se in which the object observed happens to be an animal similar to the
observer and similarly affected, as for instance when a flock or herd
are swayed by panic fear. The emotion which each, as he runs, attributes
to the others is, as usual, the emotion he feels himself; but this
emotion, fear, is the same which in fact the others are then feeling.
Their aspect thus becomes the recognised expression for the feeling
which really accompanies it. So in hand-to-hand fighting: the intention
and passion which each imputes to the other is what he himself feels;
but the imputation is probably just, since pugnacity is a remarkably
contagious and monotonous passion. It is awakened by the slightest
hostile suggestion and is greatly intensified by example and emulation;
those we fight against and those we fight with arouse it concurrently
and the universal battle-cry that fills the air, and that each man
instinctively emits, is an adequate and exact symbol for what is passing
in all their souls.

Whenever, then, feeling is attributed to an animal similar to the
percipient and similarly employed the attribution is mutual and correct.
Contagion and imitation are great causes of feeling, but in so far as
they are its causes and set the pathetic fallacy to work they forestall
and correct what is fallacious in that fallacy and turn it into a
vehicle of true and, as it were, miraculous insight.

[Sidenote: Knowledge succeeds only by accident.]

Let the reader meditate for a moment upon the following point: to know
reality is, in a way, an impossible pretension, because knowledge means
significant representation, discourse about an existence not contained
in the knowing thought, and different in duration or locus from the
ideas which represent it. But if knowledge does not possess its object
how can it intend it? And if knowledge possesses its object, how can it
be knowledge or have any practical, prophetic, or retrospective value?
Consciousness is not knowledge unless it indicates or signifies what
actually it is not. This transcendence is what gives knowledge its
cognitive and useful essence, its transitive function and validity. In
knowledge, therefore, there must be some such thing as a justified
illusion, an irrational pretension by chance fulfilled, a chance shot
hitting the mark. For dead logic would stick at solipsism; yet
irrational life, as it stumbles along from moment to moment, and
multiplies itself in a thousand centres, i