to let unintended evil go by without satisfaction of inflicting some counter evil upon the offender.”2 Perhaps another answer would be that an accidental injury in no way affects the “self-feeling” of the sufferer. But neither of these explanations goes to the root of the question. Let us once more remember that even a dog distinguishes between being stumbled over and being kicked; and this can neither be the result of discipline, nor have anything to do with the feeling of self-regarding pride.3 The reason is that the dog scents an enemy in the person who kicks him, but not in the one who stumbles. My neighbour, more clearly still, makes a distinction between a part of my body and myself as a volitional being, and finds that I am no proper object of resentment when the cause of the hurt was merely my arm or my foot. An event is attributed to me as its cause only in proportion as it is considered to have been brought about by my will; and I, regarded as a volitional and sensitive entity, can be a proper object of resentment only as a cause of pain.
2 Bain, Emotions and the Will, p. 185.
3 The Koussa Kafirs, according to Lichtenstein (Travels in Southern Africa, i. 254), expect a similar discrimination from the elephant; for “if an elephant is killed … they seek to exculpate themselves towards the dead animal, by declaring to him solemnly, that the thing happened entirely by accident, not by design.”
We can hardly feel disposed to resent injuries inflicted upon us by animals, little children, or madmen, when we recognise their inability to judge of the nature of their acts. They are not the real causes of the mischief resulting from their deeds, since they neither intended nor foresaw nor could have foreseen it. “Why,” says the Stoic, “do you bear with the delirium of a sick man, or the ravings of a madman, or the impudent blows of a child? Because, of course, they evidently do not know what they are doing. … Would anyone think himself to be in his perfect mind if he were to return kicks to a mule or bites to a dog?”4 Hartley observes, “As we improve in observation and experience, and in the faculty of analysing the actions of animals, we perceive that brutes and children, and even adults in certain circumstances, have little or no share in the actions referred to them.”5
4 Seneca, De ira, iii. 26 sq.
5 Hartley, Observations on Man, i. 493.
Deliberate resentment considers the motives of acts. Suppose that a man tells us an untruth. Our feelings towards him are not the same if he did it in order to save our life as if he did it for his own benefit. Moreover, our anger abates, or ceases altogether, if we find that he who injured us acted under compulsion, or under the influence or a non-volitional impulse, too strong for any ordinary man to resist. Then, the main cause or the injury was not his will, conceived as a continuous entity. It yielded to the will of somebody else, reluctantly, as it were out of necessity, or to a powerful conation which forms no part of his real self. He was merely an instrument in another’s hands, or he was “beside himself,” “beyond himself,” “out of his mind.” When we are angry, says Montaigne, “it is passion that speaks, and not we.”6 The religious psychology of the ancient Greeks ascribed acts committed upon sudden excitement of mind to the Ate which bewilders the mind and betrays the man into deeds which, in his sober senses, he is heartily sorry for. Hence the Ate has in its train the Litae—the humble prayers of repentance, which must make good, before gods and men, whatever has been done amiss.7 The Vedic singer apologises, “It is not our own will, Varuna, that leads us astray, but some seduction—wine, anger, dice, and our folly.”8 In the Andaman Islands violent outbreaks of ill-temper or resentment are looked upon as the result of a temporary “possession,” and the victim is, for the time being, considered unaccountable for his actions.9 Madness, as we have seen, is frequently attributed to demoniacal possession. In ancient Ireland, again, it was believed to be often brought on by malignant magical agency, usually the work of some druid, hence in the Glosses to the Senchus Mór a madman is repeatedly described as one “upon whom the magic wisp has been thrown.”10 What a person does in madness is not an act committed by him.
| “Was ’t Hamlet wrong’d Laertes? Never Hamlet: If Hamlet from himself be ta’en away, And when he’s not himself does wrong Laertes, Then Hamlet does it not, Hamlet denies it. Who does it, then? His madness: if ’t be so, Hamlet is of the faction that is wrong’d; His madness is poor Hamlet’s enemy.”11 |
6 Montaigne, Essais, ii. 31 (Œuvres, p. 396).
7 Iliad, ix. 505 sqq. Müller, Dissertations on the Eumenides, p. 108.
8 Rig-Veda, vii. 86. 6.
9 Man, in Jour. Anthrop. Inst. xii. 111.
10 Joyce, Social History of Ancient Ireland, i. 224.
11 Shakespeare, Hamlet, v. 2.
We resent not only acts and volitions, but also omissions, though generally less severely; and when a hurt is attributed to want of foresight, our resentment is, ceteris paribus, proportionate to the degree of carelessness which we lay to the offender’s charge. A person appears to us as the cause of an injury which we think he could have prevented by his will. But a hurt resulting from carelessness is not to the same extent as an intentional injury caused by the will. And the less foresight could have been expected in a given case, the smaller share has the will in the production of the event.
Our resentment is increased by a repetition of the injury, and reaches its height when we find that our adversary nourishes habitual ill-will towards us. On the other hand, as we have noticed in a previous chapter,12 the injured party is not deaf to the prayer for forgiveness which springs from genuine repentance. Like moral indignation, non-moral resentment takes into consideration the character of the injurer.
Passing to the emotion of gratitude, we find a similar resemblance between the phenomena which give rise to this emotion and those which call forth moral approval. We may feel some kind of retributive affection for inanimate objects which have given us pleasure; “a man grows fond of a snuff-box, of a pen-knife, of a staff which he has long made use of, and conceives something like a real love and affection for them.”13 But gratitude, involving a desire to please the benefactor, can reasonably be felt towards such objects only as are themselves