Fear always includes some sense of object. The apprehension of something evil to happen is the basis of all fear, but the thing, or, subjectively speaking, the objectifying, may be extremely vague. We may fear that some harm is to befall us, but what and how, we know not. We must suppose that in early stages this bare objectifying of approaching pain was a regular incipient form, that an indefinite fear preceded every case of defined fear. We, as a rule, attain a full objectifying with such ease and rapidity that this form does not often appear. A complete fear movement, then with reference to cognition includes four stages: first, a very general sense of object as about to give pain; second, an increasing definition of object up to the maximum of clearness, thus marking the highest efficiency of the fear function; third, a decreasing definition of object till, fourth, a purely indefinite objectifying is again reached. Every fear, if it attains a normal life, will rise, culminate, and decline in this way. Even in man, where the full development of single simple psychoses rarely proceed undisturbed, there is yet observed a general tendency toward these stages. I awaken in the night at a sudden noise with slight and vague fear; suspicious sounds increase my fear and I listen and look more intently till I see clearly and quite fully crouching near the bed a dark body which I make out to be an armed burglar; as he approaches with his pointed weapon fear will most likely become so intense that I see less and less clearly, and a shot might terrify me into vague but very intense fear. If the object is discerned to be not a burglar but a chair, the fear quickly lapses. At a certain point of maximum clearness either a weakening or an intensifying of fear weakens cognition. Too much or too little pain is equally injurious to the knowing activity. Low psychisms examine and clearly define only that from which they have something to fear or hope.