_ANGER_
In studying any state of consciousness we first inquire what constitutes
its dominant factor; if this is sense of object, we call it a cognition;
if effortful action, it is a volition; if the marked feature is
pleasure-pain, we term it a feeling. Finding that the consciousness is a
feeling, we would next inquire whether the pleasure-pain is mainly
determined in its colouring by direct presentation, and so is a
sensation, or whether this dominant colouring comes indirectly through
representation, and is thus what we term an emotion. For example, the
distinction between “I feel a pain in my shoulder,” and “I feel pained
at your conduct” illustrates the most radical division of feeling. If
emotion is founded on an appreciation of the experienceable, which has
developed under natural selection, we must look upon the emotional power
in general and upon the various emotions in particular as merely
advantageous psychoses which are as clearly determined by general
evolutionary laws as the merely physical organs like heart, lungs,
wings, horns, etc. It is clearly desirable that the organism should look
before, should anticipate experience and so direct its way; but bare
anticipation has no value in itself unless it powerfully stimulates will
through emotion. All conscious life above the most primitive is
eminently and increasingly anticipatory, and so becomes more and more
infused with emotional powers. Among the earliest developed of these in
the struggle for existence are fear and anger. The fear group, embracing
large numbers of allied forms, simple and complex, has been discussed in
a general way in the preceding pages, and we now come to some
consideration of the correlative anger group.
The _rationale_ of the evolution of anger is not far to seek. We have
seen that fear is the spring of defensive action, and it is obvious that
anger is the stimulant to offensive action. Fear is regressive, anger
aggressive. Fear is contractile, anger expansive. Fear is the emotion of
the pursued, of the prey; anger the emotion of the pursuer, of the
predacious. Emotion in the service of life evidently has two great
psychic ramifications from this point, and the whole world of
emotion-beings, which compose the greater mass of organisms, is hence
divided in two great divisions, a fear class and an anger class.
Likewise in relation to opposing natural forces as to neighbouring
competing and destroying organisms, the same distinction is to be made
according as the animal either combats or flees. Shyness or fierceness,
timidity or irascibility, these are characters which divide the animate
world into two grand antagonistic groups. Zoology has recognised this
psychic differentiation as a marked and essential feature in its
nomenclature, thus _lepus timidus_. In fact, the most important part of
evolution is the psychical; in this, indeed, lies the whole significance
and value of the organism. The attainment of more and more advantageous
psychic qualities is the main trend of evolution, for psychic power as
distinct from main force, like that of the elements, is far and away of
the most value in the struggle for existence, and ultimately, as in man,
it achieves the subduing all lower powers, natural, vegetable and brute,
to its own ends. It is psychical quality, moreover, which determines
physical, and not _vice versâ_. Thus it is not the possession of claws,
fangs, etc., that makes an animal fierce, but it is fierceness which
develops and maintains these weapons of offence. Thus it is, though thus
far practically overlooked by scientists, that psychic development,
especially on the emotional side, is of the utmost importance as the
prime factor and motive in organic processes. The central core of life
is emotional capacity, and this in its evolution determines the whole
external morphological trend of evolution of organisms which is so
closely followed by the science of to-day. But the science of the future
is comparative psychology, which, when once placed on a secure basis of
interpretation, will determine the real and inner law of evolution as a
psychic movement incarnating itself in a succession of animate forms.
But a sure method of knowing a psychic fact as such when it occurs, and
what, how, and why it is, is yet to be discovered and applied, and
extra-human and even extra-ego consciousness is a field, so far, for
little else than hypothesis. If this remark be turned against us, we say
that our work is mainly a deductive interpretation of the course of
psychic evolution from the general standpoint of natural selection,
reinforced and illustrated by introspective investigation, and merely
using the most obvious facts of comparative psychology in a very general
and provisional way. We do not profess to show where, how, and when mind
originated, or what particular powers any certain organisms possess, but
we do endeavour to show how the principle of utility may be made a key
to the study of a very perplexing region of mental life—the emotions. We
proffer then merely a very general sketch of the history of emotion as a
life factor, hoping that it may, at least in its general scope, be of
service to future explorers. In taking up this subject of anger we do
then thus reiterate the position we occupy and the method we follow.
Anger like fear certainly originated at some critical point in some
individuals life as an advantageous variation of essential value. A
vital issue at some early point in the history of life determined the
genesis of this new psychic mode and function as a stimulant of
aggressive will action. Very likely it was in competition of organisms
for food that some favoured individual first attained the power of
getting mad and violently attacking its fellows, and so obtaining
sustenance. However this may be, certain it is that a direct attack is
often more self-conservative than attempts at escape when injury
threatens; it is a greater advantage to destroy pain-giver than to shun
it. Fear enables organisms to avoid loss, but it does not accomplish
positive gain, as anger does through overcoming hindrance. Anger is
often also more economical for the forces of the organism, and thus, in
general, predacious animals are longer-lived than even those of their
prey who may attain a full length of life. Even in the face of great
odds a direct attack is often more serviceable than attempt at escape.
Anger is certainly the primitive motive force of all offensive action,
though of course we cannot say that the animal got mad because it saw
the serviceability. Psychic evolution, at least as far as new powers are
concerned, never comes by teleologic foresight, and, indeed, cannot by
the nature of the case. The animal did not definitely set out to get
angry because it foresaw the value, yet in the earliest angers there
must have been effort, a certain _nisus_ which marked the new form as a
real attainment, a marked achievement. That the provoking occasion gives
rise now to anger inevitably and naturally, that anger comes upon us and
overcomes us is true enough, but in its earliest phases anger must have
been, like other just evolving factors, supported only by powerful will
effort. The oftener the early psychism got mad, the easier it got mad.
Facility came only by practice, and a large variety of occasions,
besides the simple critical and original one, were gradually utilized by
the anger faculty. But in its original form and occasion anger was, no
doubt, akin to that we see when an extremely timid animal at the last
extremity will turn in anger and fiercely fight for its life. Such an
attempt, sometimes successful, marks an origin of a new mode of
conscious emotion which may never return to the individual again during
all its future life for lack of occasion. If often returning and often
improved, a definite new habit of emotion is established, and from being
a fearful animal it may at length become dominantly irascible, and so
belong to a totally distinct psychic genus.
By the evolution of anger then, as in contradistinction to fear, two
grand divisions of animate existence were set apart, two great psychical
orders as fundamentally distinct and important for evolutionary
psychics, as invertebrate and vertebrate for biology. The rise of the
back-boned animal is not more important for physiological morphology
than the evolution of anger for psychical morphology, and, indeed, as we
have before remarked, the psychical growth is ever the broadest and
deepest fact in evolution. By the acquirement and predominance of the
anger stimulus certain animals became differentiated as a distinct class
from their fearful neighbours, and they then by this new impulse
gradually attained instruments of offence, and also by increase of size
became physically distinct forms. Henceforth the animate world becomes
divided in a more and more marked way into pursuers and pursued. By
mutual interaction fear is increased on one side as anger increases on
the other, and the division into timid and fierce, predacious and prey,
becomes more and more established and marked.
We take it then that it was a most momentous day in the progress of mind
when anger was first achieved, and some individual actually got mad. If
the exact date and the particular individual were ascertainable a
memorial day set apart for all time would not be too great an honour. In
the struggle of existence, other things being equal, the most irascible
is the most successful, faring the best, securing the best mate, and
having the best and most numerous progeny. Susceptibility to anger
becomes a necessity to a large class of organisms, and those who will
not get angry and fight for their interests are surely trampled on or
pushed aside to become starveling or outcast.
Is now this primitive anger an absolutely new power, a _de novo_
evolution, or is it possible to study its rise as a gradual
differentiation from some other factor? Must we not view psychical
evolution like all evolution as coming under the law of continuity? How
then explain the sudden rise of apparently new and distinct forms like
anger or fear? Anger as a response to the demands of life seems from the
very first to be as distinctly and peculiarly anger as at any time in
its development. The peculiar quality which makes anger anger, does not
seem to appear as a gradual differentiation from other elements as
slowly emerging from previous modes, but we can only judge that it
bursts suddenly upon the field as a new and unique creation, which does
not find its explanation in pre-existent forms and cannot be traced as a
gradual evolution from them. On the other hand, while it does not at
first sight seem possible to regard anger as being from the first other
than a radically new power and activity determined, indeed, by the
struggle for existence, but wholly unexplained in its essence and
formation as a consciousness related to and differentiated from other
consciousnesses, yet we must acknowledge our profound ignorance of the
real morphology of mind and what is the real nature of mental
differentiation. Here the problem is altogether more difficult than in
biology, where the appearance of new forms like wings can be readily
traced as slow modifications of previous members, the physical
possibility and _rationale_ of which is easily seen to be inherent in
the physical constitution of the body and its circumambient matter, the
air. However, in the present state of our psychical knowledge it is
quite impossible to attain any similarly clear conception as to the
formation of new psychical forms. We may see why they should be called
into being by the necessities of animate life, we can perceive their
functional importance from the first, but to trace their morphological
development as gradually assuming their peculiar qualities as
modifications of already existing activities, and as inherently possible
in the psychical constitution of things, this is clearly beyond us at
present. We can conceive that the earliest anger was weak and rather
ineffective as compared with the fully developed anger of later life,
but we cannot see that it was any the less anger, any the less purely
and wholly _sui generis_ than the very latest and strongest form. Has it
ever in its earlier stages that hybrid and mixed character which marks
it as a modification of existent factors? It is certainly not a modified
fear, to which it is, indeed, a polar opposite.
But we may perhaps regard anger, and fear as well, as modified from
previous general emotion. We may, indeed, consider it likely that some
general emotional phase preceded the special emotions, just as a general
indefinite pain and pleasure preceded definite pains and pleasures. It
may be considered as probable that emotion first appeared as a purely
undifferentiated disturbance sequent on sense of the experienceable
pain, this general emotion being neither fear nor anger, but the basis
from which both develop. The psychic agitation we term emotional very
likely began in a purely general form, yet it is hard to understand how
peculiar forms develop therefrom. We are too far from such inchoate
experience to readily come to any appreciation of its method or mode. We
may be disturbed as to something imminent and know not whether to fear
or be angry, but this in general means only a rapid alternation of fear
and anger according as the mind runs back and forth between fear and
anger-provoking elements. It is unlikely that we can trace in any such a
purely undifferentiated emotion.
At the best we but throw the difficulty farther back, for emotion _per
se_ is then the _de novo_ form to which the principle of continuity does
not seem to apply. If anger is a traceable modification of some more
general emotion as combined with definite representation and volition
modes, yet how the peculiar anger quality is achieved is still
unexplained. On the whole it seems simplest and truest to assume the
first impulse of anger as a perfectly new and diverse wave of emotion
suddenly generated in answer to some extreme urgency in the struggle of
existence.
The analogy of organic and psychic evolution may be pressed to a certain
extent. It is plainly possible to set in order an evolutionary series of
light—sensing organs, eyes—from most elementary to most complex, and it
is quite as possible, though yet to be done, to set forth in similar
genetic order a series of psychic states as offence-sense, _i.e._,
angers, in their increasing differentiation. But previous to any eye, to
local visualization, there is a period of common sensation when an
absolutely simple organism is in every part equally responsive to light;
in a crude way the whole organism reacts to light, from which stage by
traceable specialization the eye as a light-sensing organ is gradually
developed. Here analogy would seem to fail, unless we consider it to be
the stage when any psychosis, _e.g._, anger, requires the whole
consciousness capacity, mind being merely a capacity for the recurrent
but isolated single-activities. Mind certainly but slowly grows into
that sum of organic coincident interdependent yet distinct
consciousnesses which we commonly think of under the term, mind. Anger
in its very earliest and lowest form is no doubt an absorbing naïve
isolated wave, as common to mind as a whole, that is, as making up the
whole of mind for the time being, is perhaps in its measure an analogy
to common sensation. Anger may then be but a common emotion, answering
in a certain aspect to light-sense, sound-sense, etc., as purely common
sensations. But we must remark that general sensation is not to be
confounded with common sensation, or general emotion with common
emotion. Common sensations are, indeed, usually very general in form,
and a sensation _per se_, a purely general sensation, is probably very
rarely anything else, yet when we close the eyes and direct them toward
the sun, the general sensation of light we receive—very like the
original primitive common sensation—is general, yet by a special organ.
The word common refers, not to the special nature of the function
itself, but the fact that the function, whether special or general, is
performed indifferently, or practically so, by the common whole. A
sensation of coloured light is more special than a mere sensation of
light, and this than mere general sensation of force, but all may be
accomplished either by common sensation or special sensation. General
emotion may similarly be either common or in organic co-activity. There
was certainly a time when consciousness existed which was not and could
not be anger or fear or even an emotion _per se_. Pre-emotional and
pre-representative consciousness was so absolutely primitive, general,
and common, that psychology as a necessarily automorphic science will be
very long in coming to any understanding of this field, but yet we must
set it off as something which must always receive some consideration.
Anger is not a property of all consciousness by the nature of
consciousness itself, but is merely a possible mode dependent on
circumstances for its development at a certain psychic stage.
What now is the inner nature and what the constituent elements of the
anger state? Comparatively few reflect upon their emotions save from an
ethical standpoint, and very few indeed attempt any analysis of them. To
determine the process and exact psychical constituents of getting mad
and being mad, may seem to many a quite useless and foolish
introspective endeavour. If a person is angry, he is angry, and that is
all there is of it, will be the general verdict of common sense. You can
dissect flowers into their parts, you can analyse rocks and soils, but
any emotion such as anger is wholly unanalyzable. No one can know what
it is to be mad until he has once been mad, and, thereafter, he can only
reflect upon it as a peculiar excitement, a powerful agitation, whose
occasions and results may be fully traced, but which in itself is _sui
generis_ and irresolvable. The form of consciousness we know as being
angry, is really a simple wave of emotion which stands by itself as an
elementary and ultimate form.
Suppose we acknowledge these remarks as true, we may yet maintain that
anger, like all emotions, is a highly complex state of manifold factors
whose sum total, whose grand resultant, is a seemingly simple and
peculiar _status_. Why should one arrangement of atoms produce a
peculiar perfume, another a peculiar stench? Anger may likewise be
merely an unexplainable _ensemble_ of early ascertainable elements.
Certain it is, in the first place, that sense of object is necessary to
anger. One cannot be mad without being mad _at_ something. The attitude
of mind is objective, and even rage in its blindest moment preserves
this attitude. Blind with rage, means no more than that various definite
qualities of the object are lost in the intense emotional reaction at
pain-giver. At its height, anger preserves, indeed, only the barest
apprehension of object; but this is intense and overpowering in
connection with the sense of it as infringing and injuring. In the
transports of rage and fury, the movements are wild and reckless enough,
but always antagonistic, implying outward destructive activity. Anger is
the fixation of the mind upon some object in its quality of personal
hurtfulness, and is revulsion, not _from_ it, as fear, but _against_ it.
With early psychisms, all perceptions of objects end in either anger or
fear, and a large part of early education consists in learning what
objects to be fearful of, and what to be angry at. The alertness of wild
animals is determined mainly by either nascent fear or anger. When a dog
is suddenly wakened from sleep he generally shows either fear or anger.
This is merely an illustration of how the dimmest sense of object
immediately connects itself with emotion as primitive and fundamental
tendency. The organism perceives the object, and representing its
imminent hurtfulness, feels fear and dashes away from it, or feels anger
and dashes against it. These are the two simplest possible reactions
with sense of the experienceable injurious. In fear there is elimination
of oneself from the injury, and in anger the elimination of the injury
from oneself. With later anger and fear these processes of elimination
themselves become matters of representation, and make a large part in
highly-developed forms.
A knowledge which very generally enters into anger is the comparative
estimate of power. A cat scratches us, we are angry; a lion threatens
us, we are afraid. The progress of the lower psychic life is largely in
learning what is best to fear and what should excite anger. That which
at first angers will often, when better understood, produce fear, and
_vice versâ_. Wild animals at first often show merely anger when
molested by man, but soon manifest fear as they learn to appreciate his
superior power. The African elephant learns to distinguish between the
savage with his spear, and the white hunter with his rifle, and is
merely irritated or angry with the one, while he manifests genuine fear
of the other. The young of animals and of man continually show
irrelevant fear and anger. They are generally either over fearful or
over irritable. Our own feelings are powerfully modified by varying
estimates of opposing force and injury. If, in passing through a dark
street, I am tripped by what I take to be a child’s snare, I am angered,
but upon noticing that it is a fuse to a dynamite bomb, I am thrown into
intense fear. In general, any sensation, as of sound or light, in its
lower grades of intensity produces anger, in higher occasions fear. As a
rule when reactions induced by either fear or anger are uniformly
unsuccessful, natural selection favours the development of the other.
While the comparative estimate of opposing force with one’s own is
general ingredient in anger, anger being fear-limited, it is not, as
Mercier would indicate (_Mind_, ix., p. 346), a constant element in
anger. We often see cases of anger, and have perhaps, ourselves,
experienced anger which is totally unrelated to a sense of power. Some
animals seem at times utterly fearless and utterly unaware of the
tremendous crushing force they angrily oppose. It is, moreover,
altogether probable that anger and fear originated and received a
certain measure of development before any capacity of measuring
comparative force of antagonist arose in mind. However, the
discrimination between overwhelming and slight force is certainly
tolerably early, and is obviously a very necessary factor in
self-conservative action. Yet it is very unlikely that this was an
element in primitive fear or anger, which must have been no more than a
simple emotional reaction to perceived injury without any reference to
whether pain-giver is more or less strong than pain-receiver. The
earliest fears and angers of infants seem to be quite devoid of any
guidance from sense of powerlessness or power, but merely direct,
unthinking reactions.
A marked and constant element in anger is hostility. This is the
aggressive fighting attitude of will which is exercised toward and
against the perceived pain-giving object. Anger can never subsist
without this volition element, and it always appears as direct simple
reaction to anger-provoking object. Anger always exhibits itself as
hostility, openly and freely in lower life, and in higher life, which is
often disingenuous, the hostility as real psychic act remains, though
somewhat concealed in physical manifestation as long as angry mood
exists. The will tendency is always toward the violent removing and
destroying of the offending object. However, naïve primitive anger does
not include in its hostility giving pain for pain received, making the
object suffer in turn, which is, indeed, far removed from the capacity
of primitive mind to conceive. Anger in its earliest form does, of
course, inflict pain where its object is pain-susceptible; but this, it
may confidently be said, cannot lie in the intent of the pain-inflicter.
The simple original ebullitions of anger do not include intent in any
form. Volition is powerfully and directly incited by the emotion without
the intervention of any idea. The only representation in the simplest
anger is the representation of pain experience impending which occasions
the excitement, which then directly and violently starts will-activity;
but the representations of destructiveness and pain-infliction as ends
become guiding ideas only in the slow evolution of anger toward more
intelligent forms.
Pain is certainly a prominent element in anger. This pain is the
emotional pain, the pain at pain, whose nature and origin we have
commented on in the chapter on fear. The mere representation of pain to
be starts a violent pain quite distinct from the fear-pain, yet like it,
pre-eminently central and subjective. Precedent, however, to both fear
and anger-pain, is the simple pain which immediately arises on
representation of pain, the prospect of pain being immediately and
peculiarly painful in itself. This commonly continues throughout, and
gives a dominant pain tone. But there immediately succeeds a rush of
either fear or anger emotion, each intensely painful in opposite ways.
The pain which results from the anger, which is by the anger occasioned
in me, is again distinct from the pain in and of the anger. Anger is
itself a state of pain. In its earliest forms, as rarely and with
difficulty attained, there is still another pain connected with anger,
the pain of exertion and stress. But all the pain factors, as more or
less continuous, make anger, as emotion in general, a complex pain
state. Thus, when angered by a man shaking his fist in my face, we trace
first a purely subjective pain at prospect of pain, then a rush of
aggressive emotion which embodies in it a pain of its own, then a pain
which reacts from the peculiar tension of the anger state. Of course, in
our stage of evolution, anger has become such an inwrought factor that
it arises spontaneously, it overtakes and overcomes us, not we reaching
it; and so the stress or labour pain is absent. It is never or very
rarely an effort for us to get angry, but it must have been for our very
remote psychical ancestors.
While it may be said with truth that some people are never so happy as
when mad, yet we must remember this does not alter the fact that anger
is radically a pain state. There may be a pleasure from anger
excitement, and from successful anger; there may be a pleasure in the
mere exercise of aggressive power; but the happiness meant is mostly the
excitement pleasure _plus_ the delight which always comes from freely
following out one’s nature. Especially when the outflow of natural force
in an irascible man has been pent up and restrained for some time, a fit
of anger is altogether a delightful experience, the pleasure of relief
in a habitual function. Thus an occasional fight is necessary to the
pugnacious amongst both animals and men; it is an inbred function and
tendency which must work itself out, or render the being as miserable as
a rodent kept from gnawing. But all this does not interfere with the
analysis of anger as fundamentally painful. Happiness is a very late
evolution, and, as the reaction from freely working out one’s strongest
tendency, it is unfelt by early minds, which only gradually attain
inwrought tendencies and so the capacity for being happy or unhappy. To
witness a fight is likewise to a large class of minds a supreme
felicity. This is largely the pleasure which comes at second hand from
representation of participancy. And so, to have a fight described, or to
read about it even, is a source of considerable representative pleasure
to many, a spurious and reflected anger, and an ideal fighting in the
fray. However, all this leads far away from primitive emotion, which is
now our main concern.
We may grant then that sense of the object giving pain, sense of
comparative power, hostility, and pains of various kinds, are usual
elements in anger; yet it is evident that anger is explained by no one
or all of them. It is not a mere aggregation and mixture of states, it
is essentially a compound which has in some unexplained way a peculiar
quality which is not in any of its constituent elements. When I am
angry, there occurs a phenomenon which, while based on and inclusive of
these factors, is yet peculiar in itself. The flush of anger, the wave
of emotion, the tempest of passion, bases itself on and includes
cognition, hostility, and pain; but it is more—it is a deep psychic
disturbance of a peculiar and undefinable kind which we recognise when
we have it, but which we cannot analyse. We express the nature of anger
metaphorically, indeed, when we speak of an angry man being “hot,”
“boiling with rage,” etc., as opposed to being chilled and frozen stiff
by fear. The being angry is obviously a kind of being pained at pain
quite opposite to that of fear. It is also true that I may see
threatening injury, I may be pained, I may combat, but not be angry.
There are other and higher motives which may bring about the violent
will offensive activity so often required in the struggle of life; but
we may take it that anger is the most primitive, and throughout the
whole range of psychism the most common offensive motive, and so of the
utmost importance as a life factor.
Which shall we regard as the more primitive, anger or fear? Were animals
at first universally timid, and subsequently acquired anger as an
advantageous variation, or was anger the first, and fear the
complementary and later evolution, or may we suppose that they developed
in strict correlation? The earliest manifestations of emotion with some
animals, and with some human infants, seem to be anger. Everything
perceived to be painful irritates and makes them mad, and they are quite
fearless in the presence of overwhelming danger. These but slowly learn
to fear; by hard experience they learn the hurtfulness and inutility of
combatting in many cases, and occasions which would once make them mad
now cause them to fear. On the other hand, we observe many of the very
young who seem to be universally fearful, and but slowly acquire “spunk”
and spirit. Mental embryology thus, at least with our present very
imperfect knowledge, is quite indecisive on the question. If fear and
anger were wholly determined by relation of predacious and prey, then we
might suppose correlated simultaneous origin; but we know that obstacles
and injuries, not from competitors, but from elements, forces, and
objects of nature, were the first environment and the first field for
struggle. Organism began as a weak thing planted amongst manifold
opposing forces, where fear was quite the most salutary emotion and
anger useless. If, as we must deem probable, mental function in general
and emotion in particular reaches back toward primitive organism, it is
likely, on merely general grounds, that fear is the more ancient and
original emotion, though anger was closely subsequent. The general
conditions of life at the first would demand the development of fear
more imperatively than anger. Certainly, however, both emotions are
sufficiently primitive, as is shown by their being so ingrained and
dominant forces in the whole range of lower psychic life.
All higher animals, moreover, are peculiarly sensitive to and observant
of signs of anger and fear. Rarey, a most excellent judge, made it an
axiom of his method that horses are extremely acute in detecting either
fear or anger in those who deal with them, and this is also noticeably
true of animals in general. These are also the emotional attitudes which
are earliest interpreted by children. Now what is soonest, easiest and
surest interpreted by psychisms above the lowest may be taken to be
fundamentally primitive and such are fear and anger. To discover with
readiness and certainty the emotional states of organisms about them,
because these states are the motives of very important activities, is
clearly an advantage early gained in the struggle of existence. It means
preparedness, and there is a nascent anger to break forth against the
fearful, or fear or counter-anger prepared against the fear discerned or
suspected. The inter-related activity of these two emotions is the
chiefest and most interesting spectacle we see in all lower psychic
phases.
But we must notice now a form which seems on the whole to belong to the
anger group, and that is hate. Hate often precedes and succeeds anger,
and the object of anger is peculiarly apt to be the object of hate. The
man whom we hate very easily angers us, and he who provokes us is one
whom we are apt to hate. Yet a person may be very provoking, even
exasperating, and not be hateful, and _vice versâ_ for hate. It is
obvious then that while the object of anger and hate is apt to be the
same, yet it is viewed from very different standpoints, and the emotion
reactions are somehow very different. “I hate him,” and “I am angry at
him,”—these expressions denote very distinct emotions. While anger and
hate are both aggressive emotion reactions against the pain-giver, yet
in their nature they are essentially diverse. In general we hate him who
deliberately and constantly provokes us, who establishes himself as a
deliberate enemy. It is harmful, opposed intent that particularly
stimulates hate. But anger is most generally a sudden flash of feeling
leading to violent repulsive effort against pain-giver, but without any
insight into intent. The immediacy of reaction is accomplished through
anger; but hate, having more of insight and foresight, is more slowly
generated, and is not so directly and promptly active. I may be angry at
one who casually pinches me in sport, but I will hate him who
continually pinches me in spite. I may be angry at the child who in its
childish play often interrupts my studies, but I do not hate it; this I
reserve for the malicious boys who continually put tick-tacks on my
windows. And so also inanimate things often arouse anger; but we hate
only the animate, and then mainly when we discern deliberate, purposed
offence. To be sure we often hear some such expression as, “I hate the
very sight of that house”; but here the term hate denotes loathing, and
is only a little less flagrant misuse than when I say “I hate ham, but
love beefsteak.”
Hate, then, marks in a very noticeable way the growth of psychic
responsiveness. A prevision of psychic attitude of others, especially
the emotional and volitional, is of the utmost service as helping to and
preparing for an appropriate response. Thus we may believe that quite
early in mental evolution there came an appreciation and interpretation
of the psychic modes of others as affecting the interests of the
individual. We may judge that this is probable by the very apparent
difference of reaction of even certain of the lower animals in the
presence of threatening dangers from common material things, and from
animate beings capable of being not merely crushed or pushed away, but
intimidated and frightened away. Young children learn quickly to
distinguish between mere physical events and psychic expressions, and to
feel and to act toward the psychic in the peculiar manner which will
best serve them. Thus it becomes of very definite value to excite fear
in enemies, but even a low animal learns speedily that it cannot terrify
a large stone which prevents access to food. Now fear and anger
obviously do not specially belong to the rather advanced class of
emotions which are always psychically responsive, for, in earliest
phases at least, both fear and anger may be taken to have no reference
to the psychic quality of the object, but only to the physical quality
as painful and injurious. However, later fear and anger become cognizant
of the psychic attitude and responsive thereto; but it may be said that
hate from the first is a psychic responsive, it is an answer to the
psychic attitude of others as interpreted by the individual as turned
towards itself. Hate is always against evil intent; anger and fear may
be. Hate and anger are both intensified by hate and anger in the
object—though this may often occasion fear—but fear, on the contrary, is
greatly weakened, and sometimes turned into hate or anger, by perceiving
its object as fearing it. I naturally hate those and am angered with
those whom I perceive as having the same passions against me; but he
whom I see fearing me does not thereby inspire my fear for him, but
tends in quite the contrary direction. Yet mutual fear in equally
matched opponents is consistent with mutual anger and hate. Fear, with
those who are capable of inflicting about equal losses on each other,
acts as a check upon anger and hate, and gives caution and wariness to
passion itself.
The object of hate then differs from that of anger and fear, as being
invariably a psychic quality in another as injurious to one’s own
interests. Injuriousness _per se_ does not excite hate as it may anger
and fear. Animals, indeed, often seem to hate that which has no psychic
attitude toward them, and may be wholly incapable of it; but this is
error of judgment, just as we ourselves often find ourselves wrong in
hating where we supposed there was evil feeling toward us, but where we
now see there is none. Hate disappears the moment we discover our
mistake of interpretation.
While hate often views its object very largely from the retrospective
side, as opposed to fear and anger, which are generally prospective, yet
hate originally must have applied to the present or latent potency of
the object for harm, for only in this wise does it reach
self-conservative value. In early psychic life there is no time or place
for purely retrospective emotion like revenge and resentment. Hate is
not essentially a paying back for the past offence, but a will-inciting
emotion of immediate, or imminently prospective value. In fact, though
we say, “he has done me injury and I hate him for it,” yet we do not
hate the dead injurer or the one so crippled as to be entirely powerless
against us. Certainly there is no value for our interests in injuring
the one who is past injuring us, and from the self-conservative point of
view to exercise ourselves in hate or anger in such a case is to waste
energy. Feeling for what has been done against us, purely as such, is
plainly sheer waste of force. The past is irretrievable, and emotion
about it is valuable for life only so far as the past implies the
future. Thus it is that hate, arising because of self-conservative
value, and developing under natural selection, never becomes wholly
retrospective.
Hate then is at first much the same in its elements as anger. It is
always objective. Hate is always of something, though extreme passion
dulls perception, yet at its normal tension hate, like other emotions,
is incentive to beneficial cognition. We are closely observant of those
we hate. Beside sense of object, there is the will-stirring, the
hostility, which is prominent in anger, though here more controlled and
not so impetuous and naïve. Hate thus often allies itself with fear, but
anger is very rarely coincident with it, though there may be rapid
alternations. There is also a hate pain which is a parallel complex to
the anger pain already analysed. We might term hate a distilled anger,
and yet this signifies little, for the innermost emotion seems very
distinct. Like fear and anger, hate seems a _genus_ by itself, and in
its essential feature as emotion-reaction, quite beyond scientific
analysis, which can point out its conditions, but not account for their
total value or for the peculiar quality of hate disturbance by which
hate is hate. Hate can be appreciated only by realization, but no matter
how long we reflect upon and try to catch its exact nature in some
definite formula, the essence of hate always eludes, and presents itself
as only a bare simple psychosis wholly indefinable and inexplicable in
its essential nature.
But if we turn now to the origin and development of hate, shall we
arrive at anything more satisfactory? Is hate a modified anger, or is it
from the first a wholly distinct emotion and not slowly differentiated
from any preceding psychosis? Hate evidently belongs with anger as
aggressive emotional reaction, but it is very hard to see how it could
originate by any slow growth, and it seems easier and simpler to regard
it as being a unique response to some very pressing demand in the
struggle of existence.
The whole subject of mental differentiation needs clarifying. Are we to
consider mind merely as a sum of many distinct modes each of which has,
in the course of evolution, appeared suddenly in answer to the demands
of life at a critical period, and is faint, indeed, yet from the first
having a distinct and peculiar quality by which it suitably stimulates
will, and that the sole growth of these diverse forms has been in
intensity and by various associations with other states? or are we to
consider that mind was originally a very general vague state, which, by
a continuous and traceable differentiation, has slowly developed into
many different modes? Certainly the latter seems the more rational. To
conceive that there are no essential and radical subdivisions in mind,
that not even knowing, feeling, and willing, are fundamentally
primitive, but each, and each form of each, but modifications of
precedent modes, this is a theory which is enticing in its simplicity
and in its analogy to physical evolution from a single underlying
material element. But when we come to particular investigations, as this
of the origin and development of hate, we cannot well discover any modes
intermediate between it and say, anger, which are the links in a
continuous evolution, but for aught we can see or conceive, hate is as
much hate the first time it appears as at any subsequent time. The links
in the evolution of mind from phase to phase are all missing, and how
are we to supply them? Of necessity as subjective facts they must first
be realized, before they can be known, but how can this be done by a
consciousness which has long outgrown them? We cannot discover these
fossil and extinct forms objectively, as the paleontologist discovers
extinct species, but in some way we must re-enact and re-experience them
in our own consciousness before we can know anything about them. If
every mind embryologically passes through the several stages of its
general evolution in the race, still the strange intermediate forms
which might then have existed are beyond the recall of the reflective
stage, when we first demand to know the history of mind. And when we
appeal to comparative psychology we are equally in the dark, for we must
judge animals by ourselves, we can interpret their consciousness only by
our own, and they may have very rude and peculiar forms which are
unknown and unknowable by us. Thus the limitations and difficulties of
subjective research are especially brought up to us in evolutionary
study which thus seems wholly confined to _a priori_ speculation. While
we can conceive it likely that hate was suddenly brought into full being
by the demands of life, yet it is hardly a rational view of emotion to
regard it as a _per saltum_ series of distinct psychical species called
successively into being by the exigencies of existence, which indeed, is
a view almost as ultra-scientific as that which regards all mental modes
as direct endowments from Deity.
But though on general scientific analogy we are led to believe in fossil
mental forms, in missing psychic links now extinct as regards our own
consciousness, but which were the germs of our present distinct
emotions, perceptions, etc., how are we to discover and investigate
them? Can we work our own consciousness back through the multitudinous
stages of its past evolution, through myriads of human and pre-human
forms to the confused, primal, undifferentiated psychoses?
Certainly the forms which lead up to such an emotion as hate and from
which it is gradually evolved must be realized, must be actually felt in
some measure before they can be understood and analyzed. Here then seems
a great barrier to introspective evolutionary psychology, perhaps
insuperable, for how can mind retrace itself, involute itself, in the
interests of science? Mind is fundamentally action, motive-feeling,
which, in connection with cognitive forms gradually achieved, becomes
from mere pure pleasure-pain a very complex manifold. We feel many of
these forms in our own experience, and we can say of some that they are
the higher, of others that they are the lower and more primitive. Thus
fear, anger, and hate are generally regarded as low action-motives as
compared with love of truth or justice. But while we distinguish in our
own consciousness and by analogy in the consciousness of others a
considerable variety of psychic forms, they are, so far as we are able
to see—and we have given some special attention to this in discussing
fear and other emotions—invariably distinct, and each has its own
peculiar quality, and we do not find, and we should not expect to find,
the intermediate forms any more than the anatomist would expect to find
in man a radial starfish structure. The hazy, indefinite phases which
mark evolving consciousness into new forms have been long done away with
for such emotions as hate, and it would seem an impossible task to ever
bring them back. When we let consciousness lapse of its own regressive
tendency—and undirected consciousness tends always to revert to _wild_
states—we fall down through a series, but it is by steps, and no gradual
descent, that is, defined mental forms succeed each other, with no
transitional phases which are both as differentiating into either. We
have mixed states, indeed, but these have no evolutionary value in this
line, being merely coincident distinct psychoses, and not an
intermediate differentiating mode. The psychoses which we call lower and
which we naturally _fall into_, were really a higher level once for some
remote ancestors, and it was only by occasional great efforts that fear,
anger, hate, etc., were reached, by just such efforts as now are
required by many a worldling who would be religious and would attain a
feeling for holiness, or that of a Philistine, ambitious of reaching
æsthetic feeling, who endeavours to appreciate the refined, elaborate
power in a poem by Rossetti, or the simple human grandeur in a painting
by Millet. In some forms we know what it is to try to feel, to have dim
and vague stirring of æsthetic emotion, and to reach new levels in
emotion generally, and we know the stages of differentiation and the
severe _nisus_ of the earlier realizations. On the _nisus_ side of our
psychic life there is abundant opportunity for every one to observe the
process of mental differentiation, and how slowly evolving a new emotion
is, for instance, before it reaches a definite form, but there is the
great range of purely natural, spontaneous life, deriving its whole
_impetus_ from ancestral minds, where, as in hate and anger, it is
impossible to study the slowly modifying forms precursory to the
distinct mode. How can we find or produce in ourselves a state which is
not yet hate, but merely hate in becoming, a half-differentiated,
half-evolved hate? If we could put ourselves on the _nisus_ side, and
look up to hate as something to be reached, instead of something we may
fall into, we might attain some idea of its process of formation. But
since hate, anger, and so forth, invariably come upon us and overcome
us, how can we appreciate their evolutionary stages? If we could trace
these old intermediate disused forms which merely lead up to others, we
should find them very strange, and should need an entirely new
nomenclature for them. But to reach back and realize long outgrown and
fossil psychoses, will, if ever possible, require more exertion and
ability than even the intense struggle of the actual psychical advances
which adds, by the efforts of exceptional individuals—“geniuses”—new
modes of cognition and feeling to the mind of a race. To regress beyond
a certain point is harder than to progress.
How then hate developed from non-hate, from anger, or from any other
emotion, is obviously a very difficult problem. It would seem to us in
our present stage of mentality that the first hate phenomenon was
definitely and inexplicably such. We cannot perceive or conceive how the
origin of hate is other than a sudden apparition of a new and elementary
emotion in response to an extraordinary call upon some extraordinary
organism in its life career. Yet we may easily believe that the direct
occasion of its rise and progress was as complement to anger. Anger is
certainly in general a very advantageous self-conservative factor, but
by reason of its violence it requires a vast amount of vital energy to
accomplish its end, and it thus also tends to disturb the cognitive
power in its clear and cool actions. A burst of passion, though it may
succeed in destroying the injurious, is both uneconomical and
unintelligent. It is also a very transient phase. Anger will be defeated
and supplanted in the evolution of life by some factor which has not
these incidental disadvantages. Hate is such a superior psychosis, and
is surer, steadier, and more economical than anger, and defeats it in
the long run.
Hate then may be taken to exemplify the principle of antithetic
evolution. We are careful not to raise the anger of some men and of some
animals, and thus anger, or the capacity for anger, serves them as
advantage and defence. We fear to make them mad. However, the
antagonists of many individuals, knowing the weakening effect of such a
strong emotion as anger, and knowing also how apt the angry one is to
“lose his head,” purposely stimulate anger to their own advantage, and
the disadvantage of the angered. Thus, cunning and wary animals,
impelled by hate, often tease and torment their stronger and larger
adversaries and competitors into a furious rage, which is so rash and
unintelligent that they are completely at the mercy of the weaker. Where
in such a way as this an advantageous variation is turned into
disadvantageous by an opposing form, as anger by hate, we have what may
be called an antithetic evolution. New psychic variations are then
continually stimulated by the earlier, and it is only for a short time
that any variation maintains itself as purely beneficial, but an
answering one soon takes advantage of its weak points and turns it from
self-conservative into self-destructive. Under the constant success of
opposing factors, there is gradual loss of value and soon disuse, with
the inception of some new form to combat more effectively the opponent.
This opposing form meanwhile attains dominancy, culminates, and is
gradually ousted by some variation which has been attained in order to
meet the new weapons on the other side. Thus, in the battle of life,
offence and defence, attack _versus_ retreat and counter-attack,
mutually stimulate to a series of new and higher antithetic psychic
variations.
The so-called problem of evil is, then, tolerably easy to a
thorough-going evolutionist. All developments, all perversions which are
self-destructive rather than self-conservative to the individual, have
received their original stimulus from other antagonistic individuals to
whose interest it is to promote these evils to the utmost. What is an
evil to me is first so much of a good to him whose interest lies in
defeating and destroying me, and he will take advantage of all my
weaknesses to his own profit. Competition and struggle involve the
existence of evils to individuals who are conquered and maltreated in
the battle of life. Disease and death itself is necessary to evolution
on a finite sphere. As long as the good and desirable is limited as
compared with the number of those who want, competition must exist, and
this competition must be by both cultivating advantageous variations in
ourselves, and also by cultivating the disadvantageous variations latent
in our enemies. Thus, evil sown in others that our own good may be
advanced is the general law of all life. To injure as much as possible
all those who oppose, and to get as many as possible well affected
towards us, and to be subservient to our ends, this is the meaning of
psychical evolution in all its earlier, and most of its later, course.
On any scheme of evolution by struggle, evil to particular individuals
is a necessary fact. We throw, then, the problem back to how and why
life arose and developed through this competition mode; and all science
at present can say is that it is the “nature of things,” an expression
which covers ignorance and is really metaphysical.
In all its later stages anger, and likewise hate as well, and all the
allied emotions, attach only to what is distinctly known as animate. The
futility and self-destructiveness of anger against the inanimate and
insentient comes to be fully recognised. But early anger is quite
undiscriminating. The hunter, who, pursued by an enraged bear, scatters
his clothes and accoutrements behind him for the bear to tear in pieces,
takes advantage of the unintelligent anger of the bear for his own ends.
Since animals do not wear clothes they have no conception of what they
are as independent insentient things distinct from the wearer. To the
bear the weapons and clothes dropped by the hunter appear not as
inanimate beings, but as living, vitally-connected parts of the creature
pursued. The error arose, not from senselessness, but from lack of range
of experience, and it is akin to the error of the ancient Mexicans who,
having never seen a horse by itself, regarded a man on horseback as a
single creature. A dog, the first time he sees his master unclothed, is
greatly puzzled, and but slowly learns that clothes are something the
master has and not what he is. When weapons, clothes, etc., are at
length distinguished as property, there is yet a natural and right
impulse to destroy them as injuring the owner; but the animal which
stops to do this commits an error of judgment, as it is usually of more
importance to despatch the hunter than to destroy his implements. It is
the tendency of anger to destroy all which is in any wise connected with
its object. This is true, not only of the animal world, but also of the
lower human development. A savage in a fit of fury will slay, not only
an offending fellow, but also his family and relations, and also destroy
all his property. The uselessness, not to say the injustice, of such an
indulgence of anger is only recognised at a comparatively late stage of
evolution. Anger in its later form concerns itself only with purposive
offence in its object, and vents itself solely on the individual
offending. A clear distinction is drawn between animate and inanimate.
Thus, my dog, playing with another, hurt itself by running into a tree,
and gave an angry growl; but noticing the real nature of the paingiver
as, not the other dog, but an inoffensive tree, his attitude immediately
changed, and he seemed to take the injury as a matter of course. A puppy
would in like case senselessly continue its demonstrations of anger to
no good and perhaps to its own injury.
As to the function of anger and hate, this has already been intimated in
the remarks we have just made on its origin and development. For
function it is which gives rise to organ and activity; in some unknown,
mysterious way the pressing life-struggle for useful mental activity
determines ultimately its appearance. We know that extremely hard
conditions, which would threaten the continued existence of animate life
as a whole, or of any large subdivision, would give rise to new
perceptions and emotions by which a saving remnant would escape; and on
this principle we must expect the most signal psychic advance of the
future at that seemingly remote period when mankind will be threatened
with extinction by the slow refrigeration of the earth. A long-continued
uniformity of easy conditions of life, as in the tropics, is distinctly
unfavourable to psychic progress; but let a glacial period invade that
zone, and the changed conditions would awaken such a struggle for
existence in all organisms, man included, that new organic and mental
types would be developed. The necessities of existence and the
self-interest of the individual in an unceasingly sharp competition
develop slowly in the few those mental modes which, from their
functional importance, become the heritage of a race and _genus_; and
these “sports” thereby secure to themselves a certain temporary
dominancy. This is the history of life in general, and of man in
particular. How demand determines supply, how necessity is the mother of
invention, is obvious enough in man, who, clearly conceiving the
function, sets about by his knowledge of means to accomplish the needed
improvement; but in the lower life, which is incapable of such
teleological foresight, we can only say that through pain of lack in the
altered conditions of existence there is stimulated a blind, intense
struggle, which, moving out in all lines, somewhere, at sometime, by
mere chance hitting on the right variation, sticks to it and
accomplishes its own salvation, and leaves descendants who tend in the
same direction. New psychic qualities, as well as new physical organs,
are in some way gradually determined through struggle which is
practically blind. That mental variation, that bodily variation, which
was incessantly demanded in the struggle of existence does somehow
ultimately appear, is, indeed, a fact which, for the present at least,
we can only state in this indefinite, unsatisfactory manner. Blind,
pain-impelled will, fiercely striking out in every direction, does at
length, achieve those new psychical and physical forms which are most
needed by life. The chance serviceable variation is fixed and continued
by reason of its serviceability; but when its utility wanes by reason of
new life factors appearing or new conditions of existence, it is lost by
disuse, or survives in rudimentary forms.
The function of hate is, like anger, to injure and eliminate the
injurious; but what anger accomplishes by a sudden volcanic outburst,
hate accomplishes in a slower, but surer and more subtle way. Hate is,
as previously pointed out, a manifest improvement over anger as a method
of offensive warfare. Other things being equal, the best hater is the
most successful individual. Dr. Johnson had reason on his side when he
said that he loved a good hater. A strong hater, who pertinaciously
assails and injures his enemies, strengthens his own position and makes
the largest place for himself in life. Hate, as a permanent,
economically aggressive motion, marks certainly a great advance, and is
of the highest import for life. If now hate has its own function as
direct stimulus to offensive action toward those who will be injurious,
toward those who are capable and likely to pain and harm us, how shall
we explain the hate—and we might say anger as well—which arises at mere
remembrance of injury, and which seems to have no immediate value for
life?
In the first place we may well doubt whether any purely retrospective
emotion exists, at least in early psychic life. The past, of course, has
no value in and by itself; it is irretrievable, and emotional force
spent upon it as such wasted—“no use crying for spilled milk.” It may
well be that for simple psychisms the past never exists as such; at
least, it is never a stopping point, but a mere _datum_ for interpreting
the inexperienceable. The sense of experience, especially in its
temporal aspect, is very difficult of analysis; yet we may say with some
confidence that at first it does not imply a sense of either the past or
future as such. The mind is immediately impressed by the injuriousness
of the injurious, which, though coming, of course, in terms of the
experienced, is not relegated thereby to a past time, nor is it at all
dwelt upon as such for emotion reaction. Primitive emotion is not
backward looking; for this is in itself entirely futile, and primitive
life depends for its existence and progress upon utility. The value of
emotion is in stimulating preparedness for defence and offence. The
representation of injury inflicted comes up to early mind as some injury
being inflicted, or imminently so, or is applied at once in
interpretation of the experienceable, with no thought or emotion for it
as merely past fact. Advanced psychic life may stop at the first step,
may indulge in retrospection for its own sake, and not for its immediate
value in understanding the experienceable, but primitive emotion is ever
an alertness and anticipatory readiness.
If, now, we turn to some classification of the anger group in itself and
in its general relation to emotion, we obtain something like the
following:—
┌ Reaction to ┌ Regressive—fear.
Emotion. │ injurious. └ Aggressive—anger.
│ Reaction to ┌ Receptive.
└ beneficial. └ Appropriative.
┌ Simple anger or wrath.
│ Intensive—Rage or fury.
│ Incipient—Displeasure.
│ Mild—Irritation.
│ Response to purposive injury—Hate.
Anger │ Altruistic—Indignation.
│ Sentiment—Indignation and Hate.
│ Retrospective—Resentment.
│ Revenge.
│ Sub-hate—Detestation.
│ Despite.
└ Scorn.
But few remarks need to be added to elucidate the outline. Exasperation
is plainly a late form of anger. It belongs to the period when anger has
been subjected to will restraint, and when something passes all bounds
of forbearance—is “perfectly maddening”—we are exasperated. Anger of a
high and peculiar intensity produced by special and repeated provocation
is known as exasperation. For intensive hate there seems no special
word, at least, in English, though we denote it by adjective as bitter,
malignant, virulent. Detest sometimes means strong hatred. Malice is not
an emotion; it is a state of mind which is implied in hate, namely,
deliberate intent to injure. We do not say we feel malicious; but if we
hate, we are malicious. Malice is merely an objective term for a will
element in hate, and denotes character of act.
The sight of injury done to others produces indignation. When law or
principle injured and violated excites indignation or hate, we have that
feeling for the abstract—rarely pure—which is termed sentiment. He who
is indignant at injustice and he who hates sin have risen to the highest
evolution of the anger group. For an account of resentment and revenge
see chapter on Retrospective Emotion. In the earlier stages both anger
and hate are rather undiscriminating as to rank or _status_ of opposing
object, but in later evolution there must be a sense of equality. When
we consider the offending ones as entirely below us, as unworthy of our
anger or hate, we detest or despise. Our relations with them may compel
us to notice them and to have some feeling toward them, but we would not
lower ourselves to fight them. To detest is to feel a strong revulsion,
but it also in measure has a direct objective movement. Still, although
detestation, despising, scorn, contempt, are by no means so actively
aggressive as the other members of the group, they have evidently a
direct affiliation with hate and anger. In all these there is direct
repulse of all relation with what is below us, a position holding off
and looking down upon the offending object as too small and mean for us
to seriously oppose.
We cannot at present elaborate more fully an analysis, a genetic
investigation, nor a classification, of what must appear to every
attentive student of mind as a most important and extraordinary group of
psychic phenomena. In all the lower psychic life with every perception
comes an emotion reaction, very generally either of a fear or anger
character. Everything perceived has a definite life meaning, nothing is
indifferent, and, in fact, primitive perception cannot exist except as
prompting and being prompted by emotion or feeling. For the low psychism
there is no such vast collection of practically indifferent objects, a
world of things, as maintains a constant and large place in advanced
psychism. Lower mental life is piecemeal, inconsequent and broken, and
wholly directed by feeling phases. Every object has its place only in
relation to self-interest, as favouring or injuring. This is impressed
upon those who have made any study of lower human types, and of wild
animals, where your very presence, no matter how accidental and really
meaningless, is construed as suggesting detriment, and suspicion is
aroused, a preparatory stage to some fear or anger exhibition, one of
those being often nascent, though sometimes not very active owing to the
lack of full certainty as to your injuriousness. For the savage, who is
incapable of disinterestedness, and wholly given up to self-seeking, the
missionary and scientist must have some hidden personal motive, some
intent to take advantage of them, and profit by them. From the first
they are regarded with fear, anger, or hate. The strange and peculiar is
hated merely for being unlike the self, and all non-conformity means
personal slight and insult. With primitive psychism all objects are
coloured by a strong emotion light, and this remains a tendency till the
latest stages of evolution.
Anger and hate have by no means spent their force, even for human
evolution in some of its more advanced forms. We all recognise the
necessity of “spirit” to success. The one who is incapable of anger and
of venting it powerfully is a weakling, and will be trodden under foot
in the battle of life. The high sense of personal honour and advantage,
which will brook no insult with impunity, or allow no injury to go
unpunished and unresented, is still the _sine qua non_ of worldly
success. Show anger, hate, and defiance to all those who invade your
rights; stand up and fight the battle of life against every oncomer, and
secure and hold the position against all competitors. In the natural
course of events—the struggle for self-conservation and
self-aggrandizement—the meek do not inherit the earth, but rather those
who are irascibly aggressive.
The most notable revolution in human history against the general course
of evolution which we have been considering has come from Christianity.
The world says, “If any one smite you on the cheek, hit him between the
eyes”; the Nazarene says, “Offer him the other cheek also”; the world
says, “If any one takes away your cloak, fall upon him and despoil him
of his all”; the Nazarene says, “Give him your coat also”; the world
says, “Hate your enemies”; the Nazarene says, “Love your enemies, bless
them which curse you, and do good to them that despitefully use you.”
The law of natural evolution by fear, anger, hate, strife, is replaced
by a new law of a spiritual evolution through forbearance, humility,
love, loyalty to truth, to beauty, to goodness, and to holiness in a
kingdom not of this “world.” Life consists, not in making friends and
fighting enemies, but in a fight with one’s self to realize unselfish
ideals, to exemplify the highest principles and laws, and to achieve the
largest and best work, without regard to self-conservation or
self-aggrandizement. In this radically new evolution the mind is for
itself, and is not, as in the lower evolution, merely a utilitarian
factor, subservient to the general demands of life. Life, on the
contrary, here becomes subservient to the development of mentality
purely for its own sake. Thus pure science, art for art’s sake, an
independent morality and religion, become possible. The greatest minds
of the race are those who have lived most completely this highest life;
but this new form scarcely touches the great bulk of humanity, and is
very partially developed even in the so-called highest classes.
But it is not our present purpose to survey the higher evolution, or to
point out its _rationale_. For the lower evolution, however, it is
tolerably evident that fear, anger and hate, give the dominant tone to
psychic life. These strong, direct emotions act as fundamental life
factors; without them the individual would be quickly overwhelmed in the
struggle for existence. The conditions of early life absolutely require
these simple, naïve emotions to stimulate advantageous reactions.
Emotional indifferentism is possible only as an artificial and
by-product, a sort of disease or abnormal symptom even in the very
latest phases of human evolution. The comparative psychology of the
future will show more and more clearly and fully the nature and function
of both the fear and anger groups as factors in biologic evolution.