The psychology of fear includes two stages, to be studied quite distinctly. There is a primary, instinctive, unreasoning fear preceding all individual experience, and a secondary, conscious, reasoned fear posterior to experience. They are generally confounded with one another, and as the second is by far the most frequent, it serves as the typical form in descriptions. _First Stage._—Numerous observations prove the existence of an innate fear, not attributable to any individual experience. In children, Preyer[133] maintains the existence of “a hereditary fear manifesting itself on occasion.” Many are afraid of dogs and cats, though they have never been bitten or scratched; thunder makes them cry out—why? The fear of falling, says the same author, during first attempts at walking, is as strange as the fear shown towards animals. At fourteen months, this writer’s son could not venture to take a step without support, and was full of terror if the person holding him let go; yet he had never experienced a fall. He concludes, very justly, that “it is quite erroneous to think that the child who has not been taught to fear things does not know fear. The courage or fearfulness of the mother certainly exercises a great influence; but there are in children so many cases of motiveless fear that we must admit some hereditary influence.” The same fact has been observed in young animals: Spalding’s experiments on newly-hatched chickens and their instinctive terror of the hawk are well known. Preyer repeated this experiment, with like results. Gratiolet, as I have already said, relates that a little dog, who had never seen a wolf, on smelling a piece of the skin of that animal, was seized with indescribable terror. Adult man, though his fears are in general based on experience, sometimes manifests (at least this is the case with ignorant and primitive people) vague, unconscious fears of the unknown, of darkness, of mysterious powers, witchcraft, sorcery, magic, etc. Ignorance is a great source of terror; and Bain has said, not without reason, that knowledge is the great remedy against fear. Footnote 133: _Die Seele des Kindes_, chap. vii.