Cognition is embedded in feeling, and at first is a mere tone of feeling. Things are not at first known for themselves but solely as sources of present pleasure and pain. Things are perceived in and through the feeling which has stimulated the perception. The immediate feeling value of the object is given by the very origin and process of cognition. When an animal is pained by contact with a sharp rock, and this pain stimulates cognition of the rock, this is solely on the pain account. Repeated experiences enable the percept to arise at stimulus of less and less pain, and so the proper reaction is accomplished more and more economically. We may say that the order of evolution is this: first, a pain; second, a cognition of pain-giver—“it hurts”—third, emotion about pain-giver, as fear thereof—“I am afraid of it.” Primitive and normal cognition always implies emotion as impelling self-preservative action. Knowledge which does not spring into emotion and action is abortive. At first the known is always startling.