One of the problems in all work is to place things in their right
order, in the order of origin and importance. This difficulty is
almost insoluble when one studies the character of man. As we see
him in operation, the synthesis is so complete that we can hardly
discern the component parts. Inheritance, social pressure,
excitement, interest, love, hate, self-interest, duty and
obligation, --these are not unitary in the least and there is
constantly a false dissection to be made, an artefact, in order
that clearness in presentation may be obtained.
We see men as discharging energy in work and play, in the
activities that help or hurt themselves and the race. They obtain
that energy from the world without, from the sunshine, the air,
the plants and the animals; it is built up in their bodies, it is
discharged either because some inner tension builds up a desire
or because some outer stimulus, environmental or social, directs
it. Though we have no way of measuring one man's energy against
another, we say, perhaps erroneously, "He is very energetic," or
"He is not"; "He is tireless," or "He breaks down easily." As
students of character, we must take this question of the energies
of men into account as integral in our study.
Granting that the human being takes in energy as food and drink
and builds it up into dischargeable tissues, we are not further
concerned with the details of its physiology. How does the
feeling of energy arise, what increases the energy discharge and
what blocks, inhibits or lowers it? For from day to day, from
hour to hour, we are conscious either of a desire to be active, a
feeling of capacity or the reverse. We depend on that feeling of
capacity to guide us, and though it is organic, it has its
mysterious disappearances and marvelous reenforcements.
It arises, so we assume, from the visceral-neuronic activities,
subconsciously, in the sense we have used that word. It therefore
fluctuates with health, with fatigue, with the years. We marvel
at the energy of childhood and youth, and the deepest sadness we
have is the depletion of energy-feeling in old age. We love
energy in ourselves and we yield admiration, willing or
unwilling, to its display in others. The Hero, the leader, is
always energetic. In our times, in America, we demand "pep,"
action and energy-display as an essential in our play and in our
work, and we worship quite too frankly where all men have always
worshiped.
What besides the organic activity, besides health and well-being,
excites the feeling of energy and what depresses it?
1. This feeling is excited by the society of others, by the
herd-feeling, and depressed by long-continued solitude or
loneliness. The stimuli that come from other people's faces,
voices, contacts--their emotions, feelings and manifestations of
energy--are those we are best adapted to react to, those most
valuable in stirring us up. Scenery, the grandeur of the outer
world, finally depress the most of us, and we can bear these
things best in company. Who has not, on a long railroad journey,
watched with weariness and flickering interest valley and hill
and meadow swing by and then sat up with energy and definite
attention as a human being passed along on some rural road?
Lacking these stimuli there is monotony and monotony always has
with it as one of its painful features a subjective sense of
lowered energy, of fatigue. This is the problem of the housewife
and the solitary worker everywhere,--there is failure of the
sense of energy due to a failure to receive new stimuli in their
most potent form, our fellows.
2. The disappearance or injury of desire and purpose. Let there
be a sudden blocking of a purpose or an aim, so that it seems
impossible of fulfillment, and energy-feeling drops; movement,
thought, even feeling seem painful. The will flags, and the whole
world becomes unreal. This is part of the anhedonia we spoke of.
In reality, we have the disappearance of hope as basic in this
adynamia. Hope and courage are in part organic, in part are due
to the belief that a desired goal can be reached. Whether that
goal is health, when one is sick, or riches, or fame, or love and
possession, if it is a well-centralized goal toward which our
main energies are bent, and then seems suddenly impossible to
reach, there is a corresponding paralysis of energy.
Here is where a great difference is seen between individuals and
between one time of life and another. There are some to whom hope
is a shining beacon light never absent; whatever happens, hope
remains, like the beautiful fable of Pandora's box. There are
others to whom any obstruction, any discouraging feature, blots
out hope, and who constantly need the energy of others; their
persuasions and exhortations, for a renewal of energy. Here, as
elsewhere in life, some are givers and others takers of energy.
In the presence of the hopeless it is hard to maintain one's own
feeling of energy and that is why the average man shuns them. He
guards as priceless his own enthusiasm.
Curiously enough, when energy tends to disappear in the face of
disaster to one's plans, a tonic is often enough the reflection,
"it might have been worse" or "there are others worse off."[1]
Though one rebels against the encouraging effect of the last
statement, it does console, it does renew hope. For hope and
energy and desire are competitive, as is every other measure of
value. So long as one is not the worst off, then there is
something left, there is a hopeful element in the situation.
Similarly a certain rough treatment helps, as when Job is told
practically, "After all, who is Man that he should ask for the
fulfillment of his hopes?" A sense of littleness with the rest of
the race acts to bring resignation, and after that has been
established, hope can reappear. For resignation is rarely a
prolonged state of mind; it is a doorway through which we reenter
into the vista-chambers of Hope.
[1] A humorous use of this fact is in the popular "Cheer up, the
worst is yet to come!" This acts as a rough tonic.
And one clearly sees the benefit of a belief, a faith in God.
"Gott in sein Mizpah ist gerecht," cries the orthodox Jew when
his hope is shattered,--"God's decree is just." This is Hope
Eternal; "my purposes are blocked, but were they God's purposes?
No. He would not then block them. I must seek God's purposes."
Faith is really a transcendent Hope, renewing the feeling of
energy.
3. The belief that one has the good opinion of others is a
powerful stimulus to energy and feeling. We have already
considered the effect of praise and blame. Some are so
constituted that they need the approval of others at all times;
they are at the mercy of any one who gives them a cold look or a
harsh word. Others cling to the need of their own self-approval;
they are aristocrats, firm and secure in their self-estimate. Let
their self-esteem crumble, and these proud and haughty ones are
humble, weak, inefficient. We fiercely resent criticism because
in it is a threat to our source of energy, our very feeling of
being alive.
One has shrewdly to examine his fellow men from this angle: "Does
he work up his own steam; are his boilers of energy heated by his
own enthusiasm and his own self-approval? Or does he borrow; can
he work only if others add their fire to his; does his light go
out if his neighbors turn away or are too busy to help him?" One
type of man may be as admirable as another in his gifts, but the
types need different treatment.
Self-valuation is to a large extent our opinion of the valuation
of others of ourselves.[1] We believe people like us, think we
are fine and able, or beautiful, and we react with energy to
difficulties. We may be wrong; they may call us a conceited ass
and laugh at us behind our backs, but so long as we do not find
it out, it doesn't matter. There is, however, no blow quite so
severe as the sudden realization that we have mistaken the
opinion of others, we have been "fooled." To be fooled is to be
lowered in one's own self-esteem, and we like sincerity and hate
insincerity largely because our self-esteem stands on some solid
basis in the one case and on none whatever in the other. Most of
us would rather have people say bad things of us to our face than
run the risk of the ridicule and the foolish feeling that comes
with insincerity. There are some who are always suspicions that
people are insincere in praise or friendly words; they hate being
fooled, they know of no criterion of sincerity and such people
are in an adynamic state most of the time. The difference between
the trusting and the suspicious is that one responds with energy
and belief to the manifestations of friendliness in everybody,
and the other has no such inner response to guide his energy and
his actions. Trust in others is a releaser of energy; distrust
paralyzes it.
[1] To paraphrase Doctor Holmes the biggest factor in John's
self-valuation is HIS idea of Jane's idea of John.
4. Doubt and inability to choose may be contrasted with certitude
and clear choice in their effect on energy release. Of course,
one of the signs of lowered energy is doubt, as a sign of high
energy is certainty. Nevertheless, a situation of critical
importance, in which choice is difficult or digagreeable,
inhibits energy feeling[1] and discharge perhaps as much as any
other mental factor. Especially is this true when the inhibition
concerns a moral situation--"Ought I to do this or that"--and
where the fear of being wrong or doing wrong operates so that the
individual does nothing and develops an obsession of doubt. This
"to be or not to be" attitude is typical of many intelligent
people, yes, even intellectual people. They we so many angles to
a situation, they project so far into the future in their
thoughts, that a weary discouragement comes. To such as these,
the counsel of "action right or wrong but action anyway!" is
good, but the difficulty is to make them overcome their doubts.
Their cerebral oscillation makes them weary but they cannot seem
to stop it; their pendulum of choice never stops at action.
[1] See William James' "Varieties of Religious Experiences," for
beautiful examples. The Russian writers are often narrators of
this struggle.
If one wishes to destroy the energy of any one, the best way to
do it is to sow the seeds of doubt. "Your ideal is a fine one, my
friend, but--isn't it a little sophomoric?" "A nice piece of
work, but--who wants it?" On the other hand, to one obsessed by
doubt it may happen that a whole-hearted endorsement, a
resolution of the doubt, brings with it first relief and then a
swing of energy into the channels of action.
5. Competition is a great factor in energy release. Every one has
seen a horse ambling along, apparently without sufficient energy
to go more than four miles an hour. Suddenly he cocks up his ears
as the sounds of the hoof beats of a rapidly traveling horse are
heard. He shakes his head and to the amazement or amusement of
his driver sets off in rivalry at a two-minute clip. Intensely
cooperative and gregarious as man is, he is as intensely
competitive, spurred on by his observations of the other fellow.
Introduce a definite system of rivalry into a school or an
office, and you release energies never manifested before. There
are some to whom this is the main releaser of energy; struggle,
competition and victory over another is their stimulus. They can
play no game unless there is competition, and the solitary
pleasures and satisfactions, like reading, exploring, a row on
the river or a walk in the woods, cannot arouse them. Others
dislike rivalry or competition; they are too sympathetic to wish
victory over another and also they dread to lose. They prefer
team play and cooperation. The world will always seem different
to these two types. This may be said now that for most of us, who
are somewhat of a blend in this matter, rivalry is pleasant and
stimulating when there is a show of success, but we prefer
cooperation when we foresee failure.
This brings up the interesting phase of precedent in energy
release. Early success, unless it brings too high a
self-valuation, which is its great danger, is remarkably valuable
in releasing energy, and failure establishes a precedent that may
bring doubt, fear and the attendant inhibition of energy. Of
course, failure may bring with it caution and a recasting of
plans and thus constitute the most valuable of experiences. But
if it is too great, or if there is lacking a certain fortitude,
it may act as a paralyzer of energy thenceforth. In the prize
ring this is often noted; the spirit of a man goes with a defeat
and he never again has self-confidence; thereafter his energy is
constantly inhibited.
Emotions have long been studied in their effects on energy. In
fact, every animal that bristles and snarls as it faces a foe is,
unconsciously, attempting to paralyze with fear its opponent, to
render it helpless through the inhibition of action. So with the
lurking tiger; it waits in silence for the prey and seeks the
fascination of surprise as a factor in victory. On the other
hand, the emotion of fear may be a releaser of energy for the
prospective victim; it may release the energies of flight and add
to the power of the animal. In this, there is a unique and
neglected phase of emotion, i.e., if you shake your fist at your
enemy and he runs away or knocks you down, then your
manifestation of anger has been unsuccessful for you but his
reaction has been successful for him. If he becomes so paralyzed
with fear that you can work your will with him, then your anger
is successful while his fear is not. Most of the psychologists
have neglected this phase of emotion. Thus it is hard to
understand the use fainting from terror has to the victim. The
answer is it is useful to him who has caused the victim to faint.
6. For the individual, the emotion of fear has as its function a
preparation for a danger that is foreseen to be too powerful to
be met with effective resistance. Fear says, "It's no use to
fight, fly or hide." Therefore, normally there is a heightening
of energy feeling and action in these two directions. There are
plenty of recorded incidents where fear has enabled men to run
distances utterly impossible to them otherwise. In the fear
states of mental disease, the resistance a frail woman will offer
to her attendants is such that the utmost strength of several
people is required to restrain her. Under these circumstances
fear acts as an energizer, causing physical reactions not
ordinarily within the will of the person. "Fear lends wings," is
the time-honored way of expressing this. The trapped animal makes
"frantic" efforts to escape.
Fear is extraordinarily contagious, perhaps because as herd
members the cry of fear sets us all racing for safety. This is
the grimmest danger from fires in public places or the presence
of a coward in a military unit. Panic occurs with its blind
unreasoning flight, and the result is disastrous. I emphasize
again that emotions are poorly adapted to the welfare of the
individual. Business panics are in large measure the result of
the contagiousness of fear; timidity spreads like wildfire,
distrust and suspicion are aroused and stagnation results without
a "real" basis. In President Wilson's phrase, the panic is
"purely psychological."
Intellectualized, fear becomes one of the driving forces of life,
as Hobbes[1] pointed out. Fear of punishment undoubtedly deters
from crime, though it is not in itself sufficient, and the kind
of punishment becomes important. Fear of hunger has brought
prudence, caution, agriculture into the world. Life insurance has
its root in fear for others, who are really part of one's self;
the fear of the rainy day is back of most of the thrift, though
the acquisitive feeling and duty may also operate powerfully.
Fear of venereal disease impels many a man to continence who
otherwise would follow his desire. And fear of the bad opinion of
others is the most powerful deterrent force in the world. "What
will people say" is, at bottom, fear that they will say bad
things, and though it keeps men from the "bad" conduct, it
inhibits the finer nobler actions as well. There is a great deal
of unconventional untrammeled belief in the world that never
finds expression because of fear.
How deeply the fear of death modifies the life of people it is
impossible to state. To every one there comes the awful
reflection that he, that warmly pulsating being, in love with the
world and with living, "center of the universe," HE himself must
die, must be cold and still and have no will, no power, no
feeling; be buried in the ground. Most of the essential
melancholy of the world is due to this realization, and most of
the feeling of pessimism and futility thus has its origin. Mortal
man--a worm of the earth--a brief flower doomed to perish--and
all of it finds final expression in Gray's marvelous words:
"The boast of heraldry, the pomp of pow'r,
And all that beauty, all that wealth e'er gave,
Await alike the inevitable hour.
The paths of glory lead but to the grave."
[1] Hobbes made fear the most important motive in the conduct of
man.
"Why strive, thou poor creature, for wealth and power; sink
thyself in the, Godhead!" "Turn, turn from vain pursuits; fame,
the bubble, is bound to break as thou art." This is one type of
reaction against this fear,--for men react to the fear of death
variously. If man is mortal, God is not, and there is a life
everlasting. The life everlasting--whether a reality or not--is
conjured up and believed in by an effort to compensate for the
fear of death.
I have a son who, when he was three, manifested great emotion if
death were to enter in a story. "Will anything happen?" he would
ask, meaning, "Will death enter?" And if so, he would beg not to
have that story told. But when he was four, he heard some one say
that there were people who took old automobiles apart, fixed up
the parts and these were then placed in other automobiles.
"That's what God does to us," he cried triumphantly. "When we
die, He takes us apart and puts us into babies, and we live
again." Thereafter he would discuss death as fearlessly as he
spoke of dinner, and all his fears vanished. Here was a typical
rationalization of fear, one that has helped to shape religion,
philosophies, ways of living. And the widespread belief in
immortality is a compensation and a rationalization of the fear
of death.
If some men rationalize in this fashion, others take directly
opposite means. "Eat, drink and be merry, for to-morrow we die."
The popularity of Omar Khayyam rests upon the aptness of his
statement of this side of the case of Man vs. Death, and many a
man who never heard of him has recklessly plunged into
dissipation on the theory, "a short life and a merry one." This
is more truly a pessimism than is the ascetic philosophy.
"Well, then, I must die," says another. "Oh, that I might achieve
before death comes!" So men, appalled by the brief tenure of life
and the haphazard way death strikes, work hard, spurred on by the
wish to leave a great work behind them. This work becomes a Self,
left behind, and here the fear of death is compensated for by a
little longer life in the form of achievement.
Many a father and mother, looking at their children, feel this as
part of their compensation for parenthood. "I shall die and leave
some one behind me," means, "I shall die and yet I shall, in
another form, live." Part of the incentive to parenthood, in a
time which knows how to prevent parenthood and which shirks it as
disagreeable, is the fear of death, of personal annihilation. For
there is in death a blow to one's pride, an indignity in this
annihilation,--Nothingness.
There is a still larger reaction to the fear of death. I have
stated that the feeling of likeness is part of the feeling of
brotherhood and in death is one of the three great likenesses of
man. We are born of the labor of our mothers, our days are full
of strife and trouble and we die. Men's minds have lingered on
these facts. "Man that is born of a woman, is of few days, and
full of trouble." Job did not add to this that he dies, but
elsewhere it appears as the bond for mankind. Reacting to this,
the reflective minds of the race have felt that here was the
unity of man, here the basis of a brotherhood. True, the
Fatherhood of God was given as a logical reason, but always in
every appeal there is the note, "Do we not all die? Why hate one
another then?"
So to the fear of death, as with every other fear, man has
reacted basely and nobly. Man is the only animal that foresees
death and he is the only one to elaborate ethics and religion.
There is more than an accidental connection between these two
facts.
Fear in its foreseeing character is termed worry. As a phase of
character, the liability to worry is of such importance that book
after book has dealt with the subject,--emphasizing the dangers,
the futility and cowardice of it. It is surely idle to tell
people not to worry who live continually on the brink of economic
disaster, or who are facing real danger. But there are types who
find in every possibility of injury a formidable threat, who are
thrown into anguish when they contemplate any evil, remote or
unlikely as it may be. The present and future are not faced with
courage or equanimity; they present themselves as a never-ending
series of threats; threat to health, to fortune, to family,
reputation, everything. Horace Fletcher called this type of
forethought "fear thought." Men and women, brave enough when face
to face with actualities, are cowards when confronting remote
possibilities. The housewife especially is one of these worriers,
and her mind has an affinity for the terrible. I have described
her elsewhere,[1] but she has her prototype among men.
[1] "The Nervous Housewife."
Fear of this type is an injury to the body and character both and
is one of the causes and effects of the widespread neurasthenia
of our day. For fear injures sleep, and this brings on fatigue
and fatigue breeds more fear, --a vicious circle indeed. Fear
disturbs digestion and the energy of the organism is thereby
lowered. The greatest damage by worry is done in the
hypochondriac, the worrier about health. Here, in addition to the
effects of fear, introspection and a minute attention to every
pain and ache demoralize the character, for the sufferer cannot
pay attention to anything else. He becomes selfish, ego-centric
and without the wholesome interest in life as an adventure. I
doubt if there is enough good in too minute a popular education
on disease and health preservation. Morbid attention to health
often results, an evil worse than sickness.
Sometimes, instead of the indiscriminate fear of worry, there are
localized fears, called phobias, which creep or spring into a
man's thoughts and render him miserable. Thus there is fear of
high places, of low places, of darkness, of open places, of
closed places,--fear of dirt, fear of poison and of almost
everything else. A bright young man was locked, at the age of
fourteen, in a closed dark shanty; when released he rushed home
in the greatest terror. Since then he has been afflicted with a
fear of leaving home. He dares venture only about fifty feet and
then is impelled to run back. If anybody hinders his return he
attacks them; if the door is locked he breaks through a window.
He is in a veritable panic, and yet presents no other fears; is a
reader and thinker, clever at his work (he is a painter), but his
fear remains inaccessible and uncontrollable. Often one
experience of this kind builds up an obsessive fear; the
associations left by the experience give the fear an open pathway
to consciousness, without any inhibiting power. As in this case,
the whole life of the individual becomes changed.
Throughout history the man without fear has been idolized. The
hero is courageous, that he must be; the coward is despised,
whatever good may be in him. Consequently, there is in most men a
fear of showing fear; and pride, self-respect, often urge men on
when they really fear. This pride is greater in some races than
others--in the Indian and the Anglo-Saxon--but the Oriental does
not think it wrong to be afraid. In the Great War this fear of
showing fear played a great role in producing shell shock, in
that men shrank from actual cowardice but easily developed
neuroses which carried them from the fighting line.
There is this to add to this little sketch of fear: it turns
easily to anger for both are responses to a threat. I remember in
my boyhood being mortally afraid of a larger boy who one day
chased me, caught me and started to "beat me up." Before I knew
it, the fear had gone and I was fighting him with such fierceness
and fury that in amazement he ran away. So a rat, cornered,
becomes fierce and blood-thirsty and there is always the danger,
in the use of fear as a weapon, that it become changed quite
readily into the fighting spirit.
7. Anger is a primitive reaction and is the backbone of the
fighting spirit. It tends to displace fear, though it may be
combined with it, in one of the most unhappy --because
helpless--mental states. Anger in its commonest form is a violent
energizer and in the stiffened muscles, the set jaw, bared teeth,
and the forward-thrust head and arms one sees the animal prepared
to fight. Anger is aroused at any obstruction, any threat or
injury, from physical violences to the so-called "slight." In
fact, it is the intent of the opponent as understood that makes
up the stimulus to anger in the human being. We forgive a blow if
it is accidental, but even a touch, if in malice or in contempt,
arouses a fierce reaction.
We call becoming angry too readily "losing the temper," and there
is a type known as the irascible in whom anger is the readiest
emotion. The bluff English squire, the man in authority, is this
type, and his anger lasts. In its lesser form anger becomes
irritability, a reaction common to the neurotic and the weak.
When anger is not frank, but manifests itself by a lowered brow
and sidelong look, we speak of sullenness or surliness. The
sullen or surly person, chronically ill-tempered and hostile, is
regarded as unsocial and dangerous, whereas the most lovable
persons are quick to anger and quick to repent.
As a man's anger, so is he. There are some whose anger is always
a reaction against interference with their comfort, their
dignity, their property and their will; it never by any chance is
aroused by the wrongs of others. Usually, however, these folk
camouflage their motive. "It's the principle of the thing I
object to," is its commonest social disguise, which sometimes
successfully hides the real motive from the egoist himself.
Wherever wills and purposes meet in conflict, there anger, or its
offshoot, contempt, is present, and the more egoistic one is, the
more egoistic the sources of anger.
The explosiveness of the anger will depend on the power of
inhibition and the power of the intelligence, as well as on the
strength of the opponent. There are enough whose temper is
uncontrolled in the presence of the weak who manage to be quite
calm in the presence of the strong. I believe there is much less
difference amongst races in this respect than we suspect, and
there is more in tradition and training. There was a time when it
was perfectly proper for a gentleman to lose his temper, but now
that it is held "bad form," most gentlemen manage to control it.
If it is common for men to become angry at ego-injury, there are
in this world, as its leaven of reform, noble spirits who become
angry at the wrongs of others. The world owes its progress to
those whose anger, sustained and intellectualized, becomes the
power behind reform; to those like Abraham Lincoln, who vowed to
destroy slavery because he saw a slave sold down the river; to
the Pinels, outraged by the treatment of the insane; to the
sturdy "Indignant Citizen," who writes to newspapers about what
"is none of his business," but who is too angry to keep still,
and whose anger makes public opinion. Whether anger is useful or
not depends upon its cause and the methods it employs. Righteous
anger, whether against one's own wrongs or the wrongs of others,
is the hall-mark of the brave and noble spirit; mean, egoistic
anger is a great world danger, born of prejudice and egoism. A
violent-tempered child may be such because he is outraged by
wrong; if so, teach him control but do not tell him in modern
wishy-washy fashion that "one must never get angry." Control it,
intellectualize it, do not permit it to destroy effectiveness, as
it is prone to do; but it cannot be eliminated without
endangering personality.
Fear and anger have this in common: whenever the controlling
energy of the mind goes, as in illness, fatigue or early mental
disease, they become more prominent and uncontrolled. This cannot
be overemphasized. When a man (or woman) finds himself
continually getting apprehensive and irritable, then it is the
time to ask, "What's the matter with me," and to get expert
opinion on the subject.
These two emotions are in more need of rationalizing and
intelligent control than the other emotions, for they are more
explosive. Certainly of anger it is truly said that "He who is
master of himself is greater than he who taketh a city." The
angry man is disliked, he arouses unpleasant feelings, he is
unpopular and a nuisance and a danger in the view of his fellows.
The underlying idea underneath courtesy and social regulations is
to avoid anger and humiliation. Controversial subjects are
avoided, and one must not brag or display concern because these
things cause anger and disgust. Politeness and tact are essential
to turn away wrath, to avoid that ego injury that brings anger.
We contrast with the brusque type, careless of whether he arouses
anger, the tactful, which conciliates by avoiding prejudice, and
which hates force and anger as unpleasant. Against the quick to
anger there is the slow type, whose anger may be enduring. We may
contrast egoistic anger with the altruistic and oppose the anger
which is effective with the anger that disturbs reason and
judgment; intellectual anger against brute anger. Rarely do men
show anger to their superiors; extreme provocation and
desperation are necessary. Men flare up easily against equals but
more easily and with mingled contempt against the inferior.
Anger, though behind the fighting spirit, need not bluster or
storm; usually that is a "worked up" condition intended in a
naive way to frighten and intimidate, or through disgust, to win
a point. Anger is not necessarily courage, which replaces it the
higher up one goes in culture.
8. Disgust, also a primary emotion, is one of the basic reactions
of life and civilization. Literally "disagreeable taste," its
facial expression, with mouth open and lower lip drawn down,[1]
is that preliminary to vomiting. We eject or retract when
disgusted; we are not afraid nor are we angry. We say "he--or
she, or it--makes me sick," and this is the stock phrase of
disgust. Inelegant as it is, it exactly expresses the situation.
Disgust easily mingles with fear and anger; it is often dispelled
by curiosity and interest, as in the morbid, as in medical
science, and it of ten displaces less intense curiosity and
interest.
[1] See Darwin's "The Expression of Emotions in Man and Animals,"
--a great book by a great man.
After anything has been accepted as standard in cleanliness, a
deviation in a "lower" direction causes disgust. Those who are
accustomed to clean tablecloths, clean linen are disgusted by
dirty tablecloths, dirty linen. The excreta of the body have been
so effectively tabooed, in the interest perhaps of sanitation,
that their sight or smell is disgusting, and they are used as
symbols of disgust in everyday language. Indeed, the so-called
animal functions have to be decorated and ceremonialized to avoid
disgust. We turn with ridicule and repugnance from him who eats
without "manners" and one of the functions of manners is to avoid
arousing disgust.
Disgust kills desire and passion, and from that fact we may trace
a large part of moral progress. Satiety brings a slight disgust;
thus after a heavy meal there may be contentment but the sight of
food is not at all appealing and often enough rather repelling.
In the sex field, a deep repulsion is often felt when lust alone
has brought the man and woman together or when the situation is
illegal or unhallowed. With satisfaction of desire, the
inhibiting forces come to their own, and the violence of
repentance and disgust may be extreme. Stanley Hall, Havelock
Ellis and other writers lay stress on this; and, indeed, one of
the bases of asceticism is this disgust. Further, when we have no
desires or passion, the sight of others hugging and kissing, or
acting "intimate" in any way, is usually disgusting, an offense
against "good taste" based on the "bad taste" it arouses in the
observer. In memory we are often disgusted at what we did in the
heat of desire, but usually memory itself does not prevent us
from repeating the act; desire itself must slacken. Thus the old
are often intensely disgusted at the conduct of the young, and it
is never wise for a young couple to live with older people. For
in the early days of married life the intensity of the intimate
feelings needs seclusion in order to avoid disgusting others. It
is no accident that Dame Grundy is depicted as an elderly person
with a "sour look"; her prudishness has an origin in disgust at
that which she has outlived. Sometimes the old are wise--not
often enough--and then their humor, love and sympathy keeps them
from disgust.
Love counteracts disgust. The young girl who turns in loathing
from uncleanliness finds it easy and a pleasure to care for her
soiled baby. In fact, tender feeling of any kind overcomes--or
tends to overcome--disgust; and pity, the tenderest of all
feelings and without passion, impels us to march into the very
jaws of disgust. The angry may have no pity,--but they are not
less unkind in commission than the disgusted are unkind in
omission. Thus a too refined breeding leads people away from
effective pity and that sturdiness of conduct which is real
philanthropy. Indeed, too much of refinement increases the number
of disgusting things in the world; he who must have this or that
luxury is not so much pleased with it as disgusted without it.
Raising standards in things material cannot increase the
happiness or contentment of the world, for it merely makes men
impatient and disgusted at lesser standards. We cannot hope to
increase happiness through the material improvements of
civilization.
Self-disgust and shame are not identical but are so kindred that
shame may well be studied here. Shame is lowered self-valuation,
brought on by social or self-disapproval. Usually it is acute
and, like fear, it tends to make the individual hide or fly. It
is based on insight, and there are thus some who are never
ashamed, simply because they do not understand disapproval. Shame
is essentially a feeling of inferiority, and when we say to a
man, "Shame on you," we say, "You have done wrong, humble
yourself, be little!" When we say, "I am ashamed of you," we say,
"I had pride in you; I enlarged myself through you, and now you
make me little." When the community cries shame, it uses a force
that redresses wrong by the need of the one addressed to
vindicate himself. When a man feels shame he feels small,
inferior in his own eyes and in the eyes of others. He feels
impelled, if he is generous, to make amends or to do penance, and
thus he recovers his self-esteem. Unfortunately, shame arises
more frequently and often more violently from a violation of
custom and manner than from a violation of ethics or morals. Thus
we are more ashamed of the so-called "bad break" than of our
failures to be kind. Sometimes our fellow feeling is so strong
that we avoid seeing any one who is humiliated or embarrassed,
because sympathy spreads his feeling to us. Gentle people are
those who dislike to shame any one else, and often one of this
type will endure being wronged rather than reprimand or cause
humiliation and shame. Let something be said to shame any member
of a company and a feeling of shame spreads through the group,
except in the case of those who are very hostile.
Disgust, too, is extremely contagious, especially its
manifestations. One of the most crude of all manifestations, to
spit upon some one, is a symbol taken from disgust, though it has
come to mean contempt, which is a mixture of hatred and disgust.
To raise the tastes and not raise the acquisitions is a sure way
to bring about chronic disgust, which is really an angry
dissatisfaction mixed with disgust. This type of reaction is very
common as a factor in neurasthenia. In fact, my motto is "search
for the disgust" in all cases of neurasthenia and "search for it
in the intimate often secret desires and relationships. Seek for
it in the husband-wife relationship, especially from the
standpoint of the wife." Women, we say, are more refined in their
feelings than men, which is another way of saying they are more
easily disgusted and therefore more easily injured. For disgust
is an injury, when chronic or too easily elicited, and is then a
sign and symbol of weakness.
Thus disgust is a great reenforcer of social taboo and custom, as
well as morality. Just as it fails to keep us from eating the
wrong kind of foods, so it may fail to keep us from the wrong
conduct. Like every emotion it is only in part adapted to our
lives, and in those people where it becomes a prominent emotion
it is a great mischief worker, subordinating life to finickiness
and hindering the growth of generous feeling.
9. We come to two opposite emotions, very readily considered
together. One of the linkings of opposites is in the connection
of Joy and Sorrow. Whether these are primary emotions or
outgrowths of Pleasure and Pain I leave to others. For Shand the
fact that Joy tends to prolong a situation in which it occurs
raises it into an active emotion.
Joy is perhaps the most energizing of the emotions for it tends
to express itself in shouts, smiles and laughter, dancing and
leaping. Sorrow ordinarily is quite the reverse and expresses
itself by immobility, bowed head and hands that shut out from the
view the sights of the world. There is, however, a quiet joy
called relief, which is like sailing into a smooth, safe harbor
after a tempestuous voyage; and there is an agitated grief, with
lamentation, the wringing of hands and self-punishment of a
frantic kind. Joy and triumph are closely associated, sorrow and
defeat likewise. There are some whose rivalry-competitive
feelings are so widespread that they cannot rejoice even at the
triumph of a friend, and a little of that nature is in even the
noblest of us. There are others who find sorrow in defeat of an
enemy, so widespread is their sympathy. This is the generous
victor. For the most of us youth is the most joyous period
because youth finds in its pleasures a novelty and freshness that
tend to disappear with experience. For the same reason the sorrow
of youth, though evanescent, is unreasoning and intense.
Joy and sorrow are reactions and they are noble or the reverse,
according to the nature of the person. Joy may be noble,
sensuous, trivial or mean; many a "jolly" person is such because
he has no real sympathy. At the present time not one of us could
rejoice over anything could we SEE and sympathize deeply with the
misery of Europe and China, to say nothing of that in our own
country. Nay, any wrong to others would blast all our pleasure,
could we really feel it. Fortunately only a few are so cursed
with sympathy. When the capacity for joyous feeling is joined
with fortitude or endurance, then we have the really cheerful,
who spread their feeling everywhere, whom all men love. Where
cheerfulness is due to lack of sympathy and understanding, we
speak of a cheerful idiot; and well does that type merit the
name. There is a modern cult whose followers sing "La, la, la" at
all times and places, who minimize all misfortune, crime,
suffering, who find "good in everything,"--the "Pollyana" tribe.
My objection to them is based on this,--that mankind must see
clearly in order to rid itself of unnecessary suffering. Hiding
one's head (and brains) in a desert of optimism merely
perpetuates evil, even though one sufferer here and there is
deluded into happiness.
Sorrow may enrich the nature or it may embitter and narrow it.
Wisdom may spring from it; indeed, who can be wise who has not
sorrowed? Says Goethe:
"Wer nie sein Brot in Thranen ass
Wer nie die kummervollen Nachte
Auf seinem Bette weinend sass
Er weiss Euch nicht--himmelischen Machte."
The afflicted in their sorrow may turn from self-seeking to God
and good deeds. But sorrow may come in a trivial nature from
trivial causes; the soul may be plunged into despair because one
has been denied a gift or a pleasure. The demonstrativeness of
grief or sorrow is not at all in proportion to the emotion felt;
it is more often based on the effort to get sympathy and help.
For sorrow is "Help, help" in one form or another, even though
one refuses to be comforted. All our emotions, because they are
socially powerful, become somewhat theatrical; in some completely
theatrical. We are so constituted that emotional display is not
indifferent to us; it pleases, repels, annoys, angers, frightens,
disgusts or awes us according to the kind of emotion displayed,
the displayer and the circumstances.
The psychologists speak of sympathy as this susceptibility to the
emotions of others, but there is an antipathy to their emotions,
as well. If we feel that our emotions will be "well received," we
do not fear to display them, and therein is one of the uses of
the friend. If we feel that they will be poorly received, that
they will annoy or anger or disgust, we strive to repress them.
The expression of emotion, especially of fear and sorrow, has
become synonymous with weakness, and a powerful self-feeling
operates against their display, especially in adults, men and
certain races. It is no accident that the greatest actors are
from the Latin and Hebrew races, for there is a certain
theatricality in fear and sorrow that those schooled to
repression lose. We resent what we call insincerity in emotional
expression because we fear being "fooled," and there are many
whose experiences in being "fooled" chill sympathy with doubt. We
resent insincere sympathy, on the other hand, because we regret
showing weakness before those to whom that weakness is regarded
as such and who perhaps rejoice at it as ridiculous. We like the
emotional expression of children because we can always
sympathize, through our tender feeling with them, and their very
sincerity pleases as well.
Is there a harm in the repression of emotion?[1] Is emotion a
heaped-up tension which, unless it is discharged, causes damage?
Shall man inhibit his anger, fear, joy, sorrow, disgust, at least
in some measure, or shall he express them in gesture, speech and
act? The answer is obvious: he must control them, and in that
term control we mean, not inhibition, not expression in its naive
sense, but that combination of inhibition, expression and
intelligent act we call adjustment. To express fear in the face
of danger or anger at an offense might thwart the whole life's
purpose, might bring disaster and ruin. The emotions are poor
adjustments in their most violent form, their natural form, and
invite disaster by clouding the intelligence and obscuring
permanent purposes. Therefore, they must be controlled. To
establish this control is a primary function of training and
intelligence and does no harm unless carried to excess. True,
there is a relief in emotional expression, a wiping out of sorrow
by tears, an increase of the pleasure of joy in freely laughing,
a discharge of anger in the blow or the hot word, even the
profane word. There is a time and a place for these things, and
to get so "controlled" that one rarely laughs or shows sadness or
anger is to atrophy, to dry up. But the emotional expression
makes it easy to become an habitual weeper or stormer, makes it
easy to become the over-emotional type, whose reaction to life is
futile, undignified and a bodily injury. For emotion is in large
part a display of energy, and the overemotional rarely escape the
depleted neurasthenic state. In fact, hysteria and neurasthenia
are much more common in the races freely expressing emotion than
in the stolid, repressed races. Jew, Italian, French and Irish
figure much more largely than English, Scotch or Norwegian in the
statistics of neurasthenia and hysteria.
[1] Isador N. Coriat's book, "The Repression of Emotions" deals
with the subject from psychoanalytic. point of view.
10. I have said but little on other emotions,--on admiration,
surprise and awe. This group of affective states is of great
importance. Surprise may be either agreeable or disagreeable and
is our reaction to the unexpected. Its expression, facially and
of body, is quite characteristic, with staring eyes and mouth
slightly open, raised eyebrows, hands hanging with fingers
tensely spread apart, so that a thing held therein is apt to
drop. Surprise heightens the feeling of internal tension, and in
all excitement it is an element, in that the novel brings
excitement and surprise, whereas the accustomed gives little
excitement or surprises. In all wit and humor surprise is part of
the technique and constitutes part of the pleasure. Surprise
usually heightens the succeeding feeling, whether of joy, sorrow,
anger, fear, pleasure or pain, or in any form. But sometimes the
effect of surprise is so benumbing that an incapacity to feel, to
realize, is the most marked result and it is only afterward that
the proper emotion or feeling becomes manifest.
The reaction to the unexpected is an important adjustment in
character. There are situations beyond the power of any of us
quickly to adjust ourselves to and we expect the great
catastrophe to surprise and overwhelm. Nevertheless, we judge
people by the way they react to the unexpected; the man who
rallies quickly from the confusion of surprise is, we say,
"cool-headed," keeps his wits about him; and the man who does not
so rally or adjust "loses his head,"--"loses his wits." Part of
this cool-headedness is not only the rallying from surprise but
also the throwing off of fear. A warning has for its purpose,
"Don't be surprised!" and training must teach resources against
the unexpected. "If you expect everything you are armed against
half the trouble of the world." The cautious in character
minimize the number of surprises they may get by preparing. The
impulsive, who rarely prepare, are always in danger from the
unforeseen. Aside from preparation and knowledge, there is in the
condition of the organism a big factor in the reaction to the
unexpected. Fatigue, neurasthenia, hysteria and certain depressed
conditions render a man more liable to react excessively and
badly to surprise. The tired soldier has lessened resources in
wit and courage when surprised, for fatigue heightens the
confusion and numbness of surprise and decreases the scope of
intelligent conduct. Choice is made difficult, and the
neurasthenic doubt is transformed to impotence by surprise.
Face to face with what is recognized as superior to ourselves in
a quality we hold to be good, we fall into that emotional state,
a mingling of surprise and pleasure, called admiration. In its
original usage, admiration meant wonder, and there is in all
admiration something of that feeling which is born in the
presence of the superior. The more profound the admiration, the
greater is the proportion of wonder in the feeling.
We find it difficult to admire where the competitive feeling is
strongly aroused, though there are some who can do so. It is the
essence of good sportsmanship, the ideal aimed at, to admire the
rival for his good qualities, though sticking fast to one's
confidence in oneself. The English and American athletes, perhaps
also the athletes of other countries, make this part of their
code of conduct and so are impelled to act in a way not entirely
sincere. Wherever jealousy or envy are strongly aroused,
admiration is impossible, and so it comes about that men find it
easy to praise men in other noncompetitive fields or for
qualities in which they are not competing. Thus an author may
strongly admire an athlete or a novelist may praise the
historian; a beautiful woman admires another for her learning,
though with some reservation in her praise, and a successful
business man admires the self-sacrificing scientist, albeit there
is a little complacency in his approval.
He is truly generous-hearted who can admire his competitor. I do
not mean lip-admiration, through the fear of being held jealous.
Many a man joins in the praise of one who has outstripped him,
with envy gnawing at his heart, and waits for the first note of
criticism to get out the hammer. "He is very fine--but" is the
formula, and either through innuendo, insinuation or direct
attack, the "subordinate" statement becomes the most sincere and
significant. But there are those who can admire their conqueror,
not only through the masochism that lurks in all of us, but
because they have lifted their ideal of achievement and character
higher than their own possibilities and seek in others the
perfection they cannot hope to have in themselves. In other
words, where competition is hopeless, in the presence of the
greatly superior, a feeling of humility which is really
admiration to the point of worship comes over us, and we can
glory in the quality we love. To admire is to recede the
ego-feeling, is to feel oneself in an ecstasy that becomes
mystical, and in that sense the contradiction arises that we feel
ourselves larger in a unification with the admired one.
Each age, each country, each group and each family set up the
objects and qualities for admiration, in a word, the ideals. Out
of these the individual selects his specialties in admiration,
according to his nature and training. All the world admires
vigor, strength, courage and endurance,--and these in their
physical aspects. The hero of all times has had these qualities:
he is energetic, capable of feats beyond the power of others, is
fearless and bears his ills with equanimity. Beauty, especially
in the woman, but also in man, has received an over-great share
of homage, but here "tastes differ." We have no difficulty in
agreement on what constitutes strength, and we have objective
tests for its measurement; but who can agree on beauty? What one
race prizes as its fairest is scorned by another race. We laugh
at the ideal of beauty of the Hottentot, and the physical
peculiarity they praise most either disgusts or amuses us. But
what is there about a white skin more lovely than a black one,
and why thrill over blue eyes and neglect the brown ones? What is
the rationale for the admiration of slimness as against
stoutness? Indeed, there are races who would turn with scorn from
our slender debutante[1] and worship their more buxom
heavy-busted and wide-hipped beauties. The only "rational" beauty
in face and figure is that which stands as the outer mask of
health, vigor, intelligence and normal procreative function. The
standards set up in each age and place usually arise from local
pride, from the familiar type. The Mongolian who finds beauty in
his slanting-eyed, wide-cheek boned, yellow mate has as valid a
sanction as the Anglo-Saxon who worships at the shrine of his
wide-eyed, straight-nosed blonde.
[1] The peasant type, greatly admired by the agricultural folk of
Central Europe, is stout and ruddy. This is a better ideal of
beauty than the lily-white, slender and dainty maid of the
cultured, who very often can neither work nor bear and nurse
children.
When we leave the physical qualities and pass to the mental we
again find a lack of agreement as to the admirable. All agree
that intelligence is to be admired, but how shall that
intelligence be manifested? In practice, the major part of the
world admires the intelligence that is financially and socially
successful, and the rich and powerful have the greatest share of
the world's praise. Power, strength, and superiority command
admiration, even from the unwilling, and the philosopher who
stands aloof from the world and is without real strength finds
himself admiring a crude, bustling fellow ordering men about.
True, we admire such acknowledged great intelligences as Plato,
Galileo, Newton, Pascal, Darwin, etc., but in reality only a
fragment of the men and women of any country know anything at all
about these men, and the admiration of most is an acceptance of
the authority of others as to what it is proper to admire.
Genuine admiration is in proportion to the intelligence and
idealism of the admirer. And there are in this country a thousand
intense admirers of Babe Ruth and his mighty baseball club to one
who pours out his soul before the image of Pasteur. You may know
a man (or woman) not by his lip-homage, but by what he genuinely
admires, by that which evokes his real enthusiasm and praise.
Judge by that and then note that the most constant admiration of
the women of our country goes out to actresses, actors,
professional beauties, with popular authors and lecturers a bad
second, and that of the men is evoked by prize fighters, ball
players and the rich. No wonder the problems of the world find no
solution, for it is only by fits and starts that men and women
admire real intelligence and real ability. The orator has more
admirers than the thinker, and this is the curse of politics; the
executive has more admirers than the research worker, and this is
the bane of industry; the entertainer is more admired than the
educator, and that is why Charlie Chaplin makes a million a year
and President Eliot received only a few thousand. The race and
the nation has its generous enthusiasms and its bursts of
admiration for the noble, but its real admiration it gives to
those whom it best understands. Fortunately the leaders of the
race have more of generosity and fine admiration than have the
mass they lead. Left to itself, the mass of the race limits its
hero-worship to the lesser, unworthy race of heroes.
The school histories, which should emphasize the admirable as
well as point out the reverse, have played a poor role in
education. The hero they depict is the warrior, and they fire the
hearts of the child with admiration and desire for emulation.
They say almost nothing of the great inventors, scientists and
philanthropists. The teaching of history should, above all, set
up heroes for the child to study, admire and emulate. "When the
half-gods go the gods arrive." The stage of history as taught is
cluttered with the tin-plate shedders of blood to the exclusion
of the greater men.[1]
[1] Plutarch's Lives are an example of the praise and place given
to the soldier and orator; and many a child, reading them, has
burned to be an Alexander or a Caesar. Wells' History, with all
its defects, pushes the "conquerors" to their real place as
enemies of the race.
When the object that confronts us is so superior, so vast, that
we sink into insignificance, then admiration takes on a tinge of
fear in the state or feeling of awe. All men feel awe in the
presence of strength and mystery, so that the concept of God is
that most wrapped up with this emotion, and the ceremonies with
which kings and institutions have been surrounded strike awe by
their magnificence and mystery into the hearts of the governed.
We contemplate natural objects, such as mountains, mighty rivers
and the oceans, with awe because we feel so little and puny in
comparison, and we do not "enjoy" contemplating them because we
hate to feel little. Or else we grow familiar with them, and the
awe disappears. The popular and the familiar are never awe-full,
and even death loses in dignity when one has dissected a few
bodies. So objects viewed by night or in gloom inspire awe,
though seen by day they are stripped of mystery and interest. To
the adolescent boy, woman is a creature to be regarded with
awe,--beautiful, strangely powerful and mysterious. To the
grown-up man, enriched and disillusioned by a few experiences,
woman, though still loved, is no longer worshiped.
Though the reverent spirit is admirable and poetic, it is not by
itself socially valuable. It has been played upon by every false
prophet, every enslaving institution. It prevents free inquiry;
it says to science, "Do not inquire here. They who believe do not
investigate. This is too holy a place for you." We who believe in
science deny that anything can be so holy that it can be
cheapened by light, and we believe that face to face with the
essential mysteries of life itself even the most assiduous and
matter-of-fact must feel awe. Man, the little, has probed into
the secrets of the universe of which he is a part. What he has
learned, what he can learn, make him bow his head with a
reverence no worshiper of dogmatic mysteries can ever feel.