An examination of the early habits of man and an analysis of the
instincts which persist in him show that he has been essentially a
predaceous animal, fighting his way up at every step of the struggle
for existence. It therefore becomes a point of considerable interest
to determine what influences have contributed to soften his behavior
and make it possible for him to dwell in harmony and co-operation with
large groups of his fellows.
We, the lineal representatives of the successful enactors
of one scene of slaughter after another, must, whatever more
pacific virtues we may also possess, still carry about with
us, ready to burst at any moment into flame, the smouldering
and sinister traits of character by means of which they lived
through so many massacres, harming others, but themselves
unharmed.... If evolution and the survival of the fittest
be true at all, the destruction of prey and of human rivals
must have been among the most important of man's primitive
functions, the fighting and the chasing instincts _must_ have
become ingrained. Certain perceptions _must_ immediately,
and without the intervention of inferences and ideas, have
prompted emotions and motor discharges; and both the latter
must, from the nature of the case, have been very violent, and
therefore when unchecked of an intensely pleasurable
kind. It is just because bloodthirstiness is such a primitive
part of us that it is so hard to eradicate, especially where a
fight or a hunt is promised as a part of the fun.... No! those
who try to account for this from above downwards, as if it
resulted from the consequences of the victory being rapidly
inferred, and from the agreeable sensations associated with
them in the imagination, have missed the root of the matter.
Our ferocity is blind and can only be explained from _below_.
Could we trace it back through our lines of descent, we
should see it taking more and more the form of a fatal reflex
response, and at the same time becoming more and more the pure
and direct emotion that it is.[157]
If we examine, in fact, our pleasures and pains, our moments of
elation and depression, we find that they go back for the most part to
instincts developed in the struggle for food and rivalry for mates.
We can perhaps best get at the meaning of the conflict interest to the
organism in terms of the significance to itself or the organism's own
movements. Locomotion, of whatever type, is primarily to enable the
animal to reach and grasp food, and also to escape other animals
bent on finding food. The structure of the organism has been built
up gradually through the survival of the most efficient structures.
Corresponding with a structure mechanically adapted to successful
movements, there is developed on the psychic side an interest in the
conflict situation as complete and perfect as is the structure itself.
The emotional states are, indeed, organic preparations for action,
corresponding broadly with a tendency to advance or retreat, and a
connection has even been made out between pleasurable states and the
extensor muscles, and painful states and the flexor muscles. We can
have no adequate idea of the time consumed and the experiments made in
nature before the development of these types of structure and interest
of the conflict pattern, but we know from the geological records that
the time and experiments were long and many, and the competition so
sharp, that finally, not in man alone, but in all the higher classes
of animals, body and mind, structure and interest, were working
perfectly in motor actions of the violent type involved in a life
of conflict, competition, and rivalry. There could not have been
developed an organism depending on offensive and defensive movements
for food and life without an interest in what we call a dangerous or
precarious situation. A type without this interest would have been
defective, and would have dropped out in the course of development.
There has been comparatively little change in human structure or human
interest in historical times. It is a popular view that moral and
cultural views and interests have superseded our animal instincts;
but the cultural period is only a span in comparison with prehistoric
times and the prehuman period of life, and it seems probable that
types of psychic reaction were once for all developed and fixed;
and while objects of attention and interest in different historical
periods are different, we shall never get far away from the original
types of stimulus and reaction. It is, indeed, a condition of normal
life that we should not get too far away from them.
The fact that our interests and enthusiasms are called out in
situations of the conflict type is shown by a glance at the situations
which arouse them most readily. War is simply an organized form of
fight, and as such is most attractive, or, to say the least, arouses
the interests powerfully. With the accumulation of property, and the
growth of sensibility and intelligence, it becomes apparent that war
is a wasteful and unsafe process, and public and personal interests
lead us to avoid it as much as possible. But, however genuinely war
may be deprecated, it is certainly an exciting game. The Rough Riders
in this country recently, and more recently the young men of the
aristocracy of England, went to war from motives of patriotism, no
doubt; but there are unmistakable evidences that they also regarded
it as the greatest sport they were likely to have a chance at in a
lifetime. And there is evidence in plenty that the emotional attitude
of women toward war is no less intense. Grey[158] relates that half a
dozen old women among the Australians will drive the men to war with
a neighboring tribe over a fancied injury. The Jewish maidens went out
with music and dancing, and sang that Saul had slain his thousands,
but David his ten thousands. Two American women who passed through the
horrors of the siege of Pekin were, on their return, given a reception
by their friends, and the daily press reported that they exhibited
among other trophies "a Boxer's sword with the blood still on the
blade, which was taken from the body of a Boxer killed by the legation
guards; and a Boxer spear with which a native Christian girl was
struck down in Legation Street." It is not necessary to regard as
morbid or vulgar the action of these ladies in bringing home reminders
of their peril. On the contrary, it is a sign of continued animal
health and instinct in the race to feel deep interest in perilous
situations and pleasure in their revival in consciousness.
"Unaccommodated man" was, to begin with, in relations more hostile
than friendly. The struggle for food was so serious a fact, and
predaceousness to such a degree the habit of life, that a suspicious,
hostile, and hateful state of mind was the rule, with exceptions only
in the cases where truce, association, and alliance had come about
in the course of experience. This was still the state of affairs in
so advanced a stage of development as the Indian society of North
America, where a tribe was in a state of war with every tribe with
which it had not made a treaty of peace; and it is perhaps true,
generally speaking, of men today, that they regard others with a
degree of distrust and aversion until they have proved themselves good
fellows. What, indeed, would be the fate of a man on the streets of
a city if he did otherwise? There has, nevertheless, grown up an
intimate relation between man and certain portions of his environment;
and this includes, not only his wife and children, his dog and his
blood-brother, but, with lessening intensity, the members of his clan,
tribe, and nation. These become, psychologically speaking, a portion
of himself, and stand with him against the world at large. From
the standpoint here outlined, prejudice or its analogue is the
starting-point, and our question becomes one of the determination of
the steps of the process by which man mentally allied with himself
certain portions of his environment to the exclusion of others.
If we look for an explanation of the hostility which a group feels
for another group, and of the sympathy which its members feel for one
another, we may first of all inquire whether there are any conditions
arising in the course of the biological development of a species
which, aside from social activities, lead to a predilection for those
of one's own kind and a prejudice against different groups. And we do,
in fact, find such conditions. The earliest movements of animal life
involve, in the rejection of stimulations vitally bad, an attitude
which is the analogue of prejudice. On the principle of chemiotaxis,
the micro-organism will approach a particle of food placed in the
water and shun a particle of poison; and its movements are similarly
controlled by heat, light, electricity, and other tropic forces.[159]
The development of animal life from this point upward consists in
the growth of structure and organs of sense adapted to discriminate
between different stimulations, to choose between the beneficial and
prejudicial, and to obtain in this way a more complete control of the
environment. Passing over the lower forms of animal life, we find in
the human type the power of attention, memory, and comparison highly
developed, so that an estimate is put on stimulations and situations
correspondent with the bearing of stimulations or situations of this
type on welfare in the past. The choice and rejection involved in this
process are accompanied by organic changes (felt as emotions) designed
to assist in the action which follows a decision.[160] Both the
judgment and the emotions are thus involved in the presentation to the
senses of a situation or object involving possible advantage or hurt,
pleasure or pain. It consequently transpires that the feelings called
out on the presentation of disagreeable objects and their contrary
are very different, and there arise in this connection fixed mental
attitudes corresponding with fixed or habitually recurrent external
situations--hate and love, prejudice and predilection--answering to
situations which revive feelings of pain on the one hand, and feelings
of pleasure on the other. And such is the working of suggestion that,
not alone an object or situation may produce a given state of feeling,
but a voice, an odor, a color, or any characteristic sign of an object
may produce the same effect as the object itself. The sight or smell
of blood is an excitant to a bull, because it revives a conflict state
of feeling, and even the color of a red rag produces a similar effect.
When we come to examine in detail the process by which an
associational and sympathetic relation is set up between the
individual and certain parts of the outside world to the exclusion
of others, we find this at first, on a purely instinctive and reflex
basis, originating in connection with food-getting and reproduction,
and growing more conscious in the higher forms of life. One of the
most important origins of association and prepossession is seen in
the relation of parents, particularly of mothers, to children. This
begins, of course, among the lower animals. The mammalian class, in
particular, is distinguished by the strength and persistence of the
devotion of parents to offspring. The advantage secured by the form
of reproduction characteristic of man and the other mammals is that
a closer connection is secured between the child and the mother. By
the intra-uterine form of reproduction the association of mother and
offspring is set up in an organic way before the birth of the latter,
and is continued and put on a social basis during the period of
lactation and the early helpless years of the child. By continuing the
helpless period of the young for a period of years, nature has made
provision on the time side for a complex physical and mental type,
impossible in types thrown at birth on their own resources. Along
with the structural modification of the female on account of the
intra-uterine form of reproduction and the effort of nature to secure
a more complex type and a better chance of survival, there is a
corresponding development of the sentiments, and maternal feeling,
in particular, is developed as the subjective condition necessary
to carrying out the plan of giving the infant a prolonged period of
helplessness and play through which its faculties are developed.[161]
The scheme would not work if the mother were not more interested
in the child than in anything else in the world. In the course
of development every variational tendency in mothers to dote on
their children was rewarded by the survival of these children, and
the consequent survival of the stock, owing to better nutrition,
protection, and training. Of course, this inherited interest in
children is shared by the males of the group also, though not in the
same degree, and there is reason to believe also that the interest of
the male parent in children is acquired in a great degree indirectly
and socially through his more potent desire to associate with the
mother.
This interest and providence on the score of offspring has also a
characteristic expression on the mental side. All sense-perceptions
are colored and all judgments biased where the child is in question,
and affection for it extends to the particular marks which distinguish
it. Not only its physical features, but its dress and little shoes,
its toys and everything it has touched take on a peculiar aspect.
On the organic side, therefore, there is developed a tendency, both in
connection with reactions to stimulations in general and in connection
with reproductive life in particular, to seize on particular aspects
and to be obsessed by them to the exclusion or disparagement of other
aspects. The feelings of love and hate, and the broader feelings of
race-prejudice and patriotism are consequently based first of all in
the instincts.
Perhaps the most particular and interesting expression of the general
fact of susceptibility is seen in the sensitiveness of man to the
opinion in which he is held by others. Social life in every stage of
society is characterized by an eagerness to make a striking effect.
A bare reference to the ethnological facts in this connection will
suffice: The Kite Indians have a society of young men so brave and so
ostentatious of their bravery that they will not fight from cover nor
turn aside to avoid running into an ambuscade or a hole in the ice.
The African has the privilege of cutting a gash six inches long in
his thigh for every man he has killed. The Melanesian who is planning
revenge sets up a stick or stone where it can be seen; he refuses to
eat, and stays away from the dance; he sits silent in the council and
answers questions by whistling and by other signs draws attention to
himself and has it understood that he is a brave and dangerous man,
and that he is biding his time.[162]
This bidding for the good opinion of others has plainly a connection
with food-getting, and with the conflict side of life. High courage is
praised and valued by society, and a man of courage is less imposed on
by others, and comes in for substantial recognition and the favor of
women. It is thus of advantage to act in such a way as to get public
approval and some degree of appreciation; and a degree of sensibility
on the score of the opinion of others, or at least a reckoning upon
this, is involved in the process of personal adjustment.
But the problem of personal adjustment at this point would seem
to call for more of intelligence than emotion; and we find, on the
contrary, an excess of sensibility and a mania for being well thought
of hardly to be explained as originating in the exigencies of tribal
organization, nor yet on the score of its service to the individual in
getting his food and living out his life. Why could not primitive man
live in society, be of the war-parties, plan ambuscades, develop his
fighting technique and gear, be a blood-brother to another man, show
his trophies, set a high value on his personality, and insist on
recognition and respect, without this almost pathological dependence
on the praise and blame of others?
Or if we approach the question from another standpoint and inspect our
states of consciousness, we find signs that we have a greater fund of
sensibility than is justified in immediate activity. We have the same
mania to be well thought of; we are unduly interested when we hear
that others have been talking about us; we are annoyed, even furious,
at a slight criticism, and are childishly delighted by a compliment
(without regard to our deserts); and children and adults alike
understand how to put themselves forward and get notice, and equally
well how to get notice by withdrawing themselves and staying away or
out of a game. We have a tendency to show off which is not apparently
genetically connected with exploit or organization, and we recognize
that this form of vanity is not consistent with the ordinary run of
our activities when we argue with ourselves that the opinion of this
or that person is of no consequence and attempt to think ourselves
into a state of indifference. Intellectually and deliberately our
attitude toward criticism from others would often be, if we could
choose, represented by Tweed's query: "What are you going to do about
it?" But actually it puts us to bed.
All of this seems to indicate that there is an element in sensibility
not accounted for on the exploit or food side, and this element is, I
believe, genetically connected with sexual life. Unlike the struggle
for existence in the ordinary sense of the phrase, the courtship of
the sexes presents a situation in which an appeal is made for the
favor of another personality, and the success of this appeal has a
survival value--not for the individual, but for the species through
the individual. We have, in fact, a situation in which the good
opinion of another is vitally important. On this account the means
of attracting and interesting others are definitely and bountifully
developed among all the higher species of animals. Voice, plumage,
color, odor, and movement are powerful excitants in wooing and aids
both to the conquest of the female and the attraction of the male. In
this connection we must also recognize the fact that reproductive life
must be connected with violent stimulation, or it would be neglected
and the species would become extinct; and, on the other hand, if the
conquest of the female were too easy, sexual life would be in danger
of becoming a play interest and a dissipation, destructive of energy
and fatal to the species. Working, we may assume, by a process of
selection and survival, nature has both secured and safeguarded
reproduction. The female will not submit to seizure except in a high
state of nervous excitation (as is seen especially well in the wooing
of birds), while the male must conduct himself in such a way as to
manipulate the female; and, as the more active agent, he develops a
marvelous display of technique for this purpose. This is offset by the
coyness and coquetry of the female, by which she equally attracts and
fascinates the male and practices upon him to induce a corresponding
state of nervous excitation.[163]
This is the only situation in the life of the lower animals, at
any rate, where the choice of another is vitally important; and
corresponding with the elaborate technique to secure this choice we
have in wooing pleasure-pain reactions of a violent character. In a
word, extreme sensitiveness to the judgment of another answers on
the subjective side to technique for the conquest of a member of the
opposite sex. It seems, therefore, that we are justified in concluding
that our vanity and susceptibility have their origin largely in sexual
life, and that, in particular, our susceptibility to the opinion of
others and our dependence on their good will are genetically referable
to sexual life.
This view would be completely substantiated if we could show that the
qualities of vanity and susceptibility in question are present in any
species where it is impossible to assume that they were developed
in connection with the struggle for food and as the result of the
survival of types showing a tendency to combine and co-operate in
the effort to get food. And we do, in fact, have cases of this kind
among some of the lower animals. It cannot be said that the dog, for
instance, has survived in the struggle for existence because of his
sensitiveness to public opinion in his species nor on account of an
interest in being well thought of by the community of dogs at large
which would lead him to behave in a public-spirited or moral manner.
At the same time, the dog in his relation to man shows as keen a
sensitiveness to man's opinion and treatment as does man himself. The
attention which the master pays to one dog will almost break the heart
of a dog not receiving it. A neglected dog plainly suffers as much
in his way as the soldier who is sent to Coventry by his messmates;
and if neglected and jealous dogs do not commit suicide, as they
are reported to do, they are evidently in a state of mind to do so.
This means that the dog has highly developed susceptibility to the
appreciation of others, and that the species which he represents has
had no history except a sexual history capable of developing this
mental attitude. In connection with courtship he developed a fund of
organic susceptibility, and this condition is involved in his more
general relation to man; the machinery set up in sexual relations is
played on by stimuli in general. A condition favorable to stimuli of
a particular kind is favorable to stimuli in general; and it seems
likely that this not very prominent fact of a state of excitation in a
sexual connection is an important factor in the formation of the mind
and of society.
There are also certain conditions in the development of the individual
and of society where the sexual type of reaction is so near the
surface that it shows through in connection with political, moral, and
other essentially non-sexual activities. Passing over the fact that
the period of adolescence is noticeably a period of "susceptibility"
and personal vanity, we may take as an example of the intrusion or
persistence of the sexual element in conditions of a non-sexual kind
the frequent association of sexual with religious excitement.[164]
The appeal made during a religious revival to an unconverted person
has psychologically some resemblance to the attempt of the male to
overcome the hesitancy of the female. In each case the will has to be
set aside, and strong suggestive means are used; and in both cases the
appeal is not of the conflict type, but of an intimate, sympathetic,
and pleading kind. In the effort to make a moral adjustment, it
consequently turns out that a technique is used which was derived
originally from sexual life, and the use, so to speak, of the sexual
machinery for a moral adjustment involves, in some cases, the carrying
over into the general process of some sexual manifestations. The
emotional forms used and the emotional states aroused are not entirely
stripped of their sexual content.
On the race side, also, there is a stage in development where the
sexual pattern is transferred almost unmodified to public affairs. The
following extracts from a lengthy description given by Mr. Bowdich
of his reception by the king of Ashanti, in the year 1817, will
illustrate sufficiently the employment of the turkey-cock pattern of
activity in political relations:
The sun was reflected with a glare scarcely more supportable
than the heat from massive gold ornaments which glistened in
every direction. More than a hundred bands burst at once on
our arrival, with the peculiar airs of their several chiefs;
the horns flourished their defiances, with the beating of
innumerable drums and metal instruments, and then yielded for
a while to the soft breathings of their long flutes.... At
least a hundred large umbrellas or canopies, which could
shelter thirty persons, were sprung up and down by the bearers
with brilliant effect, being made of scarlet, yellow, and
the most showy cloths and silks, and crowned on the top with
crescents, pelicans, elephants, barrels, and arms and swords
of gold.... The caboceers, as did their superior captains, and
attendants, wore Ashanti cloths of extravagant price, from the
costly foreign silks which had been unravelled to weave them
in all the varieties of color as well as pattern: they were
of incredible size and weight, and thrown over the shoulder
exactly like the Roman toga; a small silk fillet generally
encircled their temples, and many gold necklaces, intricately
wrought, suspended Moorish charms, dearly purchased, and
enclosed in small square cases of gold, silver, and curious
embroidery. Some wore necklaces reaching to the waist,
entirely of aggry beads; a band of gold and beads encircled
the knee, from which several strings of the same depended;
small circlets of gold, like guineas, rings, and casts of
animals were strung round their ankles; their sandals were
of green, red and delicate white leather; manillas, and rude
lumps of rock gold hung from their left wrists, which were so
heavily laden as to be supported on the head of one of their
handsomest boys.... [The king] wore a fillet of aggry beads
round his temples, a necklace of gold cockspur shells strung
by their larger ends, and over his right shoulder a red silk
cord, suspending three sapphires cased in gold; his bracelets
were of the richest mixtures of beads and gold, and his
fingers covered with rings; his cloth was of a dark green
silk, a pointed diadem was elegantly painted in white on
his forehead; also a pattern resembling an epaulette on each
shoulder, and an ornament like a full blown rose, one leaf
rising above another until it covered his whole breast.... The
belts of the guards behind his chair were cased in gold, and
covered with small jaw-bones of the same metal; the elephants'
tails, waving like a small cloud before him, were spangled
with gold, and large plumes of feathers were flourished among
them. His eunuch presided over these attendants, wearing only
one massive piece of gold about his neck; the royal stool,
entirely cased in gold, was displayed under a splendid
umbrella, with drums, sankos, horns, and various musical
instruments, cased in gold, about the thickness of cartridge
paper; large circles of gold hung by scarlet cloth from the
swords of state;... hatchets of the same were intermixed with
them; the breasts of the Ochras and various attendants were
adorned with large stars, stools, crescents, and gossamer
wings of solid gold.[165]
It is not surprising that the characteristically sexual method of
display and emotional appeal should be associated with the earlier
efforts at adjustment, both in the individual and in the state. This
method is based on the instincts, and just as inhibition and brain
legislation follow the instincts in point of development, a rational
mode of control, individual and public, is developed later than the
emotional form, or, at any rate, is not at first independent of it.
The origin of mental impressionability seems to lie then, not in one,
but in the two general regions of activity--that connected with the
struggle for food and that connected with reproduction. The strain
on the attention in the food and conflict side of life involves
the development of mental impressionability, particularly of an
impressionability on the side of cognition. But in addition we have
the impressionability growing out of sexual life which has been in
question above, and which is more closely related to appreciation than
to cognition. And of these two aspects of impressionability--the one
growing out of conflict and the one growing out of reproduction--the
latter has more social possibilities than the former, because it
implies a sympathetic rather than an antagonistic organic attitude. It
is certainly in virtue of susceptibility to the opinion of others that
society works--through public opinion, fashion, tradition, reproof,
encouragement, precept, and doctrine--to bring the individual
under control and make him a member of society; and it is doubtful
whether this could have been accomplished if a peculiar attitude
of responsiveness to opinion had not arisen in sexual relations,
reinforcing the more general and cognitive impressionability.
Without this capacity to be influenced the individual would be in the
condition of the hardened criminal, and society would be impossible.
This sex-susceptibility, which was originally developed as an
accessory of reproduction and had no social meaning whatever, has
thus, in the struggle of society to obtain a hold on the individual,
become a social factor of great importance, and together with another
product of sexual life--the love of offspring--it is, I suspect, the
most immediate source of our sympathetic attitudes in general, and an
important force in the development of the ideal, moral, and aesthetic
sides of life.
Morality, sympathy, and altruism are of tribal origin, and have their
roots in (1) the love of offspring, (2) the sensitivity connected
with courtship, and (3) the comradeship which arises among men in
prosecuting vital interests in common. The history of society on the
moral and aesthetic sides is in great part the history of the attempt
to make the sympathetic attitude prevail over the more antagonistic.
But how far we are still short of this, and how far our sympathy
and morality are still tribal and even familial, is indicated by the
persistence of race-prejudice and of that
lust in man no charm can tame
Of loudly publishing our neighbor's shame.