who has ever seen, a horse inflict on himself mortal injuries, in
his frantic attempts to escape from a quite imaginary danger. I
have good reasons for believing that not only animals here and
there, but whole flocks and swarms of them, are often destroyed,
even in the wild state, by mistaken fear; by such panics, for
instance, as cause a whole herd of buffaloes to rush over a bluff,
and be dashed to pieces. And remark that this capacity of panic,
fear--of superstition, as I should call it--is greatest in those
animals, the dog and the horse for instance, which have the most
rapid and vivid fancy. Does not the unlettered Highlander say all
that I want to say, when he attributes to his dog and his horse, on
the strength of these very manifestations of fear, the capacity of
seeing ghosts and fairies before he can see them himself?

But blind fear not only causes evil to the coward himself: it makes
him a source of evil to others; for it is the cruellest of all human
states. It transforms the man into the likeness of the cat, who,
when she is caught in a trap, or shut up in a room, has too low an
intellect to understand that you wish to release her: and, in the
madness of terror, bites and tears at the hand which tries to do her
good. Yes; very cruel is blind fear. When a man dreads he knows
not what, he will do he cares not what. When he dreads desperately,
he will act desperately. When he dreads beyond all reason, he will
behave beyond all reason. He has no law of guidance left, save the
lowest selfishness. No law of guidance: and yet his intellect,
left unguided, may be rapid and acute enough to lead him into
terrible follies. Infinitely more imaginative than the lowest
animals, he is for that very reason capable of being infinitely more
foolish, more cowardly, more superstitious. He can--what the lower
animals, happily for them, cannot--organise his folly; erect his