a discrimination as to those who shall impart fear; the fear of a child on shipboard will not start a panic, while the fear of a captain would. Convinced that there is something worth fearing, we fear, and make frantic efforts to escape. We have before mentioned (p. 89) the peculiar fear of fear. The latest and culminating differentiation of fear is awe, and the highest, most refined development of awe is in the feeling for the sublime. The sense of magnitude and mighty potency of injurious agents or agencies in themselves considered, and not as immediately affecting the individual or any individual, is the essential element in awe as a species of fear. This fear is then neither egoistic nor altruistic, but impersonal. We fear neither for ourselves nor others in standing awestruck at the foot of Niagara, but a sense of overwhelming greatness and might stirs a thrill of emotion which is at bottom a sublimation of fear. The view which to a peasant or an animal would give terror, or produce no emotional effect whatever, with very rational and sensitive minds produces awe. Awe does not, as early emotions and fear generally, lead directly to will, it is not a stimulant to action, and thus has not been evolved by the principle of usefulness for action which governs the general course of physiological and psychical evolution. It is evident that with awe and the sense of the sublime emotion has a value and end in itself. In the higher evolution of man we see that the psychic elements evolve no longer in a strict dependency for their value in securing advantage and success in the struggle for existence, but comfortable existence being practically assured, psychic development is pushed on in lines ethical, emotional and intellectual, for no practical end, but for their own intrinsic value. Thus the feeling for the sublime is a purely independent development, which, indeed, is based upon man’s capacity to fear egoistically and altruistically, but is really exercised solely for its own sake. A consciousness which has had no common fear stage, could never arrive at awe. We stand in awe of persons who are totally beyond us in their superiority, who exist in a sphere of power and glory, which transcends even our understanding, and thus awe has a religious as well as æsthetic side. The chief differentiations then of fear we note as intensive dread, as altruistic horror, as impersonal awe. The chronological order of evolution may be denoted in this order—fright, alarm, terror, dread, horror. CHAPTER IX _ON DESPAIR_