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.'

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." 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.

1 Shaftesbury, 'Inquiry concerning Virtue or Merit,' ii. 2. 2, in Characteristicks, ii. 145.

Butler, 'Sermon VIII.---Upon Resentment,' op. cit. p. 457.

3 Adam Smith, Theory of Moral Sentiments, p. 113.

4 Spencer, Principles of Ethics, i. 361.

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.3 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. "5 Hartley regarded resentment and gratitude

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

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

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3 Steinmetz, Ethnol. Studien, &c. 1. 135:

4 Notice, for instance, Michelangelo's Moses.

5 Polybius, Historiae, vi. 6.

2

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. "3 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." 4

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.

4 Stuart Mill, Utilitarianism, p. 79.

carelessly that it went off and killed and wounded some individuals, whereupon he fled himself. His case was

judged worthy of death by the chiefs of the tribe, and the offender's aged father was in consequence seized and strangled.'

2

In other cases an innocent person is killed for the offence of another, not because the offender cannot be seized, but with a view to inflicting on him a loss, according to the rule of like for like. The punishment, then, is meant for the culprit, though the chief sufferer is somebody else. According to the Laws of Hammurabi, "if a builder has built a house for a man and has not made strong his work, and the house he built has fallen, and he has caused the death of the owner, that builder shall be put to death." But "if he has caused the son of the owner of the house to die, one shall put to death the son of that builder." Similarly, "if a man has struck a gentleman's daughter and caused her to drop what is in her womb, he shall pay ten shekels of silver for what was in her womb." But if that woman has died, one shall put to death his daughter." The following custom which Mr. Gason reports as existing among the Australian Dieyerie, in case a man should unintentionally kill another in a fight, is probably based on a similar principle :"Should the offender have an elder brother, then he must die in his place; or, should he have no elder brother, then his father must be his substitute; but in case he has no male relative to suffer for him, then he himself must die."4

This extreme disregard of the suffering of guiltless persons is probably not so much due to downright callousness as to a strong feeling of family solidarity. The same feeling is very obvious in those numerous instances in which both the criminal himself and members of his family are implicated in the punishment.

1 Williams and Calvert, Fiji, p. 24. 2 Laws of Hammurabi, 229 sq.

3 Ibid. 209 sq.

4 Gason, Manners and Customs of the Dieyerie Tribe,' in Woods, Native Tribes of South Australia, p. 265.