CRUCIAL TRAITS IN SOCIAL LIFE
THE INTERPENETRATION OF HUMAN TRAITS. This chapter is devoted
to a consideration of a number of individual human
traits--curiosity, pugnacity, leadership, fear, love, hate,
etc., and some of their more important social consequences.
These are seldom present in isolation. A man is not, under
normal circumstances, simply and solely pugnacious, curious,
tired, submissive, or acquisitive. One's desire to own a
particular house at a particular location may be complicated by
the presence of several of these traits at once. The house
may be wanted simply as a possession, a crude satisfaction of
our native acquisitiveness. It may be sought further as a
mode of self-display, an indication of how one has risen in the
world. Its attractiveness may be heightened by the fact that
it is situated next door to the house of a rather particularly
companionable old friend. It may be peculiarly indispensable
to one's satisfaction because it is also being sought by a
detested rival. Moreover, as we shall see in the discussion
of the Self, these traits are interwoven with each other and
attain varying degrees of power as motive forces in an individual's
character.
But while these distinctive human traits are seldom apparent
in isolation, it is worth while to consider them separately,
not only because the elements of human behavior will thus
stand out more clearly, but because in certain individuals one
or another of these-traits may be natively of especial strength.
And further, in differing social situations, the possession or
the cultivation of one or another of these native endowments
may be of particular social value or danger. And in any given
situation, one or another of them may be predominant, as
when a man is intensely angry, or curious, or tired. Thus an
individual may have a marked capacity for leadership, or an
extraordinarily tireless curiosity, or an abnormally developed
pugnacity or acquisitiveness. The capacity for leadership,
as will later be discussed in some detail, will be of particular
social value in large enterprises; patient and persistent inquiry
may produce science; pugnacity when freely expressed may
provoke quarrels, bickerings, and war. In the following
discussion, the continual interpenetration and qualification of
these traits by one another in a complex situation must be
recognized. Else it may appear in the discussion of any single
trait, as if by means of it all human action were being explained.
Rather the aim is to trace them as one might the
elements in the pattern of a tapestry, or the recurrent themes
in the development of a symphony. But as the symphony is
more than a single melody, the tapestry more than one element
of line or color, so is human life more than any single
trait.[1]
[Footnote 1: Philosophers and others have time and again made the
mistake of simplifying human life to a single motive or driving
power. Hobbes rested his case on fear; Bain and Sutherland on
sympathy; Tarde on imitation; Adam Smith and Bentham on enlightened
self-interest. In our own day the Freudians interpret everything
as being sexual in its motive. And most recently has come an
interpretation of life, as in Bertrand Russell and Helen Marot,
in terms of the "creative impulse."]
THE FIGHTING INSTINCT. Almost all men exhibit in varying
degrees the "fighting instinct"; that is, the tendency, when
interfered with in the performance of any action prompted by
any other instinct, to threaten, attack, and not infrequently,
if successful in attack, to punish and bully the individual
interfering.
The most mean-spirited cur will angrily resent any attempt to
take away its bone, if it is hungry; a healthy infant very early
displays anger if its meal is interrupted, and all through life most men
find it difficult to suppress irritation on similar occasions. In the
animal world the most furious excitement of this instinct is provoked
in the male of many species by any interference with the satisfaction
of the sexual impulse.[2]
[Footnote 2: McDougall: _loc. cit._, p. 60.]
This original tendency to fight is very persistent in human
beings, but is susceptible of direction, and is not, in civilized
life, frequently revealed in its crude and direct form, save
among children and among adults under intense provocation
and excitement. Occasionally, however, pugnacity is displayed
in its simple animal form. "Man shares with many
of the animals the tendency to frighten his opponent by loud
roars or bellowings.... Many a little boy has, without example
or suggestion, suddenly taken to running with open
mouth to bite the person who has angered him, much to the
distress of his parents."[1] As the individual grows older, he
learns to control the outward and immediate expression of
this powerful and persistent human trait. He learns in his
dealings with other people not to give way, when frustrated
in some action or ambition, to mere animal rage. The customs
and manners to which a child is early subjected in
civilized intercourse are effective hindrances to uncontrolled
display of anger and pugnacity; superior intelligence and
education find more refined ways than kicking, pummeling, and
scratching of overcoming the interferences of others. But
even in gentle and cultured persons, an insult, a disappointment,
a blow will provoke the tell-tale signs of pugnacity and
anger, the flushing of the cheeks, the flash of the eye, the
incipient clenching of the fists, the compressing of the teeth and
lips, and the trembling of the voice. We substitute sarcasm
for punching, and find subtly civilized, and, in the long run,
more terrible, ways than bruises of punishing those who oppose
us in our play, our passions, our professions. But our
ancestors were beasts of prey, and there is still "fighting
in our blood."
[Footnote 1: McDougall: _loc. cit._, p. 61.]
The fighting instinct is aroused by both personal and impersonal
situations, and is occasioned even by very slight interferences,
and even when the author of the interference is
neither human nor animate. Quite intelligent men have been
known to kick angrily at a door as if from pure malice it refused
to open. Irate commuters have glared vindictively at
trains they have just missed. The glint of anger is roused in
our eye by an insolent stare, an ironic comment, or an impertinent
retort. The "boiling point" varies in different individuals
and races, and pugnacity is generally more readily roused
in men than in women. There are some persons, like the proverbial
Irishman, who, seeing the slightest opportunity for a
fight, "want to know whether it is private, or whether anybody
can get in." In most men pugnacity is more intense
when it is provoked by persons; except for a moment, one does
not try to fight a chair struck in the dark.
Under the conditions of civilized life the primitive expression
of pugnacity in physical combat has been outlawed and
made unnecessary by law and custom. Individuals are prevented
by the fear of punishment, besides their early training
and habits, from settling disputes by physical force. But as
the instinct itself remains strong, it must find some other
outlet. This it secures in more refined forms of rivalry, in
business and sport, or, all through human history, in fighting
between groups, from the squabbling and perpetual raids and
killings, and the extermination of whole villages and tribes
in Central Borneo, to the wars between nations throughout
European history.
PUGNACITY A MENACE WHEN UNCONTROLLED. The strength and
persistency of this human tendency, when uncontrolled or
when fostered between groups, make it a very serious menace.
Like all the other instincts, and more than most, it is
frustrated and continually checked in the normal peace-time
pursuits of contemporary civilization. Participation,
imaginative at least, in a great collective combat undoubtedly holds
some fascination for the citizens of modern industrial society,
despite the large-scale horror which war is in itself, and the
desolation it leaves in its wake. During peace the fighting
instinct for most men receives satisfaction on a small scale,
sometimes in nothing more important than small bickerings
and peevishness, or in seeing at first hand or on the ticker a
championship prize-fight. The pessimism which many writers
have expressed at the possibility of perpetual peace rests
in part on their perception of the easy excitability and deep
persistence of this impulse, especially among the vigorous and
young.
Not only may the fighting instinct be aroused by the possibility
of international wars, but it may be used by fomenters
and agitators to add a sense of intense pugnacity and violent
anger to the genuine friction that does exist between conflicting
interests in the same society. The theory of a "class
war" possibly finds its appeal for many minds as much in its
picturesque stimulation of their instincts of pugnacity as in
the logic of its economics.
PUGNACITY AS A BENEFICENT SOCIAL FORCE. While the power of
pugnacity and its easy stimulation makes this instinct a
peculiarly inflammable and dangerous motive force in civilized
society, it is, on the other hand, an indispensable source of
social progress. Many psychologists and sociologists, such as
McDougall, Bagehot, and Lang, attribute the superiority in
culture and social organization of the European races over,
say, the Chinese and East Indians, to the fighting instinct.
In the long series of wars that for centuries constituted much
of the history of Europe, those nations which survived, as in
earlier times those tribes which survived combat, were those
which displayed marked qualities of superiority in allegiance,
fidelity, and social coöperation. The intensity and effectiveness
of social coöperation in our own country was never so
well illustrated as during the Great War. In combat between
groups those groups survive which do stand out in
these respects.
William James in a famous essay[1] recognizes clearly the
enormous value of the fighting instinct in stimulating action
to an intense effectiveness exhibited under no other circumstances,
and proposes a "moral equivalent for war"--an
army devoted to constructive enterprises, reclaiming the
waste places of the land, warring against poverty and disease
and the like. Certainly every great reform movement has
been intensely stimulated and has gathered about it the energies
of men when it has become a "crusade for righteousness."
Part of Theodore Roosevelt's power was in his picturesque
phrasing of political issues as if they were great moral
struggles. No one could forget, or fail to have his heart beat
a trifle faster at Roosevelt's trumpet call in the 1912 campaign:
"We stand at Armageddon and we battle for the
Lord." His "Big Stick" became a potent political symbol.
Astute political leaders have not failed to capitalize the fighting
instinct, and any social project will enlist the wider enthusiasm
and the more energetic support if it is hailed as a
battle or fight against somebody or something.
[Footnote 1: "A Moral Equivalent of War," in _Memories and Studies_.]
In personal life also the instinct of pugnacity and the feeling
of anger that goes with it seem to set loose immense floods
of reserve energy. McDougall exaggerates but a trifle when
he says it supplies the zest and determines the forms of all our
games and recreations, and nine tenths of the world's work is
done by it. "Our educational system is founded upon it; it is
the social force underlying an immense amount of strenuous
exertion; to it we owe in a great measure even our science, our
literature, and our art; for it is a strong, perhaps an essential,
element of ambition, that last infirmity of noble minds."[1]
In the overcoming of obstacles, whether in the work itself, or
in the difficulties that a surgeon or a scholar meets with, or
in frustrations deliberately put in our way by other people,
pugnacity is an invaluable stimulant and sustainer of action.
Every great personality of strong convictions and dominant
energy has possessed it to some extent; in characters of great
moral energy it sometimes takes the form of a volcanic and
virtuous wrath, as in the case of the Prophets of the Old
Testament, or of later religious and social reformers who
brought an earnest and bitter anger against the wrongs they
saw and literally fought to overcome.
[Footnote 1: McDougall: _loc. cit._, p. 294.]
THE "SUBMISSIVE INSTINCT." Of great importance in the
social relations of men is their original tendency to find
satisfaction in following, partly submitting to, or completely
surrendering to a person or cause more dominating than the
individual. Thorndike describes this instinct in its simplest
form:
There is an original tendency to respond to the situation, "the
presence of a human being larger than one's self, of angry or mastering
aspect," and to blows and restraint by submissive behavior.
When weak from wounds, sickness, or fatigue, the tendency is
stronger. The man who is bigger, who can outyell and outstare us,
who can hit us without our hitting him, and who can keep us from
moving, does originally extort a crestfallen, abashed physique and
mind. Women in general are thus by original nature submissive to
men in general. Every human being thus tends by original nature
to arrive at a status of mastery or submission toward every other
human being, and even under the more intelligent customs of civilized
life somewhat of the tendency persists in many men.[1]
[Footnote 1: Thorndike: _Educational Psychology_, briefer course, p. 34.]
The impulse to follow and submit to something not ourselves
and more dominating than ourselves is very strong in
most men, and is called out by stimuli much less violent than
those physical manifestations of power mentioned in the
above quotation. Men instinctively long to be led, especially
if, as happens in the case of most individuals, there is in them
a marked absence of definite interest, conviction, or skill.
This instinct is aroused by any sign of exceptional power, or,
more generally still, by any exceptional conspicuousness,
whether socially useful or not. Men follow leaders partly
because men live in groups with common interests and in any
large-scale organization leadership is necessary. But the
power of demagogues, the faithfulness with which men will
follow a bad leader as well as a good, are evidence that men find
an instinctive satisfaction in submission. Self-dependence
stands out as a virtue or an accomplishment precisely because
most men feel so utterly at sea without any loyalty, allegiance,
or devotion. Any one who has spent a summer at a
boy's camp will recall the helplessness of youngsters to mark
out a program for themselves and to keep themselves happy
on the one afternoon when there was no official program of
play. Half the mischief performed on such occasions is initiated
by some boy with just a little more independence and
persuasiveness than the others. And it is not only among
children that there is evinced an almost pathetic bewilderment
and unrest in the absence of a leader. There is an
equally pathetic and sometimes dangerous attachment among
adults to the first sign of leadership that makes its appearance.
The demoralizing authority of the ward heeler is sometimes
dependent on no more trustworthy an index of real power
than a booming voice, a rough _camaraderie_, and a physically
"big" personality. And there are, on the other hand,
instances where lack of leadership seemed to be the chief reason
why certain classes of labor were unable to make their
demands effective at a much earlier date than they did. In the
first really big strike in the telephone industry in Boston
during the autumn of 1918 success seems to have been chiefly due
to the remarkable leadership of one of the young women
operators, a type of leadership which seems to have appeared
nowhere else in the telephone industry.[1]
[Footnote 1: See the article by Wm. Hard in the _New Republic_, May 3, 1919.]
The instinct of submissiveness, as has been pointed out in
connection with the discussion of all the other of man's original
tendencies, is not only strong, but may find its outlets in
attachment, both to desirable and to undesirable persons or
objects. Once aroused, attachment and submission may become
as stanch as they are blind. The signs which arouse our
loyalty may be and most frequently are glaring rather than
important. As Trotter phrases it:
The rational basis of the relation [following a leader] is, however,
seen to be at any rate open to discussion when we consider the
qualities in a leader upon which his authority so often rests, for there can
be little doubt that their appeal is more generally to instinct than
to reason. In ordinary politics it must be admitted that the gift of
public speaking is of more decisive value than anything else. If a
man is fluent, dextrous, and ready on the platform, he possesses the
one indispensable requisite for statesmanship; if in addition he has
the gift of moving deeply the emotions of his hearers, his capacity
for guiding the infinite complexities of national life becomes undeniable.
Experience has shown that no exceptional degree of any other
capacity is necessary to make a successful leader. There need be no
specially arduous training, no great weight of knowledge, either of
affairs or the human heart, no receptiveness to new ideas, no outlook
into reality.[1]
[Footnote 1: Trotter, p. 116.]
Though these be picturesquely exaggerated statements, they
do indicate the fact that the outward signs of leadership, of a
conspicuously emotional sort, may be more significant in determining
the attachments and loyalties of human beings,
than are genuine marks of capacity in the direction of political
and social affairs.
This pronounced tendency on the part of human beings to
follow a lead, and anybody's lead, as it were, has the most
serious dangers. It means that a man with qualities that
sway men's emotions and stir their imaginations can attach
to himself the profoundest loyalties for personal or class ends.
The gifts of personal magnetism, of a kindly voice, an air of
confidence and calmness, exuberant vitality, and a sensitivity
to other people's feelings, along with some of the genuine
qualities of effective and expert control of men and affairs,
may be used by a demagogue as well as by a really devoted
servant of the popular good, by an Alcibiades as well as by a
Garibaldi, by a conquering Napoleon as well as by a Lincoln.
Our instincts of following and submission, apart from education,
are as easily aroused by specious signs of social power
and conspicuousness as by signs of mental effectiveness and
genuine altruistic interest. The exploitation of these tendencies
by selfish leaders is therefore particularly easy. The
large circulation of the "yellow press," the power in politics
of the unscrupulous, the selfish, and the second-rate, are
symptoms of how men's natural tendency to follow has been
played upon in support of plans and ambitions which would
not be sanctioned by their reason. The genius for leadership
has been exhibited in criminal gangs, in conquests and in
fanaticism, as well as in the promotion of good government,
of better labor conditions and better education.
But progress in these last-named is dependent on the utilization
of men's submissiveness by leaders interested in the
promotion of desirable social enterprises. While men may be
so easily led, they are responsive to leadership in good
directions as well as bad. No great social movements, the freeing
of slaves, the gaining of universal suffrage, the bettering of
factory conditions, freedom of thought and action, could have
gained headway if men had been born unwilling to follow.
There are (see chapter IX) ineradicable differences in capacity
between men, and if the uninformed and the socially helpless
could not be aroused to follow those great both in mind and
magnanimity, it is difficult to see how the lot of mankind ever
could have, or ever can improve. A good leader may make
men support, out of instinctive loyalty, purposes and plans
which, if they completely understood them, they would support
out of reason. Up to the present most people have been,
and will probably remain for a long time to come, too ill-educated
or too poorly endowed by nature to understand the
bearings of the great social movements in which they are
involved. In consequence, it is a matter of congratulation that
their instinct of submission can be utilized in the interests of
their welfare which they frequently not only do not know how
to obtain, but do not understand. The Roman populace, enchanted
by Augustus, follow him to greatness, without comprehending
the imperial destiny which they are helping to
build. The barbarian hordes affectionately following the
lead of Charlemagne incidentally help to build the whole
edifice of European civilization.
MEN DISPLAY QUALITIES OF LEADERSHIP. The obverse of man's
tendency to follow a lead is, of course, his tendency to take it.
Individuals tend to display persistently and conspicuously
just those qualities which will win them the allegiance of
others.
The instinct of self-display is manifested by many of the higher
social or gregarious animals.... Perhaps among mammals the horse
displays it most clearly. The muscles of all parts are strongly
innervated, the creature holds himself erect, his neck is arched, his
tail lifted, his motions become superfluously vigorous and extensive,
he lifts his hoofs high in air as he parades before the eyes of his fellows....
Many children clearly exhibit this instinct of self-display; before
they can walk or talk the impulse finds its satisfaction in the admiring
gaze or plaudits of the family circle as each new acquirement is
practiced; a little later it is still more clearly expressed by the
frequently repeated command, "See me do this," or "See how well I
can do so and so"; and for many a child more than half the delight
of riding on a pony, of wearing a new coat, consists in the satisfaction
of this instinct, and vanishes if there be no spectators.[1]
[Footnote 1: McDougall; _loc. cit._, pp. 62-64.]
Individuals thus instinctively love to stand out from their
fellows, to outdistance and outclass them. And the qualities
of leadership are not infrequently stimulated by this competition
with others, for place, power, distinction. To win the
allegiance and loyal affection of men means that one's own
personality is enhanced; one stands out as a man of affairs, a
social or political leader, a guide to others in action or thought.
As has already been pointed out, the qualities that will win
the submission and loyalty of others vary widely. In the case
of one man it may be a charming smile and a gift of saying
striking and stirring rather than significant things. In the
case of another it may be his air of immense confidence,
restraint, and reserve. It may be brute force or a terrible
earnestness; it may even be, as in the case of certain religious
reformers, extraordinary gentleness. Garibaldi "inspired
among men of the most various temperaments love that
nothing could shake, and devotion that fell little short of
idolatry." "He enjoyed the worship and cast the spell of
a legendary hero." Alcibiades charmed, despite the patent
evil he wrought, by his magical personal beauty and grace.
Vandamme said of Napoleon: "That devil of a man exercises
on me a fascination that I cannot explain to myself, and in
such a degree that, though I fear neither God nor devil, when
I am in his presence I am ready to tremble like a child, and he
could make me go through the eye of a needle to throw myself
into the fire." Augereau is stupefied at their first meeting,
and confesses afterwards that "this little devil of a general"
has inspired him with awe.[1]
[Footnote 1: See chapter XXI on "Personality" in Ross's _Social Control_.]
Men's qualities of leadership depend, however, not only on
their personal charm, but on certain seeming or genuine
symptoms of effectiveness. Evidences of strong determination,
of a sweeping imagination, of calm, of confidence, of
enthusiasm, of qualities possessed by the vast majority only in
minor degrees, win men's admiration and devotion because
they are associated with the ability to accomplish great ends,
to do the unusual, to succeed where most people fail. Most
men are so conscious of their limitations and the difficulties of
any enterprise which they undertake that at any sign of exceptional
talent, whether real or apparent, they will commit
their respect, their energies, and sometimes, as in the case of a
religious crusade, their lives.
For good or evil, the possession, the cultivation, and the
exhibition of the qualities of leadership give men enormous
power. There was in the nineteenth century a historical
fashion, brilliantly exemplified by Carlyle, to assume that
history was made by great men. Latterly, there has been
wide dissent from this simplification of the processes of
history, but it is clear that innovations must be started by
individuals, and that a powerful leader is a matchless instrument
for initiating, and getting wide and enthusiastic support for
changes, whether good or bad. To quote Carlyle's eloquent
exaggeration:
For, as I take it, Universal History, the history of what man has
accomplished in this world, is at the bottom the History of the Great
Men who have worked here. They were the leaders of men, ... the
creators of whatsoever the general mass of men contrived to do or to
attain; all things that we see standing accomplished in the world are
properly the outer material result, the practical realization and
embodiment, of thoughts that dwelt in the Great Men sent into the
world: the soul of the whole world's history, it may justly be
considered, was the history of these.... Could we see _them_ well, we
should get some glimpses into the very marrow of the world's
history.[1]
[Footnote 1: Carlyle: _Heroes and Hero-Worship_, Lecture I.]
Later Nietzsche made much of this same idea, of the Superman
striding through the world and changing its destiny,
although in Nietzsche the Superman was an end in himself
rather than the servant of the world in which he lived.
To most historical writers to-day the forces at work in history
are much too complex to be dismissed with any such
simple melodrama. But there remain striking testimonies
of the influence of leaders. The sweep of Mohammedanism
into Europe was initiated by the burning and contagious zeal
of one religious enthusiast. The campaign against slavery
in this country assumed large proportions through the strenuous
leadership of the Garrisons and the Wendell Phillipses.
In our own day we have seen the same phenomenon; the
great political and social changes of the last generation have
all had their special advocates and leaders who, if they were
merely expressing the "spirit of the times," yet did give that
spirit expression. Every reform or revolution has its leading
spirits. That leadership is not the one essential goes without
saying; there have been great guides of repeatedly lost causes.
But many great causes may have been lost through the want
of good leadership.
In contemporary life leadership is not always directly personal,
but is carried on through the medium of the newspapers
and periodicals. But this merely means that a leader
may reach a wider audience; he reaches thousands through
picture and print, instead of hundreds by word of mouth.
Qualities of leadership may be utilized in the support of
the customary or the established, as well as in initiation and
support of the novel. People ape the great, or those that pass
for great, in manners and morals. The words of a distinguished
public man have prestige in the maintenance of the
established. Men _will_ follow, and if the socially conspicuous
lead them along the ways of the established, they will follow
there as readily and, being creatures of habit, often more
readily than along new paths. The immense following among
the lower social classes that the Conservative Party had in
England all through the nineteenth century in the face of
proposed changes that would have bettered their own conditions,
is an interesting illustration of this. This is partly
because the influence of leaders is dependent on their social
status as well as their personal qualities. The opinions of
inventors and big business men are taken with eagerness and
credulity even when touching matters outside their own field.
A man is made, as it were, _ipso facto_, a leader, by being rich,
powerful, of a socially distinguished family, or the director of
a large industry, although he may have, besides, qualities of
leadership that do not depend on his social position.
MAN PITIES AND PROTECTS WEAK AND SUFFERING THINGS. Nearly
all human beings exhibit a tendency to protect weak and
suffering things. This impulse is closely related to, and
probably has its origin in the parental instinct, more common, of
course, in women than in men. The feeling of affectionate
pity and the impulse to rescue from pain are most intense
when the distressed thing is a child, and particularly one's
own. One of the most poignant instances extant is the speech
of Andromache, one of the Trojan women in Euripides's play
of that name, to her child who is about to be slain by the
Greeks:
And none to pity thee!... Thou little thing,
That curlest in my arms, what sweet scents cling
All round thy neck! Beloved; can it be
All nothing, that this bosom cradled thee
And fostered; all the weary nights wherethrough
I watched upon thy sickness, till I grew
Wasted with watching? Kiss me. This one time;
Not ever again. Put up thine arms and climb
About my neck; now kiss me, lips to lips...
O ye have found an anguish that outstrips
All tortures of the East, ye gentle Greeks!
Why will ye slay this innocent that seeks
No wrong?...[1]
[Footnote 1: Euripides: ''Trojan Women'' (Gilbert Murray translation), p. 49.]
But the "tender emotion" as McDougall calls it, is aroused
by other children than one's own, and by others than children.
It is called out particularly by things that are by nature
helpless and delicate, but may be aroused by adults who are
placed in situations where they are suffering and powerless.
Samson, shorn of his strength, has been a traditional occasion
for pathos. The sick, the bereaved, the down-and-outers, the
failures, the forlorn and broken-hearted, call out in most men
an impulse to befriend and protect. Those who have been
dealt with unjustly or severely by their associates and society
and who have no redress, the poverty-stricken, the criminal
who has been punished and remains an exile, the maimed
and deformed, the widow and orphan, all these, arouse, apart
from the restraining force exercised by other instincts and
habits, such as anger and disgust, a natural tendency to pity
and aid.
The parental instinct in its direct and primitive form is
responsible for the closeness of family relations, a most important
consideration in the case of humans who have, as already
discussed, a long period of infancy during which they are
absolutely dependent on their elders. In the higher species,
writes McDougall, "The protection and cherishing of the
young is the constant and all-absorbing occupation of the
mother, to which she devotes all her energies, and in the
course of which she will at any time undergo privation, pain,
and death. The instinct becomes more powerful than any
other, and can override any other, even fear itself."[2] Wherever
the power of the parental instinct has waned, as in Greek
and Roman society, the civilization in which that degeneration
occurred was subjected to rapid decay.[3]
[Footnote 2: McDougall: _loc. cit._, p. 67.]
[Footnote 3: _Cf. Ibid._, p. 271.]
The parental instinct in its more general form of pity and
protectiveness toward all weak and suffering things is, in the
minds of many moralists, the origin of all altruistic sentiments
and actions, and at the same time the moral indignation
which insists on the punishment of wrong-doers. It is
clearly apparent in such movements as the Societies for the
Prevention of Cruelty to Children or to Animals, the antivivisection
crusade, and the like. But according to such a
distinguished moralist as John Stuart Mill, the whole system
of justice and punishment has its origins in this tender feeling
for those who have been wronged.
FEAR. Fear is one of the least specialized of human traits,
being called out in a great variety of situations, and resulting
in a great variety of responses. The most obvious symptom
of fear is flight, but there may be a dozen other responses.
"Crouching, clinging, starting, trembling, remaining stock
still, covering the eyes, opening the mouth and eyes, a temporary
cessation followed by an acceleration of the heart-beat,
difficulty in breathing, paleness, sweating, and erection of the
hair are responses of which certain ones seem bound, apart
from training, to certain situations, such as sudden loud
noises or clutches, the sudden appearance of strange objects,
thunder and lightning, loneliness and the dark."[1]
[Footnote 1: Thorndike: _loc. cit._, p. 20.]
In general, the marked physical reactions and deep emotional
disturbance that we call fear are aroused by anything
loud or strange, or that has outward signs of possible danger
to ourselves, such as a large wild animal approaching us. In
civilized man, whose life is comparatively sheltered, there are
considerable individual differences in susceptibility to fear,
and in the intensity with which it controls the individual.
But there are certain typical situations that call it forth.
Among young children, and not much less so among adults,
fear is aroused by any sudden loud noise, by strange men and
strange animals, black things and dark places, "vermin," such
as spiders and snakes, among a great many adults fear of
high places, and, among a few agaraphobia or fear of open
spaces.[1] The deep-seatedness of fear has been explained by
the fact that most of the things which instinctively arouse
fear were, in primitive life, the source of very real danger and
that under those conditions, where it was absolutely essential
to beware of the unfamiliar and the strange, only those animals
survived who were equipped with such a protective
mechanism as fear provides.
[Footnote 1: For a discussion of these, see James: _Psychology_,
vol. II, p. 415 ff.]
The instinct of fear has important social consequences, especially
as its influence is not infrequently clothed over with
reasons. In savage life, as McDougall points out, "fear of
physical punishment inflicted by the anger of his fellows must
have been the great agent of discipline of primitive man;
through such fear he must first have learned to control and
regulate his impulses in conformity with the needs of social
life."[2] In contemporary society fear is not so explicitly
present, but it is still a deep-seated power over men's lives.
Fear of punishment may not be the only reason why citizens
remain law-abiding, but it is an important control over many
of the less intelligent and the less socially minded. In an
unideal society there are still many who will do as much evil as is
"within the law," and fear of the consequences of failing a
course is among some contemporary undergraduates still an
indispensable stimulus of study.
[Footnote 2: McDougall: _loc. cit._, p. 303.]
Fear plays a part, however, not only in preventing people
from breaking the law, but often from living their lives freely
and after their own convictions. As has been strikingly
pointed out by Hilaire Belloc and Hobson, one of the greatest
evils of our present hit-or-miss methods of employment is
the fear of "losing his job," the uncomfortable feeling of
insecurity often felt by the workingman who, having so
frequently nothing to store up against a rainy day, lives in
perpetual fear of sickness or discharge.
In earlier times fear of the consequences of expressing dissent
from established opinions and beliefs was one of the
chief sources of social inertia. Where excommunication, torture,
and death followed dissent, it is not surprising that men
feared to be dissenters. In contemporary society under
normal conditions men have much less to fear in the way of
punishment, but may accept the traditional and conventional
because they fear the consequences of being different,
even if those consequences are not anything more serious than
a personal snub.
While men fear to dissent because of the disapproval to
which they may be subjected, dissent, the novel and strange
in action and opinion are themselves feared by most men
because of the unknown and unpredictable consequences to
which they may lead. Men were at first afraid of the steam-engine
and the locomotive. Men still fear novel political and
social ideas before they can possibly understand what they
have to be afraid of. The fact that thought so continually
turns up the novel and the strange is, according to Bertrand
Russell, precisely the reason why most men are afraid to
think. And fear of the novel, the strange, the unaccustomed
is, as in the case of many other instincts, a perfectly natural
means of protection that would otherwise have to be sought
by elaborate processes of reason. In what we call prudence,
caution, and care, fear undoubtedly plays some part, and
Plato long ago pointed out it is only the fool, not the brave
man, who is utterly unafraid.[l]
[Footnote 1: _Protagoras_.]
Psychologists may be said to differ largely as to the utility
of fear. They are nearly all agreed that in the forest life
which was man's originally, fear had its specific marked
advantages. Open spaces, dark caverns, loud noises were
undoubtedly associated very frequently with danger to the
primitive savage, and an instinctive recoil from these centers
of disaster was undoubtedly of survival value. But there is
an increasing tendency to discount the utility of fear in civilized
life. "Many of the manifestations of fear must be
regarded as pathological, rather than useful.... A certain
amount of timidity obviously adapts us to the world we live
in, but the _fear paroxysm_ is surely altogether harmful to him
who is its prey."[1]
[Footnote 1: James: _Psychology_, vol. II, p. 419.]
Fear and worry, which is a continuous form of fear, in general
hinder action rather than promote it. In its extreme
form it brings about complete paralysis, as in the case of
terror-stricken hunted animals. When humans or animals are
utterly terrified even death may result. This fact that fear
hinders action, sometimes most seriously, seems to some
philosophic writers, especially Bertrand Russell, a key fact
for social life. "No institution," he writes, "inspired by
fear, can further life."[2] And in another connection: "In the
world as we have been imagining it, economic fear will be removed
out of life.... No one will be haunted by the dread of
poverty.... The unsuccessful professional man will not live
in terror lest his children should sink in the scale.... In such
a world, most of the terrors that lurk in the background of
men's minds will no longer exist."[3] "In the daily lives of most
men and women, fear plays a _greater part than hope. It is not
so that life should be lived_."[4]
[Footnote 2: Bertrand Russell: _Why Men Fight_, p. 180.]
[Footnote 3: Russell: _Proposed Roads to Freedom_, p. 203.]
[Footnote 4: _Ibid._, p. 186. (Italics mine.)]
LOVE AND HATE. All human relations are qualified by the
presence, more or less intense, of emotion. Human beings
are not merely so many items that are coldly counted and
handled, as one counts and handles pounds of sugar and
pieces of machinery. A man may thus regard human beings
when he deals with them in mass, or thinks of them in statistical
tables or in the routine of a government office. But
human beings experience some emotional accompaniment in
their dealings with individuals, especially when face to face,
and experience more especially, in varying degrees, the emotions
of love or hate. These terms are here used in the general
sense of the receptive, positive, or expansive attitude and the
cold, negative, repellent, and contractual attitude toward
others. These may both be intense and consciously noted, as
in the case of long-cherished and deep affections or antipathies
to different individuals. They may appear as a half-realized
sense of pleasure in the mere presence and poise of a
person, or a curious sense of discomfort and irritation at his
appearance, his voice, or his gesture. These attitudes, even
when slight, color and qualify our relations with other
individuals. They may, in their larger manifestations, play so
large a part, that they must be considered separately, and in
detail.
LOVE. Love, used in this broad sense, varies in intensity.
It may be nothing more--it certainly frequently starts as
nothing more--than the feeling, so native as to be fairly
called instinctive, of common sympathy, fellow feeling,
immediate affinity with another. The psychological origins of
this disposition have already been noted in connection with
man's tendency to experience sympathetically immediately
the emotions of others. Every business man, lawyer, teacher,
any one who comes much into contact with a wide variety
of people, knows how, antecedent to any experience with an
individual's capacities or talents, or even before one had a
chance to draw any inferences from a person's walk, his bearing,
or his clothing, one may register an immediate like or dislike.
Every one has had the experience in crossing a college
campus or riding in a train or street car of noting, in passing
some one whom one has never seen before, an immediate
reaction of good-will and affection. This has been charmingly
expressed by a well-known English poet:
"The street sounds to the soldiers' tread,
And out we troop to see;
A single redcoat turns his head,
He turns and looks at me.
"My man, from sky to sky's so far,
We never crossed before;
Such leagues apart the world's ends are,
We're like to meet no more.
"What thoughts at heart have you and I,
We cannot stop to tell;
But dead or living, drunk or dry,
Soldier, I wish you well."[1]
[Footnote 1: A. E. Housman: _The Shropshire Lad_ (John Lane edition), p. 32.]
All affection for individuals probably starts in this immediate
instinctive liking. "The first note that gives sociability a
personal quality and raises the comrade into an incipient
friend is doubtless sensuous affinity. Whatever reaction we
may eventually make on an impression, after it has had time
to soak in and to merge in some practical or intellectual
habit, its first assault is always on the senses; and no sense is
an indifferent organ. Each has, so to speak, its congenial
rate of vibration, and gives its stimuli a varying welcome.
Little as we may attend to these instinctive hospitalities of
sense, they betray themselves in unjustified likes and dislikes
felt for casual persons and things, in the _je ne sais quai_
that makes instinctive sympathy."[2] From this immediate
instinctive liking it may rise to deep personal attachments,
strikingly manifested in friendship and love between the
sexes, both immemorially celebrated by poets and novelists.
Love is aroused chiefly by persons, and among persons,
especially in the case of sexual love, most frequently by more or
less physical beauty and attractiveness. But affection may
be aroused and is certainly sustained by other than merely
physical qualities.
[Footnote 2: Santayana: _Reason in Society_, p. 151.]
It is provoked by what we call personal or social charm, a
genuine kindliness of manner, an open-handed sincerity and
frankness, considerateness, gentleness, whimsicality. Which
particular social graces will win our affections depends of
course on our own interests, equipment, and fund of instinctive
and acquired sympathies. Popular psychology has in
various proverbs hit at and not entirely missed some of the
obvious and contradictory elements: "Opposites attract,"
"Birds of a feather flock together," and so on. Intellectual
qualities, in persons of marked intellectual interests, will also
sustain friendship and deepen an instinctive liking. Friendships
thus begin in accident and are continued through community
of interest. It is to be questioned whether merely
striking intellectual qualities initiate a friendship. They may
command admiration and respect, but liking, friendship, and
love have a more emotional and personal basis.
This same warm affectionate appreciation that nearly all
people have for other persons, fewer people--great poets,
philosophers, and enthusiastic leaders of men--have for
causes, institutions, and ideas. One feels in the works of great
thinkers the same warmth and loyalty to ideas and causes
that ordinary people display toward their friends. Plato has
given for all time the progress of love from attachment to a
single individual through to institutions, ideas, and what he
called mystically the idea of beauty itself.
For he who would proceed rightly in this matter should begin in
youth to turn to beautiful forms; and first, if his instructor guide
him rightly, he should learn to love one such form only--out of that
he should create fair thoughts, and soon he will himself perceive that
the beauty of one form is truly related to the beauty of another,
and then if beauty in general is his pursuit, how foolish would he be
not to recognize that the beauty in every form is one and the same!
And when he perceives this he will abate his violent love of the one,
which he will despise and deem a small thing, and will become a lover
of all beautiful forms; this will lead him on to consider that the
beauty of the mind is more honorable than the beauty of the outward
form. So that if a virtuous soul have but a little comeliness, he will
be content to love and tend him... until his beloved is compelled
to contemplate and see the beauty of institutions and laws, and
understand that all is of one kindred; and that personal beauty is
only a trifle; and after laws and institutions, he will lead him on to
the sciences, that he may see their beauty... until at length he
grows and waxes strong, and at last the vision is revealed to him of a
single science which is the science of beauty everywhere.[l]
[Footnote 1: Plato: _Symposium_ (Jowett translation), p. 502.]
There have been again great scientists who have had the
same warm affectionate devotion for their subject-matter
that most men display toward persons. There are scholars
almost literally in love with their subjects. There have been
a greater number whose capacity for affection has extended to
include the whole human race, and, indeed, all animate creation.
Such a type of character is beautifully exemplified in
Saint Francis of Assisi:
In Francis all living creatures may truly be said to have found a
friend and benefactor; his great heart embraced all the men and
women who sought his sympathy and advice, and his pity for the
dumb helplessness of suffering animals was deep and true. He would
lift the worm from his path lest a careless foot should crush it, and
would encourage his "little sister grasshopper" to perch upon his
hand, and chirp her song to his gentle ear. He tamed the fierce wolf
of Gubbio, and fed the robins with crumbs from his table.[1]
[Footnote 1: Goff and Kerr-Lawson: _Assisi of Saint Francis_, p. 121.]
And Christ stands, of course, in the Christian world, as the
supreme symbol of love for mankind.
In ordinary men it is this generalized affection which is at
the basis of any sustained interest in philanthropic or altruistic
enterprises. No less than a large and generous affection for
humanity is required to enable men to endure for long the
dreariness and disillusion so often incident to philanthropic
work, the conflicts and disappointments of public administration.
Certainly this is true of the first rank of statesmen; no
characterization of Lincoln fails to emphasize his essential
humanity and tenderness.
Disinterested love for humanity is normally most intense
in the adolescent.[2] The pressure of private concerns, of one's
narrowing interest in one's own career, one's own family, and
small circle of friends, the restriction of one's sympathies by
fixed habits and circumscribed experience, all tend to dampen
by middle age the ardor of the man who as an undergraduate
at eighteen set out to make the world "a better place to live
in." But more effective in dampening enthusiasm is the disillusion
and weariness that set in after a period of exuberant
and romantic benevolence to mankind in general. "We
call pessimists," writes a contemporary French philosopher,
"those who are in reality only disillusioned optimists."[1] So
the cynic may be fairly described as a disheartened lover of
men. It is only an unusual gift of affectionate good-will
that enables mature men, after rough and disillusioning experiences
in public life, to maintain without sentimentality a genuine
and persistent interest in the welfare of others. Those in
whom the fund of human kindness is slender will, and easily
do, become cynical and hard.
[Footnote 2: Simeon Strunsky has somewhere remarked: "At eighteen
a man is interested in causes; at twenty-eight in commutation
tickets."]
[Footnote 1: Georges Sorel: _Reflection on Violence_ (English
translation), p. 9.]
The attitude of affection for others is profoundly influential
in stimulating our interest in specific individuals, and modifying
our attitudes toward them. We cannot help being more
interested in those for whom we entertain affection than in
those to whom we are indifferent. In the same way our judgments
of our own friends, families, and children are qualified
by our affection for them. Parents and lovers are notoriously
partial, and a fair judgment of the work of our friends
demands unusual clarity, determination, and poise.
In a larger way the generally friendly attitude towards
others, genial expansive receptivity, is at the basis of what is
called "charity for human weakness." The gentle cynic can
see and tolerate other men's weaknesses:
"He knows how much of what men paint themselves
Would blister in the light of what they are;
He sees how much of what was great now shares
An eminence transformed and ordinary;
He knows too much of what the world has hushed
In others, to be loud now for himself."[2]
[Footnote 2: Edwin Arlington Robinson: "Ben Jonson Entertains a Man
from Stratford," in his _Man Against the Sky_.]
The devoutly religious have displayed keen psychological
insight when they made man's salvation dependent on God's
charity, and identified, as did Dante, charity with love.[3]
[Footnote 3: "Love and the gentle heart are one and the same thing."
_The New Life_. XX (son XI) _Amore e cor gentile son una cosa._
To Dante the spontaneous impulse to love is the basis of all altruism.
To feel and to follow this impulse is to be truly noble, to have a
"_cor gentile_," a gentle heart.]
HATE. Hate may be described as an extreme form of disaffection
usually provoked by some marked interference with
our activities, desires, or ideals. But in less intense degree
the negative feeling towards others may be provoked immediately
and unmistakably by most casual evidence of voice,
manner, or bearing. Such immediate revulsions of feeling
contrast with the instances of "instinctive sympathy" previously
cited, and are as direct and uncontrollable. Even
kindly disposed persons cannot help experiencing in the presence
of some persons they have never seen before, a half-conscious
thrill of repulsion or a dislike colored with dread.
A shifting gaze, a noticeably pretentious manner, a marked
obsequiousness, a grating voice, a chillness of demeanor, a
physical deformity, these, however little they may have to do
with a person's genuine qualities, do affect our attitudes toward
them. As the familiar verse has it:
"I do not like you, Dr. Fell,
The reason why I cannot tell,
But this I know, and know full well,
I do not like you, Dr. Fell."
We may later revise our estimates, but the initial reaction
is made, and often remains as a subconscious qualification of
our general attitude toward another. People of worldly experience
learn to trust their first reactions, to "size a man up"
almost intuitively, and to be surprised if their first impressions
go astray.
From this merely instinctive revulsion the negative attitude
may rise to that terrible form of destructive antipathy
which is "hate," as popularly understood. In between lie
degrees of dislike depending partly on the strength of the
initial antipathy, but equally so on the degree to which others,
whether persons, institutions, or ideas, interfere with our
activities, desires, or ideals. The man who seriously obstructs
our love, our pleasure, or our ambition, or who tries to do so,
provokes hate, and its concomitants of jealousy, rage, and
pugnacity. It is not only that we dislike the mere presence
of the person (in the opposite case the mere presence of the
beloved object is a joy), but we dislike it for what it portends
in danger and threat to ourselves. The more serious the evil
or disaster for which a person comes to stand, the more violent
the hatred for him, despite his personal fascinations.
The villain is not infrequently a "damned smiling villain."
The provocation of hate is complicated by the fact that it
is closely associated with fear. We dislike those who threaten
our happiness partly because we fear them. And we fear, as
was pointed out in more detail in the discussion of that powerful
human trait, the unfamiliar, the strange, the startling, the
unexpected. The facility with which sensational newspapers
can work up in an ignorant population a hate for foreign
nations, especially those of a totally alien civilization, is made
possible by the fear which these uninformed readers can feel
at the dangerous possibilities of mysterious foreign hordes.
The fomenting of fear is in nearly all such cases a prerequisite
to the fomenting of hate. And the promotion of hate has
historically been one of the frequent ingredients of international
conflicts.
Like love, hate is profoundly influential in modifying our
interest in persons and situations. To dislike a person moderately
is, in his absence, to be indifferent to him. To dislike
him intensely, in a sense increases our interest in him, though
perversely. Just as we wish the beloved person to succeed, to
gain honor and reputation and wealth, so we long for and
rejoice in the downfall and discomfiture of our enemies. Thus
writes the Psalmist:
Arise, O Lord, save me, my God; for thou has smitten all mine
enemies upon the cheekbone; thou hast broken the teeth of the
ungodly....
Thou hast also given me the necks of mine enemies that I might
destroy those that hate me.
Hate may be directed against persons, and usually it is.
But hatred may be directed against institutions and ideas as
well. For many persons it will be impossible for a decade to
listen to German music or the German language, so closely
have these become associated in their minds with ideas and
practices which they detest. To a dogmatic Calvinist in the
sixteenth century, both an heretical creed and its practitioners,
were objects of abomination. Disappointed men may
take out in a spleen and hatred of mankind their personal
pique and balked desires.
Great hates may be present at the same time and in
the same persons as great loves. Indeed for some persons
strength in the one passion is impossible without a corresponding
strength in its opposite. We cannot help hating,
more or less, not only those who interfere with our own welfare,
but with the welfare of those who, being dear to us, have
become, as we say, a part of our lives. Thus writes Bertrand
Russell in the introduction to his treatment of some of the
radical social tendencies of our own day:
Whatever bitterness or hate may be found in the movements which
we are to examine, it is not bitterness or hate, but love, that is their
mainspring. It is difficult not to hate those who torture the objects
of our love. Though difficult, it is not impossible; but it requires a
breadth of outlook, and a comprehensiveness of understanding which
are not easy to preserve amid a desperate contest.[1]
[Footnote 1: Russell: _Proposed Roads to Freedom_, pp. xvii-xviii.]
Hate may thus be, as great religious and social reformers
illustrate, invoked on the side of good as well as evil. The
prophets burned with a "righteous indignation." But hate
is a violent and consuming passion, bent on destroying
obstacles rather than solving problems. It consumes in hatred
for individuals such energy as might more expeditiously be
devoted to the improvement of the circumstances which
make people do the mean or small or blind actions which
arouse our wrath. The complete meekness and humility
preached by Christ have not been taken literally by the
natively pugnacious peoples of Europe. But as James says
suggestively:
"Love your enemies!" Mark you not simply those who do not
happen to be your friends, but your _enemies_, your positive and active
enemies. Either this is a mere Oriental hyperbole, a bit of verbal
extravagance, meaning only that we should, in so far as we can,
abate our animosities, or else it is sincere and literal. Outside of
certain cases of intimate individual relation, it seldom has been
taken literally. Yet it makes one ask the question: Can there in
general be a level of emotion so unifying, so obliterative of differences
between man and man, that even enmity may come to be an irrelevant
circumstance and fail to inhibit the friendlier interests aroused.
If positive well-wishing could attain so supreme a degree of excitement,
those who were swayed by it might well seem superhuman
beings. Their life would be morally discrete from the lives of other
men, and there is no saying... what the effects might be: they
might conceivably transform the world.[1]
[Footnote 1: James: _Varieties of Religious Experience_, p. 283.]
Dislikes, disagreements, native antipathies are not to be
abolished, human differences being ineradicable and human
interests, even in an ideal society, being in conflict. But a
keener appreciation of other viewpoints, which is possible
through education, a less violent concern with one's own
personal interests to the exclusion of all others, may greatly reduce
the amount of hate current in the world, and free men's
energies in passions more positive in their fruits.