1

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among savage and civilised men alike; even dogs and monkeys get angry when laughed at. Nothing more easily rouses in us anger and a desire for retaliation, nothing is more difficult to forgive, than an act which indicates contempt, or disregard of our feelings. Long after the bodily pain of a blow has ceased, the mental suffering caused by the insult remains and calls for vengeance. This is an old truth often told. According to Seneca, "the greater part of the things which enrage us are insults, not injuries." Plutarch observes that, though different persons fall into anger for different reasons, yet in nearly all of them is to be found the idea of their being despised or neglected.3 Contempt," says Bacon, "is that which putteth an edge upon anger, as much, or more, than the hurt itself." But, indeed, there is no need to resort to different principles in order to explain the resentment excited by different kinds of pain. In all cases revenge implies, primordially and essentially, a desire to cause pain or destruction in return. for hurt suffered, whether the hurt be bodily or mental; and, if to this impulse is added a desire to enhance the wounded "self-feeling," that does not interfere with the true nature of the primary feeling of revenge. There are genuine specimens of resentment without the cooperation of self-regarding pride; and, on the other hand, the reaction of the wounded "self-feeling" is not necessarily, in the first place, concerned with the infliction of pain. If a person has written a bad book which is severely criticised, he may desire to repair his reputation by writing a better book, not by humiliating his critics; and if he attempts the latter rather than the former, he does so, not merely in order to enhance his "self-feeling,"

but because he is driven on by revenge. Dr. Boas tells us that the British Columbia Indian, when his feelings are hurt, sits down or lies down sullenly for days without partaking of food, and that, "when he rises his first thought is, not how to take revenge, but to show that he is superior to his adversary." 1

In the feeling of gratification which results from successful resentment, the pleasure of power or superiority also may form a very important element, but it is never the exclusive element. As the satisfaction of every desire is accompanied by pleasure, so the satisfaction of the desire involved in resentment gives a pleasure by itself. The angry or revengeful man who succeeds in what he aims at, delights in the pain he inflicts for the very reason that he desired to inflict it.

Revenge thus only forms a link in a chain of emotional phenomena, for which "non-moral resentment" may be used as a common name. In this long chain there is no missing link. Anger without any definite desire to cause suffering, anger with such a desire, more deliberate resentment--all these phenomena are so inseparably connected with each other that no one can say where one passes into another. Their common characteristic is that they are mental states marked by an aggressive attitude towards the cause of pain.

As to their origin, the evolutionist can hardly entertain a doubt. Resentment, like protective reflex action, out of which it has gradually developed, is a means of protection for the animal. Its intrinsic object is to remove a cause of pain, or, what is the same, a cause of danger. Two different attitudes may be taken by an animal towards another which has made it feel pain: it may either shun or attack its enemy. In the former case its action is prompted by fear, in the latter by anger, and it depends on the circumstances which of these emotions is the actual

1 Boas, First General Report on the Indians of British Columbia, read at the Newcastle-upon-Tyne meeting of

the British Association, 1889, p. 19. 2 Cf. Ribot, op. cit. p. 221 sq.

determinant. Both of them are of supreme importance for the preservation of the species, and may consequently be regarded as elements in the animal's mental constitution which have been acquired by means of natural selection in the struggle for existence. We have already noted that, originally, the impulse of attacking the enemy could hardly have been guided by a representation of the enemy as suffering. But, as a successful attack is necessarily accompanied by such suffering, the desire to produce it naturally, with the increase of intelligence, entered as an important element in resentment. The need for protec

tion thus lies at the foundation of resentment in all its forms.

This view is not new. More than one hundred and fifty years before Darwin, Shaftesbury wrote of resentment in these words:"Notwithstanding its immediate aim be indeed the ill or punishment of another, yet it is plainly of the sort of those [affections] which tend to the advantage and interest of the self-system, the animal himself; and is withal in other respects contributing to the good and interest of the species." 1 A similar opinion is expressed by Butler, according to whom the reason and end for which man was made liable to anger is, that he might be better qualified to prevent and resist violence and opposition, while deliberate resentment "is to be considered as a weapon, put into our hands by nature, against injury, injustice, and cruelty."2 Adam Smith, also, believes that resentment has "been given us by nature for defence, and for defence only," as being "the safeguard of justice and the security of innocence." 3 Exactly the same view is taken by several modern evolutionists as regards the "end" of resentment, though they, of course, do not rest contented with saying. that this feeling has been given us by nature, but try to explain in what way it has developed. "Among members of the same species," says Mr. Herbert Spencer, "those individuals which have not, in any considerable degree, resented aggressions, must have ever tended to disappear, and to have left behind those which have with some effect made counter-aggressions." 4

Mr.

Hiram Stanley, too, quoting Junker's statement regarding the pigmies of Africa, that "they are much feared for their revengeful spirit," 1 observes that, "other things being equal, the most revengeful are the most successful in the struggle for selfconservation and self-furtherance." 2 This evolutionist theory of revenge has been criticised by Dr. Steinmetz, but in my opinion with no success. He remarks that the feeling of revenge could not have been of any use to the animal, even though the act of vengeance might have been useful. But this way of reasoning, according to which the whole mental life would be excluded from the influence of natural selection, is based on a false conception of the relation between mind and body, and, ultimately, on a wrong idea of cause and effect.

4

From non-moral resentment we shall pass to the emotion of moral indignation. That this is closely connected with anger is indicated by language itself: we may feel indignant on other than moral grounds, and we may feel 'righteous anger." The relationship between these emotions is also conspicuous in their outward expressions, which, when the emotion is strong enough, present similar 'characteristics. When possessed with strong moral indignation, a person looks as if he were angry, and so he really is, in the wider sense of the term. This relationship has not seldom been recognised by moralists, though it has more often been forgotten. Some two thousand years ago Polybius wrote: If a man has been rescued or helped in an hour of danger, and, instead of showing gratitude to his preserver, seeks to do him harm, it is clearly probable that the rest will be displeased and offended with him when they know it, sympathising with their neighbour and imagining themselves in his case. Hence arises a notion in every breast of the meaning and theory of duty, which is in fact the beginning and end of justice." Hartley regarded resentment and gratitude

Junker, Travels in Africa during the Years 1882-1886, p. 85.

2 Hiram Stanley, op. cit. p. 180. Cf. also Guyau, Esquisse d'une Morale sans obligation ni sanction, p. 162 sq.

3 Steinmetz, Ethnol. Studien, &c. i. 135.

4 Notice, for instance, Michelangelo's Moses.

5 Polybius, Historiae, vi. 6.

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as "intimately connected with the moral sense." 1 Adam Smith made the resentment of "the impartial spectator a corner-stone of his theory of the moral sentiments. Butler found the essential difference between sudden and deliberate anger to consist in this, that the "natural proper end" of the latter is "to remedy or prevent only that harm which implies, or is supposed to imply, injury or moral wrong." And to Stuart Mill, the sentiment of justice, at least, appeared to be derived from "the animal desire to repel or retaliate a hurt or damage to oneself, or to those with whom one sympathises.".

Moral indignation, or disapproval, like non-moral resentment, is a reactionary attitude of mind directed towards! the cause of inflicted pain. In a subsequent chapter we shall see that both are in a similar way determined by the answer given to the question, What is the cause of the pain?—a fact which, whilst strongly confirming their affinity, throws light upon some of the chief characteristics of the moral consciousness. Nay, moral indignation resembles non-moral resentment even in this respect that, in various cases, the aggressive reaction turns against innocent persons who did not commit the injury which gave rise to it. The collective responsibility assumed in certain types of blood-revenge is an evidence of this in so far as such revenge is not merely a matter of individual practice, but has the sanction of custom. And even

punishment, which, in the strict sense of the term, is a more definite expression of public, or moral, indignation than the custom of private retaliation, is often similarly indiscriminate.

Like revenge, and for similar reasons, punishment sometimes falls on a relative of the culprit in cases when he himself cannot be caught. In Fiji, says Mr. Williams, "the virtue of vicarious suffering is recognised." It once happened that a warrior left his charged musket so

1 Hartley, Observations on Man, i. 520.

2 Adam Smith, op. cit. passim.

3 Butler, op. cit. p. 458.

+ Stuart Mill, Utilitarianism, p. 79.