. Fear means the impulse to escape,
rather than any specific stirred-up state. Psychology has, indeed,
made a mistake in taking over these names from common speech and
trying to use them as names of specific emotional states. We were
having some difficulty, a few moments ago, in finding any great
distinction between fear and anger, considered as emotional
states--just because we were overlooking the obvious fact that "fear"
is an impulse to escape from something, while "anger" is an impulse to
get at something and attack it. The adjustments are very different,
but the organic states are much alike.

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The organic state in fear or anger cannot generate the escape or
fighting tendency, since the two tendencies are so different in spite
of the likeness of the organic state. The tendencies are aroused
directly by the perception of the dangerous or offensive object. The
order of events is as follows. The stimulus that sets the whole
process going is, let us say, a bear in the woods. First response:
seeing the bear. Second response: recognizing the dangerous situation.
Third response: adjustment towards escape. Fourth response (unless
escape is immediate): internal preparatory reactions, adrenal, etc.;
also, probably, external expressive movements and movements steered in
the general direction of escape. Fifth response: conscious stirred-up
state consisting of blended sensations of all these preparatory
reactions. Sixth response (by good luck): definitive escape reaction.
Seventh response: satisfaction and quiescence.

[Illustration: Fig. 24.--Here the stimulus-response diagram is
complicated to take account of the emotional state. The ellipse here
stands for the brain. S arouses T, a tendency towards the response R.
But T also arouses P, a bodily state of preparedness, and sensations
(E) of this bodily state, together with T, constitute the conscious
state of the individual while he is tending towards the response, or
end-result, R.]

Emotion Sometimes Generates Impulse

Typically, impulse generates emotion. The reaction tendency is primary
and the emotion secondary.

But suppose the organic state of fear to be {133} present--never mind
how it got there--might it not act like hunger or fatigue, and
generate a fear impulse? Could it not be that a person should first be
fearful, without knowing what he was afraid of and without really
having anything to be afraid of; and then, as it were, _find_
something to