If we inquire how it happened that this imitation of the feelings of others has become so common, there will be no doubt as to the answer: man being the most timid of all beings because of his subtle and delicate nature has been made familiar through his timidity with this sympathy for, and rapid comprehension of, the feelings of others, even of animals. For century after century he saw danger in everything that was unfamiliar to him, in anything that happened to be alive, and whenever the spectacle of such things and creatures came before his eyes he imitated their features and attitude, drawing at the same time his own conclusion as to the nature of the evil intentions they concealed. This interpretation of all movements and all facial characteristics in the sense of intentions, man has even brought to bear on things inanimate,—urged on as he was by the illusion that there was nothing inanimate. I believe that this is the origin of everything that we now call a feeling for nature, that sensation of joy which men experience at the sight of the sky, the fields, the rocks, the forests, the storms, the stars, the landscapes, and spring: without our old habits of fear which forced us to suspect behind everything a kind of second and more recondite sense, we should now experience no delight in nature, in the same way as men and animals do not cause us to rejoice if we have not first been deterred by that source of all understanding, namely, fear. For joy and agreeable surprise, and finally the feeling of ridicule, are the younger children of sympathy, and the much younger brothers and sisters of fear. The faculty of rapid perception, which is based on the faculty of rapid dissimulation, decreases in proud and autocratic men and nations, as they are less timid; but, on the other hand, every category of understanding and dissimulation is well known to timid peoples, and among them is to be found the real home of imitative arts and superior intelligence.