It is under this form that the masters of the seventeenth century

had stated the question, and I take it up again, because this method

seems to me far superior to that of classifications, which has since

become prevalent. We know that Descartes admitted only six primary

passions: admiration, love, hatred, desire, joy, and sadness. “All

the others,” he says, “are composed of some out of these six, or

else they are different species of the same, and derived from

them;”[163] and he goes on to describe about forty. Spinoza admits

only three principal: desire, joy, and sadness, whence he deduces

the others, which, after eliminating some repetitions, amount to

forty-six. However, it is not very clearly shown by what method

these philosophers determine their primary passions; it seems as

though the criterion were their extremely general character, except

in the case of admiration. As for the other passions, they are

_deduced_, and in order to show this clearly, Spinoza always takes

care in his definitions to connect the primary with the derived

passion. Thus: “Fear is an ill-assured sadness, arising from the

idea of some past or future thing of which we are in some doubt as

to the result.” In short, their method is geometrical and deductive,

especially in the _Ethics_; but we can, with slight modifications,

adapt it to the exigencies of experimental psychology. Thus we have

determined the primary emotions by derivation, from the

chronological order of their appearance, not by their extremely

general character. As for the derivative emotions, we are about to

seek to determine the very various conditions of their genesis, not

by way of deduction, but by that of analysis or synthesis based on

observation, _i.e._, as far as possible by a genetic method. We have

elsewhere spoken of classification and the insurmountable

difficulties inherent in it; accordingly, the aim which we propose

to ourselves is not, given a composite emotion, to determine its

genus and species, but to know _from what primary emotion, and in

what manner, it is derived_.

Footnote 163:

_Traité des Passions_, sec. 69.

These natural methods of transition from the simple to the complex

seems to me capable of being ranged under three heads: (1)

evolution, (2) arrest of development, (3) composition (mixture and

combination). These three methods may act separately or conjointly;

the more complex emotions are usually the result of their

co-operation. We shall examine them in succession.

I.

The transition _by evolution_, complete or incomplete, is the

simplest and most general case. It consists, like all evolution, in

the passage from simplicity to complexity, from the undifferentiated

to the differentiated, from the lower to the higher. It depends on

the intellectual development, and is based on the law of

transference already described (Pt. I., chap. xii.), which is its

active and unconscious instrument. However feeble the development of

the emotions may be in any race or individual it is never entirely

wanting (idiots excepted), because the events of national and

individual life have always some variety and some changes of aspect,

which influence the emotional life.

It is convenient to distinguish two cases, according as the

evolution takes place in a homogeneous or a heterogeneous form.

I. _Evolution in homogeneous form._—The primary emotion remains

identical with itself, through the whole course of evolution; it

only increases in complexity. Here are some examples:[164]

-----

Footnote 164:

As all the emotions to be enumerated in this chapter have been

already—or are about to be—studied separately, they will only be

mentioned briefly, by way of example, and in order to illustrate

the work of the mind in the creation of composite forms.

-----

Æsthetic emotion has its origin in a surplus of activity expending

itself in a particular direction, under the influence of the

creative imagination; and it preserves this fundamental character

from the drawings scratched on flints by quaternary man, or the

symbolic dances of savages, through the classic ages, to the

quintessential refinements of the decadents. It is true that all are

not disposed to admit this: a person of delicate artistic

temperament, brought up in a very cultured environment, and suddenly

thrown into the midst of savage æsthetics, would deny any community

of nature, but in this he would be mistaken. Those centuries which

had no sense of evolution, of the continuity of development (the

seventeenth and eighteenth), could see nothing in the origin of art

but incomprehensible crudities, not worth notice. The transition

from simplicity to complexity took place through the accumulation of

knowledge, of ideas, and technical skill, and of causes or occasions

of new ways of feeling: thus were formed juxtaposed aggregates

acting by quality and quantity. This progress from simplicity to

complexity is seen better than anywhere else in the development of

the feeling for music, the most emotional of all the arts.

The religious sentiment is not of simple origin. It results: (1)

from the fusion of two primary emotions—fear, and love in the larger

sense (tender emotion); it is therefore a binary compound; (2) from

a process of evolution which we shall have to follow in detail and

which depends on intellectual conditions: predominance, first, of

images, then of inferior concepts, then of superior concepts. Here,

too, the continuity escapes the notice of many who do not see the

bond connecting fetichism with the most idealistic of religions. How

many travellers and ethnographers, after having ascertained the

existence, among a given tribe, of magic, amulets, funeral rites,

seriously affirm that these people are devoid of all religious

feelings! It is because for them complex and highly organised forms

are the only ones that count, and because they are accustomed to

think of religious feelings as formulated by the great established

religions.

II. _Evolution in heterogeneous form._—The primary feeling is

transformed to such a degree as to become unrecognisable, and can,

in many cases, only be recovered by laborious analysis. This case

resembles that of the morphological development of animals: the

forms of the adult give no hint of the forms of embryonic and fœtal

life.

The best example I can give is the genesis of the benevolent

emotions, which, however, will be more suitably placed in the next

chapter. We can, however, examine another case.

The instinct of conservation is, as we have seen, a collective term,

an abridged formula, used to designate the totality of particular

tendencies which assure the persistence of the individual, and one

of which, the craving for food, is fundamental. It manifests itself

in all its simplicity in most animals and in savage tribes who live,

strictly speaking, from day to day. Yet ants, bees, foxes, and many

other animals put aside a reserve store of food for future needs.

The human race has very rapidly acquired the habits of foresight and

care for the future, even while still in the savage stage and living

by hunting and fishing. With a nomadic or agricultural life, the

need of possession affirms itself more and more. As social progress

substitutes for exchanges in kind the use of the precious metals,

first in ingots, then as coined money, and later still, of paper

money, feeling follows the same course, transferring itself from

things to the values which represent them and the representations of

these values, in many cases with well-known tenacity; and we see

people who prefer illness to the expense of a cure, the risk of

being murdered to the unpleasantness of giving up their purses. So

that those values and signs of values which represent the

possibility of satisfying needs (food, clothes, lodging, etc.),

become in and for themselves a cause of desire and pleasure, and,

amassed as a security for life, remain useless—if, indeed, they do

not cause death. Avarice is a passion very well suited to illustrate

this evolution in heterogeneous form, which, in spite of a strictly

logical development, undergoes so many changes that its extreme

point seems the negation of its point of departure.

The feeling of strength, self-feeling in its positive form, is at

first, as we have seen, the consciousness of physical energy; but,

with the intellectual development, it radiates in different

directions, according to temperament and disposition. We can at

least note two very different directions: (1) an evolution in the

theoretical and purely individual sense, which leads a man to take

up all questions, examine and criticise everything, form an

independent opinion on every subject—in short, to have as his ideal

an absolute liberty of thought, without any sort of restriction; (2)

an evolution in the practical and social sense, extending one’s

power over things and men; the child who domineers over his

playmates may, at a later age, impose his personality on a party, a

nation, a number of nations (Cæsar, Napoleon). The quality of the

emotions felt in the two cases is very different; however, the

original source is common to both, the divergence is the effect of

character and intellectual evolution.

II.

The transformation of simple into derivative emotions, _by arrest of

development_, is of less frequent occurrence. While, in the

preceding case, there was a forward movement in a straight line,

intellectual evolution involving emotional evolution according to

the law of transference, here the mental process is more

complicated; it supposes an antagonism between two states of

consciousness, resolving itself into a compromise. There are, on the

one hand, emotional tendencies going in the direction of impulse; on

the other, images, ideas, intellectual states of all sorts acting by

way of arrest, so that the resultant emotion is composed at the same

time of movements and inhibitions of movement.

Except fear, all primary emotions imply tendencies to movement,

sometimes blind and violent, like natural forces. This is seen in

infants, animals, savages, the Barbarians of the first centuries of

our era as depicted by contemporary chroniclers; the passage of

emotion into action, good or bad, is instantaneous, rapid, and fatal

as a reflex movement.

Reflection is, by its nature, slow and inhibitory. How can an image

or a conception produce an arrest of movement? This is a very

obscure question, the psychological and physiological mechanism of

which has had but little light thrown on it; it is useless to treat

it here in a cursory manner; we need only remark that the arrest

exists as a matter of fact.

The intervention of this new factor, reflection, may result in two

ways. On the one hand, it may obstruct and finally suppress; thus a

passion kept in check ends, after various oscillations backward and

forward, in being altogether extinguished. The second is a

transformation or metamorphosis by arrest of development; the

passion is not extinguished, but it has changed its nature.

The biological sciences have familiarised us with the notion of

arrested development and the morphological modifications resulting

therefrom. We know that the parts of a living being are so closely

connected that none can change without involving a change on the

part of the others; such is the formula of the “Law of Organic

Correlations,” and it has its equivalent in the functional order.

The “compensation of development” exists beyond all doubt in

psychology, though it has not been as much studied as it deserves;

thus experience shows us that hypertrophy of certain faculties

entails as a consequence the hypertrophy or atrophy of certain

others.

I have previously (Chap. III.) mentioned hatred as an abortive form

of anger, the result of arrested development. I have only to add a

few supplementary remarks on the two antagonistic elements. One is

primary and tends to the partial or total destruction of the enemy,

attacking him in his own person or in that of his friends, in his

reputation, his honour, his interests. The other, made up of

reflection and calculation, consists in the representation of

consequences, in the fear of reprisals and of Divine or human laws.

Hence arises an emotional state comparable to the movement of a body

rotating on itself and incapable of passing certain limits; and it

must be admitted that the metamorphic process is here very

thorough-going, since many writers, so far from grasping the

affinities between hatred and anger, set up the former as a primary

emotion, the antithesis of love. Yet it is very clear that hatred,

by the inhibitory character peculiar to it, is not and cannot be a

primary emotion; it corresponds to a second stage. If it is objected

that we might as well assert that anger is the developed form of

hatred (_i.e._, that the latter is primary), and not hatred an

abortive form of anger, I should answer that this position is

inadmissible, because in experience we have no example of the

inhibitory form appearing _before_ the corresponding impulsive form.

What is primary is an instinctive, unconscious movement of retreat,

of aversion (in the etymological sense), but this is no more the

emotion of hatred than the instinctive and unconscious movement of

attraction is the emotion of love.

Resignation, with its varieties and gradations, is an abortive form

of grief. Its mode of expression has been described in detail by

Darwin (Chap. XI.). This state is the resultant of two currents: on

one side, moral pain, grief, which by itself and in its complete

form shows itself in prostration, tears, etc.; on the other hand, an

intellectual notion—that of the irreparable and irremediable, of the

futility of all efforts. The intellect has its teleology, which is

not that of feeling; if it prevails and asserts itself in the

consciousness, we shall have, after a period of oscillation, a fixed

state, in which the loss will be accepted and perceived in a

mitigated form.

Mystic, platonic, or intellectual love (there is no advantage in

distinguishing the exact shades expressed by these various epithets)

is, as we have seen, an abortive form of sexual love. Predominance

of the intellectual element, the conceived ideal; weakening of the

physiological and emotional manifestations and the organic erethism,

of the tendency to movements of contact and embrace, and everything

which constitutes emotion in its plenitude: such are its

characteristics. Here, more than elsewhere, the term “arrest of

development” is strictly accurate, because mystical love results,

not from a voluntary inhibition which mutilates or checks emotion,

but from an impotence on the part of emotion to develop its complete

form.

Experience furnishes the counterproof: let the antagonistic action

of reflection, or of the intellectual state—whatever it may

be—cease, and hatred will once more become anger, resignation grief,

or despair; mystical will change to sexual love, and the primitive

form reappears under the ruins of the derivative.

To sum up, all the emotions of this group whose genesis depends on

an arrest of development are reducible to a single formula:

_intellectualised emotions_, because the intellectual element

becomes dominant. We might also call them _attenuated_ emotions,

because they tend towards emotional weakening. The two contrary and

reciprocally dependent tendencies peculiar to this group, determine,

not a medium emotion, but a new form which, relatively to the

primary emotion, and to the general quantity of emotional life, is a

_loss_.

III.

Transformation _by composition_ is a general term including two

different cases: mixture and combination. This process consists of

additions, and can be thus formulated: When two or more intellectual

states coexist, each having its own peculiar emotional colouring,

there arises a complete emotional state; in other words,

intellectual complexity involves emotional complexity. If we compare

the primary emotions to the simplest perceptions of sight and

hearing, the complex emotions will correspond to the perception of

an extensive landscape or a symphony. It is thus formed by the

addition or fusion of binary, tertiary, quaternary compounds, and so

on, these terms implying the number of simple emotions which compose

them. The composition may be brought about in two ways, which we

shall distinguish by calling them respectively mixture and

combination, in the sense in which these words are employed by

writers on chemistry.

I. _Composition by mixture._—In the emotions derived from this

mental procedure, the constituent elements can be recovered from the

compound; they embrace without interpenetrating one another, and a

psychological analysis conducted with sufficient thoroughness is

able to determine and enumerate them. For greater clearness, I

distinguish two cases in the mixture of feelings.

(_a._) The elements are homogeneous or convergent. If they are

numerous, since they all tend in the same direction, the resultant

emotion will be of great intensity. We have found one example of

this in sexual love, an aggregate compound (according to Herbert

Spencer’s analysis) of physical attraction, æsthetic impressions,

sympathy, tenderness, admiration, self-love, love of approbation,

love of possession, and desire of liberty.

(_b._) The elements are heterogeneous or divergent. As an example I

take jealousy, which many authorities consider primary, perhaps

because it is manifested by animals and infants, which simply proves

that it is precocious,—quite a different thing. A contemporary

writer tries to define it by saying: “It is a morbid fear passing

from inert stupidity to active or passive rage.” I greatly prefer

Descartes’ definition: “Jealousy is a kind of fear related to the

desire we have of keeping some possession” (_Passions_, art. 167).

This passion deserves a monograph to itself, and one will certainly

be written when this style of work comes to be applied more

frequently to the psychology of the emotions. Our task at present is

not to study its gradations, from mild cases up to madness and

homicide, but to inquire into its composition. There is, firstly,

the representation of some good, possessed or denied—a pleasurable

element acting by way of excitement and attraction; and, secondly,

the idea of dispossession or privation (_e.g._, of the lover with

regard to his mistress, of the rejected candidate against his

fortunate rival, and in general, of any who fail against all who

succeed), an element of vexation which acts depressively; and,

thirdly, the idea of the real or imaginary cause of this

dispossession or privation, awakening, in various degrees, the

destructive tendency (anger, hatred, etc.). In the passive or inert

forms of jealousy this last element is very slight. This emotion is,

therefore, a binary compound.

We might further mention the religious sentiment (a binary

compound), the feeling of respect, composed of sympathy and a slight

degree of fear, and the moral sentiment, which we are about to

analyse in the next chapter.

I must remark that these derivative emotions, by reason of their

complexity, ought logically to show as many shades of variety as

they have constituent elements. In sexual love, where analysis

discovers at least ten tendencies, whether primary or not, the

predominance of one or more among these changes the aspect of the

emotion according to times and individuals. The instability of the

passions, of which we hear so much, is partly caused by their

composite character.

II. _Composition by combination._—The emotion resulting from this

mental procedure differs, in its nature and characteristics, from

its constituent elements, and appears in the consciousness as a new

product, an irreducible unit. Here the analysis, uncertain and

hazardous as it often is, cannot give us everything which we find in

the synthesis—a psychological case which has well-known equivalents

in chemistry.

A Danish psychologist, Sibbern, whom I believe to have been the

first to point out this mode of composition of the emotions under

the name of mixed sentiments, defines them as “Those in which the

disagreeable excites the agreeable, and _vice versâ_, so that one is

not antecedent to the other, but both act simultaneously, and the

disappearance of the one involves the disappearance of the

other.”[165] In fact, there is not merely coexistence, but

reciprocity of action; if you suppress a single term the emotion

changes its nature, as we shall see by the following examples.

-----

Footnote 165:

Sibbern’s _Psychologie_ (1856), having been published in Danish,

is only known to me through extracts quoted by his compatriots,

Höffding (_Psychologie_, 2nd German ed., pp. 330, 331) and Lehmann

(_Hauptgesetze_, pp. 247 _et seq._). These two authors may also be

consulted with advantage on this question.

-----

In the emotion accompanying all forms of activity in which we _seek_

great difficulties to overcome, or risks to run (as in hunting wild

animals, dangerous mountain climbing, exploring expeditions, etc.),

if we suppress the unknown element, the risk, the danger, there is

no longer any attraction. If we suppress this attraction and its

accompanying pleasure we have nothing left but fear or disgust. This

particular emotion exists only through the interdependence of its

various elements. It can be produced in a modified form, but without

changing its nature, in the spectators of bull-fights, wild beast

tamers, violent struggles, and thrilling dramas, and in a lesser

degree by mere recitation or reading.

I have already mentioned melancholy (in the ordinary, not the

medical sense) as one form of the luxury of grief. It implies the

calling up of pleasant states, past or distant, _plus_ a state of

present sadness which surrounds them. Suppress one or other of these

elements and the melancholy vanishes. If the pleasurable element,

however slight, disappears, nothing remains but grief pure and

simple. In this combination sometimes the one element predominates,

sometimes the other, and the resultant feeling receives a special

emotional _timbre_, as the case may be.

The feeling of the sublime is usually considered as a form of the

æsthetic sentiment, and we shall have to return to it later on.

Whatever it may have for its object—whether the spectacle of sullen

glaciers, of a boundless desert, or of a man who throws himself

recklessly into some great act of self-devotion,—it is composed of

discordant elements fused into a single synthesis: (1) a painful

feeling of oppression, of lowered vitality, of annihilation, which

drags us down and depresses us; (2) the consciousness of an upward

rush, of unfolded energy, of an inward lifting up, of an increase of

vital power; (3) the conscious or unconscious feeling of security in

presence of a formidable power. Without the last-named the emotion

would change its nature, and we should feel fear. These three

co-existent and interdependent elements enter collectively into the

consciousness, and present themselves to it as an irreducible unit.

Höffding (_op. cit._, p. 407) gives humour as an example of a

combination, or, as he calls it, a mixed feeling. He defines it as

“the sentiment of the ridiculous based on sympathy.” This state

consists in seeing simultaneously and indissolubly the petty side of

great events and the great side of the most trivial things. It is

the synthesis of two antithetic elements: the destructive and

contemptuous laugh which makes us feel ourselves superior; and the

indulgence, pity, and compassion which place us on a footing of

equality with others. This emotional manifestation may be simply a

passing whim, or it may be a permanent trait of character, a

peculiar manner of understanding nature and human life, striking an

average between optimism, which finds everything too bright, and

pessimism, which sees the ugly side of everything. The school of

“irony,” which, with Solger, Schlegel, and others, played its part

in German æsthetics at the opening of this century, proposed

humour—negative and destructive in form, positive and constructive

in reality—as its fundamental principle in the interpretation of the

universe.

I am inclined to place in this group an emotional state which has

given rise to many dissertations and discussions—I mean modesty. I

look upon it as a binary compound capable of being resolved into two

primary emotions: self-feeling and fear. Whatever may be thought of

this explanation, the subject is worth the trouble of a little

examination; it could scarcely be omitted from a treatise on the

psychology of the feelings.

There is no lack of documents respecting the manifestations of

modesty among different peoples; they may be found in the narratives

of travellers, and in works on anthropology and ethnology. The

psychological question of its nature and origin has been treated by

Spencer, Sergi, James, Mantegazza, to mention contemporary writers

only. The last-named even gives us a definition of it: “Modesty is

physical self-respect.”

It has a physical mode of expression peculiar to it, or at least

only met with in the emotions related to modesty (shame, timidity,

shyness), viz., the sudden redness of the face due to momentary

paralysis of the vaso-constrictor nerves. We know Darwin’s ingenious

explanations of this point: a person who thinks others are looking

at him directs his attention to his own face, whence results a flow

of blood towards that part. These explanations are now rejected. The

experiments of Mosso and others on the circulation of the blood

rather justify the view taken by Wundt, who sees in the momentary

relaxation of the vaso-motor innervation, causing the redness of the

face, a compensation for the accelerated pulsations of the heart,

produced by emotion.

Besides this special mode of expression, modesty shows itself by

concentric, defensive movements, by a tendency to cover or disguise

certain parts of the body. The means employed to this end are of the

most various description, according to race, country, or period:

some hide the whole body, some the sexual parts only, or the face,

or the bosom, some paint the body, or the face, etc. It is

impossible to determine the exact part played in this diversity by

circumstances, climatic conditions, the association of ideas,

compulsion, fashion, imitation, and even chance.

So far as psychology is concerned, it is especially the question of

origin which has been discussed: Is modesty an instinct? is it

innate or acquired, primary or derived? Some writers, rather

carelessly, assume that it is an instinct, on no other evidence than

its quasi-universal character, which they deduce, legitimately

enough, from its multiple manifestations. Most, however, adopt the

contrary opinion, alleging the example of children, and of certain

primitive races who seem totally devoid of it. This second view

seems the more tenable, though it is difficult to find a categoric

solution which is free from objections. Modesty, being an

ego-altruistic feeling (and the same applies to shame and shyness),

presupposes some degree of reflection.

The conditions of its origin are little understood. H. Spencer, and,

after him, Sergi, maintain that it results from the habit of wearing

clothes, which began with men (not with women) from motives of

ostentation and ornament. There are tribes where both sexes go

naked, others where clothing is the privilege of the male sex:

immodesty would thus be, in its origin, a lack of æsthetic feeling.

Exclusively appropriated, at first, to the male sex, the feeling of

modesty would then have transferred itself to the other. This

explanation seems very precarious, not to mention the theory

incidentally implied, that the feeling is not stronger in women than

in men.[166]

-----

Footnote 166:

Sergi, _Piacere e Dolore_, pp. 210 _et seq._

-----

W. James proposes another, which is less simple, but more

acceptable.[167] Briefly, it is this: The emotional state which lies

at the root of modesty, shame, and other similar manifestations,

arises from the application in the second instance to ourselves of a

judgment primarily passed upon others. The sight of certain parts of

the body, and the ideas which they suggest, inspire repulsion, and

“it is not easy to believe that even among the nakedest savages an

unusual degree of cynicism and indecency in an individual should not

beget a certain degree of contempt, and cheapen him in his

neighbours’ eyes.” (In our opinion, this psychological state

approximates to disgust, of which we have already seen the causes

and the significance.) What is repugnant to us in others must be

repugnant to them in us: whence the habit of covering certain parts

and concealing certain bodily functions. Modesty cannot be

considered an instinct in the strict sense of the word, _i.e._, as

an excito-motor phenomenon. Under the influence of custom, public

opinion, civilisation, it passes through its evolution, till it

reaches “the New England pitch of sensitiveness and range, making us

say stomach instead of belly, limb instead of leg, retire instead of

go to bed, and forbidding us to call a female dog by name” (James,

ii. p. 437).

-----

Footnote 167:

W. James, _Psychology_, ii. pp. 435-437.

-----

Taken as a whole, this emotion approximates most by its external

symptoms to fear. It also contains elements derived from

self-feeling. Must we add other elements derived from the

sex-instinct? This is only admissible in certain cases. In short,

its composition is variable. We cannot consider it as instinctive,

primitive, innate. On the other hand, analysis cannot clearly

resolve it into its constituent parts; we are inclined to see in it

a particular case of mental synthesis, a combination.

To conclude, with regard to the emotions formed by combination:—

They are based on an association of intellectual states, which is,

in most cases, an association by contrast.

They presuppose a fusion, in varying proportions, of agreeable and

disagreeable states, which justly entitles them to be called mixed

emotions.

The whole differs from the sum of its constituent elements.

Analysis ascertains and isolates these elements, but cannot boast of

having discovered them all.

CHAPTER VIII.

THE SOCIAL AND MORAL FEELINGS.

_Origin of the Social Feelings—Animal societies—Nutritive

societies—The individual and society—Domestic societies—Social

instinct has its source neither in sexual nor in maternal

love—Gregarious societies—Attraction of like for like—Origin of

social tendencies—Accidental and transitory unions, of variable

duration, and voluntary—The social tendencies arise from the

conditions of existence—Social life does not spring from

domestic life—The higher societies among animals: they exclude

family relations—Human societies—Two opposite theories of

their origin: the family, the horde—Evolution of the

family—Evolution of social life—The family and the clan not

similar institutions—The moral sense. Two views of its origin:

(a) the intellectual, (b) the emotional—They correspond to two

stages in its development—Its innateness and its necessity

belong to the motor, not the intellectual order—Genesis of

the benevolent feeling. Psychological analysis of its

generative elements. Facts in support of this—Discoverers in

morality—Genesis of the sense of justice—Phases of its

development—Conclusion: complexity of the moral sense—Pathology.

Elimination of the questions of criminal anthropology. Moral

insensibility._

At the moment of beginning the study of the composite emotions which

have had the most brilliant career, and played the most important

part in human life, it will be well to indicate the course which

will be followed, once for all. We cannot, in dealing with the

social, moral, religious, æsthetic and intellectual sentiments,

discuss the numerous questions which they suggest, and so lose

ourselves in endless details. The allotted task of psychology seems

to me to be quite clearly defined—viz., to take each feeling _at its

origin_ and try to determine its nature and follow its development,

in its principal phases, by the help of the documents supplied to us

by ethnology, and the history of morals, of religions, and of

æsthetic and scientific culture, thus avoiding vagueness and _a

priori_ reasoning, without losing our way in an inextricable tangle

of facts.

In conformity with this plan, we shall begin with the simplest forms

of the social instinct in animals, passing from them to man, and

thence to the evolution of moral tendencies.

Even if we admit the transformist hypothesis, zoological evolution

has not proceeded in a straight line. This point, it is true, is

contested, but it is all the more important to remember, because the

development of the organisation and that of the social instincts do

not always go on _pari passu_. Thus the social aptitudes of ants and

bees are far superior to those of certain mammals considered of a

far higher type of organisation. Without troubling ourselves,

therefore, about the frequent disagreements between zoological

taxinomy and sociological psychology, we shall follow the ascending

march of the social instinct, no matter in what order or class or at

what point of the genealogical tree it shows itself.

We thus find four principal forms of animal societies: at the lowest

stage, those founded on nutrition; further on, those based on

reproduction; then, unstable, gregarious societies; and finally,

societies with a stable and complete organisation.[168] Some special

question will be put with regard to each of them, so as to show us

the social question under some one particular aspect.

-----

Footnote 168:

For the general study of this question see Espinas, _Les Sociétés

Animales_, 2nd ed. (1878), and Ed. Perrier, _Les Colonies

Animales_.

-----

“The idea of a society,” says Espinas, “is that of permanent

co-operation between separate living beings, engaged in the same

action” (_op. cit._, p. 157). The character of permanence even is

not necessary for the inferior forms; there are temporary societies

differing _in toto_ from those heterogeneous, fortuitous, momentary

aggregates which we call crowds. Reciprocity and solidarity are the

two fundamental conditions, a fact which excludes from human and

animal societies two forms somewhat approximating to them:

parasites, in whose case there is no reciprocity, and who show a

modified form of the struggle for life; and messmates, where

community of life, though it involves no injurious action, likewise

implies no helpful one.

I. In animal societies founded on nutrition, it is this function

which constitutes the social tie; the individuals composing it are

attached to one another in a permanent manner, from their birth

onwards, and the nutritive liquid circulates from one to another,

thus establishing a material community. It is found in the hydroid

polypes, the Bryozoa and the Tunicata. As examples of the superior

forms, we may quote the hydractinia, composed of individuals each of

which has its own special and exclusive function: some, that of

feeding; others, that of feeling and exploring; others, of defending

the colony; others, again, of reproducing it—the last-named being

divided into males and females. The siphonophora present an

analogous division of labour, and the community, over a metre in

length, suspended to a floating bladder, executes well co-ordinated

collective movements.

Is there—at any rate in the higher forms of these colonies—a social

instinct? Solidarity and reciprocity can indeed be perceived, in an

objective, material way, in the form of adherence, and vascular

communication; but nothing proves that there is anything more than

an _organic_ solidarity and reciprocity. Perhaps, in circumstances

such as the nautical manœuvres just mentioned, in which a general

obedience to one directing individual has been ascertained, there is

a momentary consent—a certain unity of representation. To be

accurate, the terms individual and community are diverted from their

ordinary acceptation and used in an equivocal sense. Our notion of

the individual is that of an organised whole living independently by

itself: this no longer corresponds to the present case. Our notion

of a community is an assemblage of individuals, and as these are, in

the case under consideration, of a peculiar nature, it might thus be

contended with equal force that these aggregates deserve, or that

they do not deserve, the name of animal communities: it is a

question of the point of view. On the one hand, one may regard the

hydractinia or the siphonophora as a complex individual whose organs

are the fishing, the piloting, the reproductive, etc., individuals.

On the other hand, it may be maintained that the food-providers,

pilots, etc., are true individuals whose aggregation forms a

society. In short, it is an undifferentiated state, in which

individuals and community are hardly to be distinguished from one

another, and are only two different aspects of the same whole. The

social instinct, also, if existing at all, is not yet differentiated

from the conservative instinct under its simplest forms—the search

for food, defence, attack. In fact, the two coincide. This stage has

nothing more to teach us. Let us now pass on to social forms whose

psychology is clearer.

II. These are the societies founded on reproduction—domestic

societies, or families, under their various forms. I prefer to begin

with these rather than with the gregarious state; first, on account

of their universality; then because they are the first to appear in

chronological order. Common opinion finds in them the first

manifestation of the social sentiments, their origin, their source,

and their moment of entry into the world. I reject this view in

order to adopt that which connects the social instinct with the

gregarious state.

If we take, one after another, the conditions of every aggregate

founded on reproduction, we shall find three stages: that of

sexual approach, that of maternal love, and lastly, but in the

case of animals only exceptionally, paternal love. The social

instinct—_i.e._, the more or less vague consciousness of at least

a temporary solidarity and reciprocity—does not, as we shall see,

make its appearance at any of these stages.

1. Sexual approach results from one particular instinct; it unites

two individuals only: can we consider it as the embryo of a society?

“Around sexuality are co-ordinated the altruistic instincts of which

the animal is capable.” This formula of Littré’s needs defining with

more precision. First, in the immense majority of cases the

connection is not lasting; the blind instinct satisfies itself, and

all is over. Higher up there are more permanent forms, such as

polygamy and polyandry; but these small communities founded on

sex-attraction are closed, and have no power of radiation or

extension, no future. Higher still we find monogamy, as among

wolves, many birds, etc.; but the monogamic aggregate is still more

of a close corporation than the others. Let us note, in passing,

that these two forms, polygamy and monogamy, are distributed through

the animal world in an apparently fortuitous manner, having no

relation to the intellectual development—as, for instance, the

monogamy of the stork and the polygamy of the monkey.

Finally, this first stage yields us no result, tending rather

towards social restriction than social extension.

2. Maternal love is of much greater importance. In domestic

societies it is the universal and permanent element, the vital bond.

This emotion is so widespread, so well known, we might say so trite,

that it seems to involve no mystery, and yet, if we descend into

animal psychology, we find nothing more enigmatical. The development

of sympathy and intelligence partly explains it in the human species

and the higher animals; but in the lower orders the difficulty

becomes extreme. Yet it shows itself among the annelids, the

crustacea, the mollusca, and even the echinoderms, which carry their

eggs about adhering to their bodies. Frequently it shows itself as a

feeling which, though vague, is tenacious, devoted, heroic. We do

not indicate all the difficulties of the question, as for instance:

How can an insect take such care of its eggs when it cannot

recognise its own form in a creature which in nowise resembles

itself, and has not even a living form?[169]

-----

Footnote 169:

For a detailed study of this question see Espinas, _Les Sociétés

Animales_ (2nd ed.), pp. 334 _et seq._, 411 _et seq._, 444 _et

seq._

-----

Most naturalists content themselves with ascertaining the fact,

without inquiring into its origin. Darwin declares that it is

useless to speculate on this subject. Others connect maternal

affection with parasitism—scarcely a legitimate hypothesis, since

the parasite is the enemy of its host and lives against his will at

his expense. Romanes seems to have recourse to the principle of

serviceable variations; an animal which takes care of its eggs or

carries them about with it, has a better chance of preserving them;

and if this way of acting becomes a fixed habit in its descendants,

an instinct has been established. This explanation reduces itself to

chance and to the hereditary transmission—an open question—of

acquired modifications.

Excluding the insects and those analogous cases which, as Espinas

has shown (_op. cit._, pp. 334-339), require a special explanation,

it is preferable to admit, with this author and Bain, the prominent

part played by contact. “It seems to me that there must be at the

foundation that intense pleasure in the embrace of the young which

we find to characterise the parental feeling throughout. The origin

of the pleasure may be as purely physical as in the love of the

sexes; ... [there is] an initial satisfaction in the animal embrace,

heightened by reciprocation.”[170] “The female, at the moment when

she gives birth to little ones resembling herself, has no difficulty

in recognising them as the flesh of her flesh; the feeling she

experiences towards them is made up of sympathy and pity, but we

cannot exclude from it an idea of property which is the most solid

support of sympathy. She feels and understands up to a certain point

that these young ones which are herself at the same time belong to

her; the love of herself extended to those who have gone out from

her changes egoism into sympathy and the proprietary instinct into

an affectionate impulse. As sexual love implies the idea of mutual

ownership, so maternal love supposes that of subordinated ownership.

It is because this other self is so feeble that the interest felt

for it takes the form of pity.”[171] This last remark relates to an

emotional manifestation which Spencer regards as the source of

maternal love—tenderness for the _weak_. This seems to me rather one

of its elements than its sole basis. On the other hand, Bain

maintains that “an intensified attraction towards the weak is not

merely consistent with the gregarious situation, but seems to be

required by its varying exigencies.... An interest or solicitude

about weak members would be almost the necessary completion of the

social system” (Bain, _op. cit._, pp. 138, 139). This granted,

maternal love and social instinct would have an element in common,

but they nevertheless remain distinct and mutually independent.

-----

Footnote 170:

Bain, _The Emotions_, p. 140.

Footnote 171:

Espinas, _Les Sociétés Animales_, pp. 444 _et seq._

-----

I have insisted to some extent on maternal love, because it is one

of the most important manifestations of the emotional life. It is

clear that it belongs to the category of the tender emotions, of

which it is a well-determined form and remarkable by reason of its

intensity; but it is not the source of the social instinct, because

it implies neither solidarity nor reciprocity. It might be

maintained that it is the gate by which the feeling of benevolence

made its entrance into the world, and that its appearance is the

earliest in date; but other conditions are needed for the social

instinct to reveal itself.

3. The third stage, marked by the entrance of the father into the

domestic community, does not affect our conclusion. In the animal

world taken as a whole, paternal affection is rare and far from

permanent, and among the lower representatives of humanity the

feeling is a very weak one and the tie very loose. It exists,

however, and its origin is much more difficult to assign than in the

case of maternal love.[172] Though it may be maintained that in man

it originates in pride and the feeling of ownership (Bain), this

hypothesis is not applicable to animals; we cannot say, as in the

case of the mother, that there is a material and visible relation,

so that the offspring seems to be a separated portion of the parent.

It remains to establish the significance of sympathy for weakness,

as a primary cause of this feeling. We might add another element if

we admit, with Spencer, that the life in common of the father and

mother (paternal affection being only found where unions are

permanent) creates a current of affection in proportion to the

services rendered. Whatever origin we may assign to it, it adds

nothing to our discussion, and has no efficacity in arousing the

social instinct.

-----

Footnote 172:

For the theories on this matter see Espinas, pp. 401 _et seq._

-----

To sum up: what we find at the base of domestic aggregates is tender

emotion, the genesis of altruism, but restricted to a closed group,

without expansive force or elasticity.

III. The gregarious life—_i.e._, that of the animals who live in

troops or hordes—is founded on the attraction of like for like,

irrespective of sex, and for the first time manifests the true

social tendencies, through the habit of acting in common.

In its lowest degree it consists of accidental and unstable

assemblages which are, as it were, an attempt at life in common.

Every one knows that certain pelagic animals travel in vast numbers,

their course being determined by the temperature of the water or the

direction of the currents. We also know what happens in the

migrations of processionary caterpillars, of crickets, and more

especially of birds. Numerous species of animals assemble together

in the morning and evening to sing, utter their various cries,

pursue each other and gambol about, living dispersed at other times.

This shows, says Espinas, “a latent social tendency, always ready to

show itself when not combated by any other tendency.”

Higher still, we find assemblages of variable duration, but

voluntarily formed and maintained, in view of a common aim. They

have all the characteristics of a society—community of effort,

synergy, reciprocity of services. Darwin[173] has given many

examples of this: Pelicans fish in concert, and close in round their

prey like a living net; wolves and wild dogs hunt in packs, and help

each other to attack their victims. These communities are to some

extent accidental and unstable, and may come to an end in a final

competition for the sharing of the spoil. Much more stable are those

which have the common defence for their aim: rabbits warn one

another of danger; many mammals and birds place sentinels (it is

well known how difficult it is to approach a herd or drove of

animals); monkeys remove vermin or take out thorns from one

another’s skins, form a chain to cross the gap between two trees,

unite their forces to raise a heavy stone, and finally, gathered

into bands under the direction of a leader, they defend themselves

energetically and risk their lives to save their companions. We

might enumerate endless facts of this kind. No doubt, we have not

yet found the permanent organisation, the fixed division of labour,

the continuity, which are peculiar to the higher animal societies;

but the instability and intermittence of these social forms help us

to understand why they exist and whence they originate.

-----

Footnote 173:

_Descent of Man_, chap. iii. See also Espinas, _op. cit._, sec.

iv.

-----

Social tendencies are derived from sympathy; they arise in

determinate conditions. The facts already given supply the answer to

the questions: how do they arise? what is their source? They arise

from the nature of things, from the conditions of the animal’s

existence; they are not based on pleasure, but on the unconscious

affirmation of the will to live; they are auxiliary to the instinct

of conservation. Society, as Spencer justly remarks, is founded on

its own desire—_i.e._, on an instinct.

The gregarious life, as this writer has shown in detail,

predominates among the herbivora and graminivora, who, as a rule,

being ill armed for strife and finding food in abundance, find it to

their advantage to live in herds.

The contrary is the case with the carnivora; they are well armed,

and need ample space in which to hunt down their prey, so that it is

to their advantage to live in isolation, except in those cases

already mentioned, where they associate together for a difficult

chase, or for defence against a dangerous enemy.[174]

-----

Footnote 174:

Herbert Spencer, _Psychology_, ii. § 503 _et seq._

-----

We may add that there are animals which, as they find it to their

advantage or otherwise, live alternately in communities or isolated.

“Certain sociable birds in Australia build bowers of branches, where

they assemble in great numbers during the day. In pairing-time the

society is broken up, and each couple retires by itself to construct

its own separate nest. While the temporary families last there is no

longer any assemblage, nor any life in common; it only begins again

when the young are able to try their wings. This is only one of

numberless examples which might be mentioned.”[175]

-----

Footnote 175:

Houssay, _Revue philosophique_, May 1893, p. 487.

-----

In short, gregarious life depends on stature, strength, means of

defence, kind and distribution of food, and mode of propagation.

Derived from necessity, this habit of life in common creates a

solidarity which is not mechanical and external, but psychological:

the sight, the touch, the smell of his companions constitute in each

individual a part of his own consciousness, of which he feels the

want in its absence; the distressed state and the lamentations of an

animal separated by chance from the herd are well known.

Here a disputed question suggests itself. It has been already

settled by implication in the course of the statements already made,

but it cannot be thus treated retrospectively and merely in passing.

For the moment I may confine myself to indicating it. If we compare

family societies and gregarious societies, what relation is there

between them? We find ourselves in presence of two opinions or

theories—one in favour of unity, the other of duality.

The first, the most ancient and widespread, derives social life

from domestic life. The family is the social molecule: by its

increase are formed aggregates of a more or less complex

character, whose life in common creates a solidarity and an

exchange of services—_i.e._, the conditions of a community.

The second admits two groups of irreducible feelings and tendencies,

mutually independent, though there are points of contact. The social

instinct is not derived from the domestic feelings, while the latter

are not derived from the social feelings. They are distinct by

nature, having their respective sources in the attraction of like

for like, irrespective of sex, and in the sexual appetite and the

development of the tender emotions.

More than this: some writers, especially zoologists, have maintained

that there is not merely dualism but _antagonism_. When the feelings

of domestic life are strong, social solidarity is lax or

non-existent. When social solidarity is close and rigorous, the

family tendencies are transitory, effaced, or _nil_—_e.g._, in ants

and bees. The case of the Australian birds shows us this antagonism

in an alternating form, the domestic and the social tendency

predominating by turns. No doubt this antagonism is not irremediable

and is compatible with various modifications and compromises; but

there is, in fact, a dualism not to be explained away. I shall

return later on to this question, only remarking in anticipation

that the dualist view seems to me the only admissible one.

IV. The higher societies are those in which the animal world has

attained its loftiest degree of social development. In them we find

division of labour, solidarity, stability, and continuity through

several generations. Such are bees, wasps, ants, termites, beavers,

etc. It is not part of our subject to study them, since our only aim

is to follow the social tendencies to their highest point; but the

problem already suggested again arises: On what foundation do these

higher societies rest? Espinas, who admits the view of the family as

the source of social life, classes them among societies having

reproduction for their purpose. For my own part, I refer them to the

gregarious state, in which they mark the stage of the highest

perfection. Let me take this opportunity of pointing out the

inconveniences of a false position and the factitious difficulties

arising from it. The author draws out (pp. 370 _et seq._) a detailed

comparison between the societies of bees and those of ants; he

demonstrates the superiority of the latter, who, according to

circumstances, dig, carve, build, hunt, store up food, reap

harvests, keep slaves and cattle, and when they carry on war against

the wasps (the warlike representatives of the bees) gain the

victory. He also clearly shows that this superiority is due to their

terrestrial habits, in which every contact, every march, leaves them

a precise indication of the nature of their surroundings. But he

finds something perplexing in this superiority. As a matter of fact,

a hive is a perfect domestic society, since the queen-bee—_i.e._,

the common mother—is the visible soul of social life among the bees.

An ant-heap is imperfect, “inferior” as a domestic society, as

containing several females. The apparent contradiction disappears,

if we consider that in both cases, especially in the second, the

essential element is the solidarity among the members, the mutual

attraction between similar beings, and that, consequently, we must

refer them to the gregarious, and not to the domestic type. For the

rest, in neither case does the family, in the true sense of the

word, exist: it is needless to demonstrate this at length, it is

quite sufficient to note the absence of maternal love. And so

certain writers have made use of this argument—as I have already

said—to prove that such a high development of the social tendencies

has only been possible through the suppression of the family

tendencies.

II.

If we pass from animals to man, the situation remains the same, and

the tendency to social life, in spite of its manifold adaptations,

does not change its nature; it is always at bottom a solidarity and

a reciprocity of services, determined by the conditions of human

existence and variable as they. We need not come back to this; but

the question already hinted at—that of the relation between the

emotional manifestations serving as a basis to the family on the one

hand, and those which are the foundation of social life on the other

hand—presents itself anew. We cannot evade it, if we desire any

light on the origin of the social feelings.

If we assume the family as the primitive fact which, by its

increase, produced the clan, and afterwards, more complex

aggregates, such as tribes, connected with each other by the memory

of a common ancestor and at last subject to the authority of a

patriarch-king, the social development is simply an expansion of the

natural family. On this hypothesis, the domestic tendencies (founded

on reproduction) are primary; the social tendencies are derivative

and of secondary or tertiary formation.

If, on the contrary, we consider the smallest social groups (hordes,

clans, or whatever other name they may be called by) as existing by

themselves, independently of the domestic group, the tendency to

live in societies must be considered as irreducible and

self-determined; there is only one more general emotional phenomenon

whence it could be derived, viz., sympathy.

Evidently, this question cannot be settled _a priori_, but only by

the interpretation of facts. Now there is no lack of documents,

supplied by ethnology from observations on actually existing

primitive peoples, by the history of the remotest epochs, and by the

literary monuments of the earliest ages, which are the echo of

prehistoric times. There is no lack, either, of authorised works on

the subject: MacLennan, Bachofen, Tylor, Sumner Maine, Starcke,

Westermarck—to cite only a few at random. Although there is much

disagreement, both as to the facts and the interpretation of the

facts, the probability is very slight in favour of the priority of

the family, very great in favour of two distinct developments with

inevitable points of contact and interference.

Let us briefly recall the most generally admitted results of

research into the evolution of the family and the progress of social

development.

1. The evolution of the family has certainly not proceeded in all

places in the same way, a circumstance which always permits the

critic to oppose facts to the view he is combating. A disease

inherent in the human mind induces most writers to try and refer

everything to _one_ formula, to impose on facts that perfect unity

which, in such matters, does not appear very probable. Those who

assign the greatest length of time to the evolution of the family

admit three stages: promiscuity, matriarchate, patriarchate.

The period of primitive promiscuity (Bachofen, MacLennan,

Girard-Teulon, etc.) is contested and rejected by many authorities.

In any case, it does not seem as if we could establish the rule

without a great number of exceptions. Not to speak, however, of

archaic institutions which have been interpreted in this sense, and

as survivals, there are still certain Tartar populations which

approach this stage. At Hawaii, the individual was related to the

whole horde, age alone determining the relationships: every one

called all the old people indiscriminately grandfather and

grandmother; all those who, as far as age went, might be his

parents, father and mother; all those of his own generation,

brothers and sisters; and so on for sons and daughters, grandsons

and grand-daughters. These five terms expressed all known degrees of

kinship. We may note, in passing, that a very weak psychological

argument has been put forward in order to disprove the existence of

this period—viz., that the natural jealousy of man would have

rendered promiscuity impossible, at least for any length of time.

Those who have hazarded such reasoning have been too ready to judge

primitive man by civilised standards. However this may be, such a

mass, without individual relationships, is rather a society than a

family; or rather, it is an undifferentiated state, which might be

compared to the lowest form of animal societies (the nutritive),

which also is undifferentiated.

In the period of the matriarchate, which appears to have lasted for

a considerable time, the mother is the centre of the family. This

domestic form, coexisting with polygamy, polyandry, and even with

monogamy, has left so many traces, and is still met with in so many

different races and countries, from the ancient Egyptians and

Etruscans to the present natives of Sumatra and some regions of

Africa, that there is no dispute on the subject. The woman gives her

name to the children, kinship is reckoned, and the inheritance of

property (though not always that of political dignities) descends,

in the female line; the position of most importance is filled, not

by the father, but the uncle—the mother’s brother. The causes of the

matriarchal system have been much discussed. Did it originate in an

assumption that the true father was unknown, or in a common opinion

of his insignificance? Whatever view may be adopted, it seems to me

reasonable to compare the matriarchate with the predominating system

among animals—_i.e._, maternal societies where the male is not

admitted.

The patriarchate (_agnatio_) which makes the father the centre of

the family brings us down to the historic epoch, to which it was

even anterior in some parts of the globe. Its appearance is saluted

in lyrical terms by Bachofen as the triumph of ideas over matter:

“By the spiritual principle of paternity the chains of tellurism

were broken;” it was a conquest of mind over material nature—over

what can be seen and touched.[176] It is not known how it came

about, whether by adoption or by a pretence of childbirth. In any

case, it corresponds with the admission of the male into animal

societies.

-----

Footnote 176:

_Mutterrecht_, pp. 17-19. See also his interpretation of the myths

of Orestes and Bellerophon as expressing the triumph of the

patriarchate, p. 85.

-----

2. The development of social life is quite otherwise. It would be

foreign to our purpose to retrace its successive phases; let us

confine ourselves to the question of origin. What was primitive man?

On this point much has been written by way of argument and

conjecture. H. Spencer, in his _Sociology_ (vol. i.), has made a

complete restoration from prehistoric documents, burial-mounds, and

more especially from the condition of contemporary savages. Nothing

proves that this picture will suit all classes; there have existed

not one primitive man, but primitive men differing considerably,

according to race and environment.

However far we go back, the first form of life in common seems to

be the horde, an unstable, unorganised aggregate, without

recognised kinships, drawn together instinctively in view of

utility and defence. But the true social unit, which arose at an

early period in various parts of the globe, is the clan (and

analogous institutions), a fixed, stable, coherent, closed

aggregate, founded on religious or other affiliation (but not on

descent), independent of family conditions: a man cannot belong to

two clans at once, and in most cases each of these groups is in a

hostile attitude towards the rest. How has this social molecule

been able to aggregate to itself others, and this closed organism

to break its narrow limits, in order to extend itself by increase

and fusion? This is a somewhat obscure question; perhaps by

exogamy, _i.e._, the imperative custom which forbade marriage

within the group (yet in other groups the rule was endogamy,

_i.e._, the prohibition of marriage outside them); more probably

the great agent of assimilation and fusion was war, followed by

the assimilation of the conquered.

This simple comparison shows that the family and the clan are not

similar institutions: the first is an autonomous group belonging to

a master, and having for its end the enjoyment of property; the

second is a group of another nature having for its end the common

struggle for existence. “Where the interests defended by the family

are less important than those of the clan, the family is influenced

by the ideas which regulate the clan organisation; and this fact

repeats itself in all primitive societies when defence against an

outside enemy is the dominant necessity.”[177] The family group and

the social group have each sprung from different tendencies, from

distinct needs; each has its special, independent psychological

origin, and there is no possible derivation from one to the other.

-----

Footnote 177:

Starcke, _La famille primitive_, p. 116.

-----

III.

Life in common, even under the gregarious form, requires certain

ways of acting, and habits founded on sympathy and determined by the

concerted aim pursued by all. In order that it may become stable and

constitute a society, an element of fixity must be added—the more or

less clear consciousness of an obligation, of a rule, of what has to

be done or avoided. This is the appearance of the _moral sentiment_.

All conceptions of morality, coarse or refined, theoretical or

purely practical, agree on this point; divergences exist, in

practice, only as to the characteristics of the act reputed

obligatory; in theory, only as to its origin.

All _real_ morality which has lived, _i.e._ governed a human

society, large or small, which has existed, not in the academic

abstractions of moralists, but in the concrete development of

history, and has run its complete course, passes through two

principal periods.

One of these is instinctive, spontaneous, unconscious, unreflecting,

determined by the conditions of existence of a given group at a

given moment. It expresses itself in custom—a heterogeneous mixture

of beliefs and actions which, from the point of view of reason and

of a more advanced culture, we consider sometimes as moral,

sometimes as immoral, sometimes as unmoral, _i.e._, puerile and

futile, but all of which have been rigorously observed.

The other is conscious, reflecting, many-sided, complex, like the

higher forms of social and moral life. It expresses itself in

institutions, written laws, religious or civil codes; and still more

in the abstract speculations of philosophical moralists. Then, the

apogee being reached, vague aspirations reach out towards a new,

dimly apprehended ideal, and the cycle begins over again.

Most constructors of a scientific system of morality have forgotten

or neglected the first period; but wrongly so, for it is the source

of the second. This, too, is the reason for the two opposite views

held with regard to the origin of moral development.

Some seek it in the order of knowledge, whence they deduce all the

rest; they suppose innate ideas, or an adaptation acquired through a

long process and fixed by heredity (Spencer), or the consciousness

of a categorical imperative, or the notion of utility; all of which

are intellectual solutions.

Others seek it in the order of instinct and feeling. They admit

tendencies, impulses implanted in us by nature, _i.e._, forming part

of our organisation, like thirst and hunger, whose satisfaction

produces pleasure and their non-satisfaction pain; this is the

emotional view.

The two are not absolutely irreconcilable: each of them

corresponds to a different period of evolution; the emotional

view to the instinctive stage, the stage of moral chaos; the

intellectualist view to the reflective stage of rational

organisation; but it is clear that one alone can claim the mark

of its origin. In other words, we may say: in the moral

consciousness there are two elements—judgment and feeling. A

judgment (approving or condemnatory) on our own conduct and that

of others is the result of a deeper process—not an intellectual

one—of an emotional process of which it is only the clear and

intelligible manifestation in consciousness. It would be a

psychological absurdity to suppose that a bare, dry idea, an

abstract conception without emotional accompaniments, and

resembling a geometrical notion, could have the least influence

on human conduct. No doubt, we must admit that the evolution is

rather that of moral ideas than of the moral sentiment, which,

in itself, is no more than a tendency to act—a predisposition;

but an evolution of _purely speculative_ ideas, with no

emotional accompaniment, will have no results in the practical

order. We may note that the opposition between these two views

is constantly reflected in the history of moral theory. In

England, where psychology predominates, the doctrine of feeling

has had numerous champions, from Shaftesbury down to the present

day. In Germany, where metaphysics are predominant, the

intellectualist doctrine, since Kant, occupies the first place,

except with Schopenhauer and his adherents. It is quite natural

that the metaphysicians, intellectualists by temperament and by

profession, should have adopted this position.

For the rest we are concerned here with the moral sentiment, and

with that alone; the other elements of morality do not form part of

our study. It consists, at bottom, in movement or arrest of

movement, in a tendency to act or not to act; it is not, _in its

origin_, due to an idea or a judgment; it is instinctive, and herein

lies its strength. It is innate, not like an alleged archetype,

infused into man, invariable, illuminating him everywhere and

always, but in the same way as hunger and thirst and other

constitutional needs. It is necessary; it forces one to act (when

not kept in check by counter-tendencies), as the sight of water

forces the duckling to plunge into it. Thus we must say that the man

who impulsively throws himself into danger to save another is more

thoroughly moral than he who only does so after reflection; one must

be blinded by intellectualist prejudices to maintain the contrary.

_Natural_ morality is a gift—theologians would say a grace; it is

artificial, acquired morality, which is measured by the quantity of

resistance overcome. Finally, like every other tendency, it results

in satisfaction or dissatisfaction (_e.g._, remorse).[178] In short,

its innateness and its necessity place it in the _motor_, not in the

intellectual order.

-----

Footnote 178:

“The Australians attribute the death of their friends to spells

cast by some neighbouring tribe; for this reason they consider it

a sacred obligation to avenge the death of a relative by killing a

member of the tribe in question. A native having lost one of his

wives, announced his intention of going to kill a woman belonging

to a distant tribe. The magistrate told him that if he committed

this act, he would be confined in prison for the rest of his life.

He therefore did not start on his journey; but, month by month, he

wasted away: remorse preyed on his mind, he could neither sleep

nor eat; the ghost of his wife haunted him, reproaching him with

his negligence. One day he disappeared; a year later he came back,

having accomplished his duty” (Guyau, _Esquisse d’une Morale_,

etc., p. 109). Here we have an example of instinctive morality and

rational immorality. It should be noted that in this work Guyau

has returned to the view of the moral instinct, adopted by him,

after having previously criticised it, in his _Morale Anglaise_

(III. chap. iv.).

-----

These characteristics being determined, let us follow the progress

of its evolution. It presents two aspects: first, the positive,

corresponding to the genesis of the beneficent feelings, or active

altruism, an internal evolution—_i.e._, one of the primary feeling,

in and through itself; secondly, negative, corresponding to the rise

of the sense of justice, an external evolution—_i.e._, one produced

under the pressure of conditions of existence and coercive means.

I. We include under the name of beneficence, or active altruism,

such feelings as benevolence, generosity, devotion, charity, pity,

etc.; in short, those foreign or contrary to the instinct of

individual self-preservation. Their fundamental conditions are two

psychological facts already studied:

1. Sympathy, in the etymological sense, _i.e._, an emotional unison,

the possibility of feeling with another, and like him. Could a

society be based on this state alone? In extreme cases this might

happen; but such a society would be transitory, precarious,

unstable: we have found similar examples in the gregarious state,

animal or human. Stability requires stronger ties, that is to say,

moral ones.

2. The altruistic tendency, or tender emotion, which exists in all

men, except in those to be referred to at the end of this chapter.

It belongs to our constitution, as much as the fact of having two

eyes or a stomach.

Now the question put to us is this: How is active altruism

developed, and by what psychological mechanism? How do disinterested

feelings arise from primitive egoism? Setting aside all metaphysical

solutions, such as Schopenhauer’s theory of universal pity,

compassion (_Mitleid_) for all beings, founded on a vague

consciousness of community of being and identity of origin—a

monistic conception,—I shall confine myself to a strictly

psychological explanation.

Benevolence arises from a particular form of activity accompanied by

pleasure: this vague and obscure formula will be explained

presently.

The fundamental tendency consists, in the first place, of

preserving, and then of extending one’s self, of being and

well-being, _i.e._, expending activity. Man may devote this activity

to things: he cuts, hacks, destroys, overthrows,—these are

destructive activities; he sows, plants, builds, and exercises

preservative or creative activities. He may apply it to animals or

to men; he injures, maltreats, destroys, or he cares for, helps,

saves. Destructive activity is accompanied by pleasure, but by a

pathological one, since it is the cause of evil. Preservative or

creative activity is accompanied by pure pleasure, leaving behind it

no painful feeling; consequently, it tends to repeat and increase

itself: the object or the person which is the cause of pleasure

becomes a centre of attraction, the starting-point of an agreeable

association. To sum up, we have (1) a tendency to the display of our

creative activity; (2) the pleasure of succeeding; (3) an object or

living being to play a receptive part; (4) an association between

this being or object and the pleasure experienced; whence a

continually increasing attraction towards this being or object. The

conservative tendency in action and the law of transference (see

Part I., Chap. XII.) are the essential agents in the rise of

altruism.

This may be justified by several examples. If we reflect on the

preceding, it will be understood that benevolence may well be the

result of chance, and have, in its origin, no intentional character.

A man, without paying any special heed to it, happens to throw some

water on a plant which was drying up beside his door; next day he

chances to notice that it is beginning to revive; he repeats the

operation, intentionally; he becomes more and more interested in the

plant, grows attached to it, and would not like to be deprived of

it.[179] This is a very trivial, everyday occurrence, and there is

no one who has not experienced something of the sort; this is all

the better, as showing us the rise of the feeling in all its

simplicity. If this happens in the case of a plant, how much more

easily in that of an intelligent animal or a man!

-----

Footnote 179:

Friedmann, “Genesis of Disinterested Benevolence,” _Mind_, vol. i.

(1878), p. 404.

-----

It is an observed fact that a man attaches himself to another rather

in proportion to the services he renders than to those he receives

from him. There is, in general, a stronger current of benevolence

passing from the benefactor to his _protégé_ than _vice versâ_.

Common opinion considers this illogical: from the point of view of

reason, it is so—not from that of feeling; and the preceding

analysis even shows that it _must be_ so, because the benefactor has

put more of himself into the recipient of his bounty than the latter

can do to him. Thus, in many persons, gratitude needs to be

supported by reflection.

If we are ill-disposed towards any one, the best and surest remedy

against this incipient aversion is to render him some service.

Conversely, the person who refuses all our benefits and obstinately

avoids them becomes an object of indifference, or even hatred.

“During the proscriptions of Marius and Sulla,” says Friedmann,

“there were many sons who, out of fear, gave up their father, but it

was never known that a father had denounced his son; a fact that

somewhat startled the Roman moralists, who were unable to explain

it.” The explanation is involved in the constitution of the Roman

family, by which the father could confer many benefits on the son,

whereas the son was entirely dependent on the father, and could do

nothing for him.

Many other incidents might be cited to justify the accuracy of the

preceding analysis. Such is the mechanism by means of which our

emotional self succeeds in externalising, in alienating itself; but

this could not be done were there not at the origin and

starting-point a primary tendency, already studied under the name of

tender emotion. It is clear, also, that beneficence is a generic

term designating forms which vary according to circumstances:

charity, generosity, devotion, etc.

The extension and heightening of the feeling of beneficence have

taken place slowly, and owing to the work of certain men who deserve

to be called _discoverers_ in morals. This expression may sound

strangely in some ears, because they are imbued with the theory of

an innate and universal knowledge of good and evil imparted to all

men at all times. If we admit, on the contrary,—as observation

teaches us to do,—not a ready-made, but a growing morality, it must

necessarily be the discovery of an individual or group of

individuals. Every one admits the existence of inventors in

geometry, in music, in the plastic and mechanical arts; but there

have also been men in moral disposition far superior to their

contemporaries, who have initiated or promoted reform in this

department. Let us note (for this point is of the highest

importance) that the _theoretic_ conception of a higher moral ideal,

of a step in advance, is not sufficient; it needs a powerful emotion

leading to action, and, by contagion, communicating its own impulse

to others. The onward march is proportioned to what is _felt_, not

to what is understood.

Were the human race, in the beginning, cannibals? Some affirm this,

others deny it. What is certain is that the custom of eating one’s

fellow-men has existed in many places, and still exists in some. It

has been explained by scarcity of food, by superstitious beliefs, by

the intoxication of triumph in annihilating a vanquished enemy, by

the idea of assimilating his strength and courage, and by a variety

of other reasons; but it has not been sufficiently remarked that its

extinction has not always been due to the intervention of superior

races. It has sometimes taken place on the spot. In the Tahiti

Islands it had disappeared shortly before the arrival of

Bougainville; among the Redskins, and even among the Fijians,

parties had been formed in order to suppress not only cannibalism,

but the tortures inflicted on prisoners of war.[180] The promoters

of this abolition, whether individuals or groups, were certainly

inventors. The universality of human sacrifices is well known; they

are found still existing during the historic period, from China to

Judæa, from Greece to Gaul, from Carthage to Rome. How did they

disappear? On this point we have nothing but ignorance or legends,

but they could not have disappeared without the agency of man. Du

Chaillu cites a case in which reform is, so to speak, caught in the

act—that of an African chief who was the first to give orders that

no slave should be killed at his tomb.[181] Among the Aztecs, with

their bloodthirsty religion, a sect, formed before the arrival of

the Spaniards, had placed itself under the protection of a deity who

abhorred bloodshed. All the great ancient legislators, whether

historical or legendary—Manes, Confucius, Moses, Buddha,—we might

say all founders of religions, have been discoverers in morals;

whether the discovery originated with themselves alone or with a

collectivity as whose summary and embodiment they may be regarded,

matters little.

-----

Footnote 180:

About 1820, during the time of scarcity consequent on Tshaka’s

wars, certain of the Natal tribes (the natives say, at the

suggestion of a chief named Umdava) adopted the practice of

cannibalism. It was abandoned when food again became plentiful,

and has always been regarded with great horror; those individuals

who had acquired such a taste for human flesh as to prefer it to

other food, fled into the recesses of the Drakensberg and Maluti

mountains. Moshesh, the great Basuto chief, directed his efforts

for years to the extirpation of the practice, though unwilling to

do so, as his advisers desired, by means of a summary massacre of

the offenders. The _Amazimu_ (_Modimo_) are now a myth to both

Zulus and Basutos; indeed the word, as now used, is frequently

synonymous with “ogre.” It is to be noted that Moshesh was not in

any way acting under European influence, in fact the last of the

cannibals had disappeared long before the country came under

British rule, and though the memory of their atrocities was still

fresh when the French missionaries arrived in 1833, the chief had

already been proceeding against them for some time. See Casalis,

_Les Bassoutos_.

-----

-----

Footnote 181:

Staniland Wake, _Evolution of Morality_, vol. i. pp. 427 _et seq._

To be consulted for facts of this kind.

-----

It would be easy to continue this historical demonstration, but the

above is sufficient to justify the term discoverers. From causes of

which we are ignorant, but analogous to those which produce great

poets or painters, there arise men of indisputable moral superiority

who _feel_ what others do not feel, just as a great poet does

compared with ordinary men. And for one who has succeeded, how many

have failed for want of a favourable environment! A St. Vincent de

Paul among the Kanakas would be as impossible as a Mozart among the

Fuegians.

In primitive societies there has been a long struggle between the

strongest egoistic tendencies, with their dissolvent action, and the

weaker and intermittent altruistic tendencies, which have progressed

through the agency of some more enlightened individuals, and also

with the help of force, of which we still have to speak.

II. Let us now examine the development of the moral sentiment under

its negative and restrictive aspect—_i.e._, as the sense of justice.

Here the intellectual element evidently preponderates, and its

evolution involves the other.

“Justice,” says Littré, “has the same foundation as science.” One

rests on the principle of identity which governs the region of

speculation, the other rests on the principle of equivalence and

rules the sphere of action. Justice, in its origin, is a

compensation for damages. Its evolution starts from an instinctive

semi-conscious manifestation, rising by progressive steps to a

universalist conception. Let us mark the principal stages.

The first, and lowest, is neither moral nor social, but purely

animal and reflex—"a defensive reflex."[182] The individual who

suffers violence, who thinks himself attacked or injured,

immediately reacts. This is “the exasperated instinct of

conservation,” or, to call it by its true name, revenge. So the

savage who, before Darwin’s eyes, broke his son’s head for having

dropped a store of shell-fish, the fruit of a laborious day’s

fishing. This defensive reflex frequently recurs in the psychology

of crowds; it is needless to give instances. It may seem paradoxical

to take revenge as a starting-point for the sense of justice; but we

shall see how it becomes mitigated and rationalised.

-----

Footnote 182:

Letourneau, _L’évolution juridique chez les différents peuples_.

-----

In fact, a second stage corresponds to revenge deferred through

premeditation, reflection, or some analogous cause. It tends towards

equivalence and reaches it under the form of retaliation, so

frequent in primitive communities. The idea of equality, tooth for

tooth, eye for eye, has won its way; the instinct has become

intellectualised.

So far, the compensation claimed would appear to have only an

individual character; but it must very early have taken on a

collective character, by reason of the close solidarity uniting the

members of the small social aggregate—the clan or family. An

all-powerful opinion forces the injured party to pursue his revenge

even when he does not wish it; and when a _vendetta_ is in force as

between clan and clan, the stage of collective responsibility

appears, and the notion of the compensation due is enlarged.

However, revenge restores, in the social aggregate, a state of war,

which has to be eliminated; hence a reaction on the part of the

community tending to suppress or attenuate it. This is the stage of

arbitration and peace-making. Many facts show that, in the

beginning, the decision of the umpires is without binding value, and

supported by no coercive means. It is a proof not so much of

culpability as of an indemnity to be paid to those concerned; the

criminal trial is as yet a civil action.

For this temporary and unsanctioned arbitration the social

development logically substitutes a permanent and guaranteed

arbitration, exercised by a chief, or an aristocracy, or the popular

assembly. Compensation becomes obligatory and is forcibly imposed.

The condemned person must submit or leave the community; if

refractory, he is excommunicated, and in primitive societies the

outlaw’s life is intolerable; we see the equivalent of it in modern

strikes. Let us also note the somewhat widely distributed custom of

a division of the indemnity imposed, one portion being assigned to

the injured party, the other to the state—_i.e._, the chief. The

notion of justice has taken on a definitely social character.

It only remains that it should become universal. It long remains

enclosed within the limits of the social group. All that contributes

to the material and moral welfare of the group is good, and

conversely; outside the group, all acts are _unmoral_. We find in

history, and even at the present time, many proofs of this dualism

or duplication of the individual, according as he is acting within

his own social environment or with regard to strangers. Such were

the Germans of Cæsar’s time.[183] In their earlier period, the

Greeks considered themselves as less under moral obligation towards

the Barbarians, and the Romans towards foreigners (_hostes_). It is

especially owing to the efforts of the philosophers—Socrates, Plato,

Aristotle, the Stoics—that justice ceased to be national and became

universal. It might be added that at that period when the notion of

justice remains a national one, it still varies within the group,

according to caste; it is not the same for priests and warriors, for

free men and for slaves, for aristocrats and for merchants. In the

beginning, particularism was the rule.

-----

Footnote 183:

“Latrocinia nullam habent infamiam quæ extra fines cujusque

_civitatis_ fiunt.”—_De Bell. Gall._, vi. 21.

-----

It is evident that, on the negative side, the evolution of moral

life has been especially due to the progress of intelligence; the

emotional element has only been incidental. Compared with the sense

of justice, the feeling of active benevolence, if not evolved more

quickly, at least appeared sooner, because nearer to instinct and

less dependent on reason. A certain philosopher (Kant, I believe)

was surprised that there is so much kindness and so little justice

among men. He did not observe as a psychologist, or else he was led

astray by intellectualist prejudice. This must be so, because

tenderness is innate and spontaneous, justice acquired and

deliberate; because one springs directly from an instinct, while the

other has to undergo various metamorphoses. If man is sociable and

moral, it is less because he thinks than because he feels in a

certain manner and tends in a certain direction.

To conclude: moral emotion is a very complex state. Those

sentimentalists in the last century, or in this, who have maintained

the hypothesis of a “moral sense,” have erroneously considered it as

a special sense with an innate faculty of discriminating good and

evil. It is not a simple act, but the sum of a set of tendencies.

Let us eliminate the intellectual elements, and enumerate its

emotional constituents only: (1) as basis, sympathy—_i.e._, a

community of nature and disposition; (2) the altruistic or

benevolent tendency manifesting itself under different forms

(attraction of like to like, maternal or paternal affection, etc.),

at first weak, but gaining more expansion by the restriction of the

egoistic feelings; (3) the sense of justice with its obligatory

character—whose origin we have just traced; (4) the desire of

approbation or of divine or human rewards, and the fear of

disapprobation and punishments. As in the case of all complex

feelings, its composition must vary with the predominance of one or

other of its constituent elements; in one case it is obligation (the

Stoics), in another charity, in many the fear of public opinion or

of the law, of God or of the devil. It is impossible that it should

be constant and identical in all men.

IV.

The pathology of the moral sense cannot detain us long, its detailed

study belonging to the department of criminal anthropology. Numerous

works have been published on this subject within the last

half-century; there would be no advantage in presenting a bald

abstract of these. Lombroso’s view of the “born criminal,” with his

physiological, psychical, and social characteristics, has been

violently attacked, and sustained serious damage. Several successive

theories have attempted to explain the existence of this moral

anomaly: atavism, according to which the born criminal is a

survival, a return to primitive man, who is assumed to have been

violent and unsociable; infantilism, which has recourse, not to

heredity, but to arrested development, and alleges that the

perversion which is permanent in the criminal is normal, but

transient, in the child; the pathological view which connects the

criminal type with epilepsy, considered as the prototype of violent

and destructive impulses; the sociological view (the most recent),

which attributes a preponderant function to social conditions, and

maintains that the criminal is “a microbe inseparable from his

environment.”[184] We need not enter into a detailed examination of

these hypotheses, which have given rise to much passionate

debate: one question alone concerns our subject, that of moral

insensibility—a condition described, long before the days of

criminal anthropology, under the names of _moral insanity_

(Prichard, 1835), _folie morale_, impulsive insanity, instinctive

monomania, etc., and which will serve to show once more the

independence and the preponderance of feeling in the moral

life.[185]

-----

Footnote 184:

It should perhaps be added that the more scientific writers on

criminal anthropology do not regard the chief causes suggested

above as rival theories, but rather as factors which may

co-operate to produce criminality, the biological factor

(heredity, arrest of development, infantilism, etc.) acting as

predisposing cause, the sociological factor as exciting cause.—ED.

Footnote 185:

According to Krafft-Ebing, _Lehrbuch_ (vol. i., sec. 2, chap,

iii.), Regiomontanus already maintained, in 1513, that depravity

is quite independent of the accurate knowledge of good and evil;

he attributed this anomaly to the influence of the planet Venus.

-----

“Moral insanity is a form of mental derangement in which the

intellectual faculties appear to have sustained little or no injury,

while the disorder is manifested principally or alone in the state

of the feelings, temper, or habit.” Such is the formula of Prichard,

which has been but little modified since. Translated into the

language of pure psychology, it signifies: a complete absence or

perversion of the altruistic feelings, insensibility to the

representation of the happiness or suffering of others, absolute

egoism, with all its consequences. By a self-evident analogy, this

state has been called one of moral blindness; and, like physical

blindness, it has various degrees. It has also been compared to

idiocy. Reduced to the vegetative and sensitive life, the idiot is,

intellectually, opposed to the genius, while the moral idiot is the

antithesis of the great benefactors of humanity (Schüle).

We may find numerous instances of moral insanity in works on mental

pathology and criminal anthropology.[186] It shows itself in two

forms: (1) the passive, or apathetic—_i.e._, that of pure

insensibility; if the temperament is cold and the circumstances

favourable, there is no violence to be feared; (2) the active, or

impulsive, where there is no check on the violence of the appetites.

Taken as a whole, it consists in: complete insensibility, absence of

pity, cold ferocity, absence of remorse after committing acts of

violence, or even murder. On this last point statistics and figures

have been given whose precision makes me somewhat suspicious;[187]

for it is very difficult to penetrate so far into the consciousness

of a criminal as to be duped neither by the hypocrisy which

simulates remorse, nor by the boastfulness which feels but will not

acknowledge it. The absence of all maternal feeling, though rare,

has also been observed.

-----

Footnote 186:

Especially Despine, _Psychologie naturelle_ (ii. pp. 169 _et

seq._), and Maudsley, _Pathology of Mind_.

Footnote 187:

_Dictionary of Psychological Medicine_, art. “Criminal

Anthropology.” Here it is stated that, at Elmira, 34 per cent.

criminals on admission exhibit entire absence of moral

susceptibility; while (according to Dr. Salsotto, at Turin) in 130

women guilty of murder, or complicity in murder, genuine remorse

was only observed in 6.

-----

Moral insensibility is usually innate, and coincident with other

symptoms of degeneracy. Among several children of the same family,

brought up in the same surroundings, having received the same care,

a single one may differ from all the rest, be amenable neither to

gentleness nor to force, and manifest a precocious depravity, which

will only strengthen as he grows older.

This state may be acquired and momentary, its causes being epilepsy,

hysteria, apoplexy, paralytic dementia, senile decay, blows on the

head, etc. Krafft-Ebing, besides an observation made by himself

(_loc. cit._), quotes from Wigan the case of a young man who, in

consequence of being struck on the head with a ruler, developed

complete moral insensibility. When, by means of the operation of

trephining, a splinter of bone pressing on the brain had been

removed, he returned to his former state. We have met with other

analogous cases in the course of this work.

The most difficult and fiercely debated point is whether this moral

anomaly is strictly instinctive and emotional in its origin,

intellectual activity being entirely unconnected with it. Most

writers take the affirmative view of this question, others deny it.

The different modes of mental activity are so interdependent, and

their relations so close, that it is difficult to solve the question

definitely. We cannot refuse to admit that the intellect sometimes

suffers from a counter-shock; but observation shows that most of

these persons are well acquainted with the requirements of morality,

and have had the abstract ideas of good, of evil, and of duty

instilled into them by education, though without the slightest

influence on their conduct. They have moral _ideas_, not moral

feelings—_i.e._, a disposition to feel and act. The law is to them

nothing but a police regulation, which they are conscious of having

broken. Their intellect, often firm and clear, is only an instrument

for weaving skilful plots, or justifying themselves by subtle

sophisms.

It was worth our while to recall, if only in a cursory manner, the

nature of moral insensibility, in order to show the importance of

the emotional element. In these cases there is a lack of

completeness, and the deficit comes, not from the intellect, but

from the character.

CHAPTER IX.

THE RELIGIOUS SENTIMENT.

_Importance of the subject—Its Divisions. First Period: origin of

the religious feeling—Primitive notions of the Infinite (Max

Müller); Ancestor-worship (H. Spencer)—Fetichism, animism;

Predominance of fear—Practical, utilitarian, social, but not

moral character—Second period: (1) Intellectual evolution;

Conception of a Cosmic Order first physical, then moral—Function

of increasing generalisation; its stages; (2) Emotional

evolution; Predominance of love; addition of the moral

sentiment—Third Period: Supremacy of the rational element;

Transformation into religious philosophy; Effacement of

the emotional element—Religious emotion is a complete

emotion—Manifold physiological states accompanying it; ritual, a

special form of the expression of emotion—The religious

sentiment as a passion—Pathology—Depressive forms: religious

melancholy, demonomania—Exalted forms: ecstasy, theomania._

It must be confessed that psychologists have not troubled themselves

greatly with the study of the religious sentiment. Some omit it

altogether, while others content themselves with a brief reference

in passing; they note the two essential elements whence it is

derived—fear, and tender emotion (love)—without troubling themselves

about the variable relations between these two elements, or the

multiform changes undergone by them in the course of centuries,

through the annexation of other emotional states.[188] As we cannot

deny its importance, this abstention, or negligence, is not

justifiable. To summon to our aid an ill-understood respect, to

maintain that one religion only is true and all the others false, to

allege that all are alike false,—these and other analogous modes of

reasoning are not in any degree acceptable to psychology; for, even

if we take up an extreme position, and admit that all manifestations

of the religious sentiment are mere illusion and error, it remains

none the less true that illusion and error are psychic states, and

worthy of being studied as such by psychologists. To such, the

religious sentiment is _a fact_ which they have simply to analyse

and to follow through its transformations without being competent to

discuss its objective value or its legitimacy. Thus understood, the

question bears on two principal points: primary manifestations and

their evolution, _i.e._, the different elements which have

constituted the religious sentiment during the various stages of its

existence.

-----

Footnote 188:

Since the above was written two lengthy and valuable studies of

the psychology of religion, and more especially of the phenomena

of “conversion,” have been published by Leuba and Starbuck,

largely inspired by Prof. Stanley Hall (_Am. Jour. Psych._,

1896-97). Both these studies are founded on original data, in part

obtained by a _questionnaire_.—ED.

-----

In every religious belief there are of necessity two parts: an

intellectual element, a knowledge which constitutes the object of

belief, and an emotional state, a feeling which accompanies the

former and expresses itself in action. To any one deficient in the

second element, the religious feeling is unknown, inaccessible;

nothing remains to such persons but abstract metaphysical

conceptions. The study of the religious sentiment, in its evolution,

cannot dissociate these two elements; and it is the degree in which

the element of knowledge is present which renders a precise division

possible. I trace three periods: (1) that of perception and concrete

imagination, where fear and the practical, utilitarian tendencies

are predominant; (2) that of medium abstraction and generalisation,

characterised by the addition of moral elements; (3) that of the

highest concepts, where, the emotional element becoming more and

more rarefied, the religious feeling tends to be confounded with the

so-called intellectual feelings.

I.

As usual, authorities are not agreed on the question of origin.

Under what form did the religious sentiment first make its

appearance? We must first put aside two extremely systematic

answers, which, although differing in spirit, have this in common,

that they are both purely intellectualist.

The first, a very ancient one, has found its latest and clearest

interpreter in Max Müller, who thinks that the notion of the Divine,

more especially under the form of the Infinite, preceded that of the

gods. Our senses give us the finite, but “beyond, behind, beneath,

and within the finite, the infinite is always present to our senses.

It presses upon us, it grows upon us from every side. What we call

finite in space and time, in form and word, is nothing but a veil or

net which we ourselves have thrown over the infinite.”[189] What,

then, is the infinite, he asks, but the object of all religions? The

religion of the infinite precedes and comprehends all others, and as

the infinite is implied by the senses (_i.e._, the limits to our

sensory perceptions imply an unlimited region beyond), it follows

that religion can, with as much right as reason, be called a

development of our sensory perceptions. The earliest religion

consisted in the adoration of various objects, taken, each in turn,

and isolatedly, as incarnations of the notion of the Infinite. This

is what Max Müller calls “Henotheism.” For him, polytheism and even

fetichism are later developments, resulting from the breaking up of

the primitive unity, and due to a disease of language: each name

becomes a distinct deity; words are raised to the dignity of things,

having their life, their attributes, and their legends: _Nomina

numina_.

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Footnote 189:

Max Müller, _Origin and Development of Religion_ (Hibbert

Lectures), p. 227.

-----

This last view, though it has had a certain vogue among linguists,

is worth nothing as a psychological explanation, for it is quite

clear that the word is only a starting-point or a vehicle for the

process of thought, which is the sole agent of the metamorphosis. If

the _nomina_ become _numina_, it is by a disease of imagination or

thought, rather than of language.[190]

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Footnote 190:

For a discussion of this point see Goblet d’Alviella, _L’idée de

Dieu_, pp. 60 _et seq._

-----

As for the principal thesis, the alleged primitive notion of the

Infinite, which is the source of henotheism, it is a metaphysical

hypothesis of extreme improbability. Primitive man, enclosed within

hard conditions of life, is practical and positive rather than a

dreamer; he does not naturally tend towards the Beyond. But a better

reason than this, and an entirely psychological one, is that he is

incapable of attaining to even a medium degree of abstraction and

generalisation. How could a savage, who cannot count up to four,

form any idea whatever of the Infinite? Evidently, this notion of

the Illimitable is far beyond him.

There is only one way of imparting a certain psychological

verisimilitude to Max Müller’s view, viz., to strip it of its

intellectualist character, and admit as its origin a feeling rather

than a notion, a craving, a tendency, rather than a cognition. Of

these two factors, which make up all religious belief, one

intellectual, the other emotional, which has the priority? Did the

notion produce the feeling, or the feeling excite the notion? Such

is the problem which lies at the heart of all debates on the origin

of religious manifestations. Some place it in the region of

instinct: so Renan when he compares religion in humanity to the

nest-building instinct of the bird. Others maintain that every

feeling presupposes an object. “At first sight this latter theory

seems to have logic on its side. It is clear that, in order to love

or fear any being, one must have conceived the notion of his

existence. Yet, however indispensable it may be to assume an

intellectual operation at the beginning of religion, we must

recognise that the feelings set in motion by this operation must

have long preceded the most ancient formulas of primitive

theology.”[191] For my own part, I am inclined to accept the

priority of feeling, though unable to supply any arguments based on

fact; the period of origins being also that of conjecture.

-----

Footnote 191:

Goblet d’Alviella, _op. cit._, p. 50.

-----

The second theory, that of Herbert Spencer, brings us down from the

notion of the Infinite to the extremely terrestrial mental life of

savages. It is well known that he reduces all primitive religions to

the cult of ancestors—to necrolatry. The primordial fact is the

conception of a spirit, or rather, of a _double_. The savage

believes that he has a Sosia, or, in other words, a principal _ego_

and a secondary _ego_. He infers the existence of this double from a

great number of facts, to him inexplicable: his shadow, his

reflection in the water, echoes, apparitions in dreams, fainting,

trances, epilepsy, etc. The world is thus, for him, full of

wandering spirits which he tries to propitiate. According to

Spencer, fetichism and polytheism are only aberrant forms of

ancestor-worship, and he tries to prove this by a series of

arguments, through which we need not now follow him. Imperturbable

in his systematic deduction, he even asserts that he can derive from

the same root, by far-fetched and easily-controverted arguments, the

adoration of animals, plants, and inanimate objects.[192] It is

indisputable that a great number of beliefs have sprung from this

root, but this conception, which is anthropomorphism carried to its

extreme, is found to be too narrow to include all the facts. Tylor

and others have criticised it with some vivacity, and I do not think

that it now claims many adherents.

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Footnote 192:

_Principles of Sociology_, vol. i. pp. 130-142.

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These two systematic hypotheses being put on one side, we may remind

the reader how religious development _seems_ to have taken place

during this primitive period; for the march of evolution has not

been everywhere and always the same—a difficulty already pointed out

with regard to the social instinct. According to the best

authorities, the most frequent form has been the following.

The first stage is that of fetichism, polydemonism, naturism—terms

which in the history of religions are not quite synonymous, but

which answer to the same psychical condition, the adoration of some

object, living or not, which is _perceived_—_i.e._, apprehended as a

concrete form, at the same time body and soul—or rather animated by

a soul, judged to be benevolent or malevolent, useful or injurious;

for there is scant justification for the opinion that the worshipper

of a piece of wood or stone sees in it only a purely material

object.

The second stage is that of animism or spiritism, “a belief in

spirits having no substantial bond or necessary connection with

determinate natural objects.” The spirit is conceived as

independent, separable; it goes and comes, enters and departs; it is

attributed not only to men, but also to animals: the savage tries to

deprecate the wrath of the beast he has killed in hunting, the chief

has his horses and dogs buried with him. Psychologically, this stage

corresponds to a preponderance of the imagination over simple

perception.

These primitive forms of religious belief originate in the tendency

of the savage, and the child, perhaps also of the higher animal, to

look upon everything as alive, to attribute desires, passions, will,

to everything that acts, to form his ideas of nature from what he

knows of his own nature. This anthropomorphism results from the

awakening of reasoning thought under its baldest form: analogy, the

first source of myth, language, arts, and even science. But those

analogies, which to us are merely images, were realities to

primitive man. It is needless to insist on so well known a point. We

must remember, however, that this primitive god-creating operation

is a projection from our activity rather than from our intelligence;

it originates with man as a _motor_ rather than as a thinking being.

So far we have considered nothing but the object of belief,

perceived or imagined; but what does the believer feel? of what

elements is the religious sentiment composed during this period? We

may point out the following:

(1) First of all, the emotion of fear in its different degrees, from

profound terror to vague uneasiness, due to the faith in an unknown,

mysterious, impalpable Power, able to render great services, and,

more especially, to inflict great injuries; for historians have

always remarked that, in early times, it is always malevolent and

terrible genii who are adored; the good and merciful ones are

neglected; in the following periods this state of things will be

reversed. During this period Power is the attribute of the gods.

(2) A second and much less marked characteristic consists in a

certain attraction or sympathy which, though very slight, binds the

worshipper to his deity. The saying “Primus in orbe Deos fecit

timor” is not absolutely true; for fear has a tendency to

withdrawal, flight, aversion, while in every worship there is at

least some hope of moving the most maleficent power and exciting its

compassion,—consequently an approach to it. Later on, this

rudimentary attraction will become the essential point.

(3) A third characteristic resulting from the preceding is that the

religious feeling is strictly practical and utilitarian; it is the

direct expression of a narrow egoism. It connects itself with the

self-preserving instinct of the individual or the group, and is in

nowise, as Sergi has maintained it to be, a pathological symptom.

Quite on the contrary, it is a weapon in the struggle for life;

since it is not a matter of indifference whether those in power are

for or against one. This by no means disinterested character is

shown in the worship which rests entirely on the practical rule: _Do

ut des_. Hence the oblations and sacrifices proportioned to the

worshippers’ desires and requests, for which the deity owes his

faithful ones an ample recompense. Hence incantations, magic, and

sorcery, which are methods not only of alluring and appeasing the

god, but of getting possession of him by stratagem and holding him

in one’s power.

(4) Lastly, from this time forward, the religious feeling has a

_social_ character, or rather, the religious and social tendencies

amalgamate into a whole. It strengthens the principle of authority,

often in favour of the altruistic tendencies, which are still very

weak. The chiefs, priests, sorcerers, speak and act in the name of a

higher power, and keep up the social tie. The worship of the dead,

which Spencer has made the mistake of generalising too much, is an

element of stability, establishing a continuity between different

generations. The community of worship and ritual is the objective

and visible expression of social solidarity. I do not consider as

belonging to this period institutions such as the religious oath,

trial by ordeal, or others presupposing the addition of a novel

element, which is still absent. But there are other customs, local

or general—_e.g._, that of the _tabu_, existing in nearly the whole

of Oceania and elsewhere under different forms, in which religion

performs a social office, but a novel one (at least according to our

present ideas), and safeguards institutions and conventions by

terror, while still remaining outside the region of morality.

II.

Except the intellectual feelings themselves, no emotional

manifestation depends more on the intellectual development than the

religious sentiment, because every religion implies some conception

of the universe—a cosmology and a system of metaphysics. With the

first period we have scarcely passed beyond the stage of

imagination; with the second, reflection and generalisation, whose

upward progress we are about to follow, make their appearance. The

intellectual evolution and the emotional evolution must each be

studied in turn during this second stage.

I. _Intellectual Evolution._—We shall find it useful, moreover, to

divide the study of the intellectual element into two questions: (1)

the conception of a cosmic order, at first physical, afterwards

moral; (2) the progressive march of generalisation from an almost

unlimited multiplicity up to unity. These two processes have not

always coincided or kept pace with one another.

(1) We have seen that, for primitive man, everything is alive, full

of arbitrary caprices, desires, intentions, and especially

mysteries, because everything is unforeseen: it is the reign of

universal contingency. The formula, “everything is alive,” is,

however, too absolute; it only suits those things which were seen to

move and change—_i.e._, the majority, not the totality of things. It

seems as if the absence of motion, stability, fixity, the want of

reaction, had been a sort of revelation to a simple mind. Perhaps it

was through the spectacle of the fixity of things that the notion of

order or law made its very humble entry into the world. However that

may be, it is certain that the depersonification of nature began

early to mark the origin of science. In our present state of culture

we find a difficulty in representing to ourselves a state of mind in

which the idea of fixity in natural phenomena is almost _nil_; yet

such a state of mind has existed, and there is no want of documents

to prove it. The expression, “the new moon,” was not at first a

metaphor: men wondered if the sun would always continue his course;

the Mexicans anxiously awaited his new birth every fifty years;

eclipses seemed to happen at random, and caused great terror,

etc.[193] Gradually the spirit of observation and reflection arrived

at constant relations, and introduced into the conception of Nature

the ideas of order and regularity, diminishing in so far the domain

of chance and contingency. This notion of a cosmic order has

influenced religious conceptions; the government of the physical

world was attributed to the gods; they are its regulators; each has

his department where he is supreme. The co-existence of two opposite

principles has been remarked in the religion of several nations in

this period of their development: necessity being personified in an

abstract, mysterious, inaccessible deity (Rita among the Aryans, Ma

with the Egyptians, Tao with the Chinese, Moira or Nomos with the

Greeks, etc.[194]); while contingency, or rather limited arbitrary

power, was personified in more human gods having their legends,

acting within their own special sphere, as, for instance, the gods

of Greece. The latter are also sometimes divided into two

categories, which is the first step towards simplification, one kind

bestowing physical well-being—health, prosperity, riches; the other

inflicting physical ills—disease, famine, tempest, shipwreck.

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Footnote 193:

For the facts see Goblet d’Alviella, _op. cit._, p. 178.

Footnote 194:

Goblet d’Alviella, _ib._, pp. 176-198.

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The notion of the cosmic order led to that of a moral order; the

gods have first the physical government, in a later age the ethical

government of the universe. The conception of higher powers,

invested with moral attributes, has been, as we shall afterwards

see, an important stage in the evolution of the religious sentiment.

The very ancient opinion, still prevalent among many believers, that

the crimes of men occasion epidemics, unchain the elements, cause

floods and earthquakes, shows that the human mind, rightly or

wrongly, has supposed an analogy between all the forms of order in

the universe. Hence also the change of the physical dualism above

mentioned into a moral dualism; the genii of light and darkness

become respectively moral or immoral gods, good or bad counsellors,

saviours or tempters; and in this period a faith in the superiority

and definitive triumph of the good is firmly established. In short,

the gods have as attributes first power, then intelligence, and

lastly morality.

(2) Let us now see the part played by increasing generalisation in

the constitution of religious ideas.