Anger is strikingly shown by many fish, and notoriously by sticklebacks when their territory is invaded by other sticklebacks. In such circumstances of provocation the whole animal changes colour, and, darting at the trespasser, shows rage and fury in every movement;3 but we can hardly believe that any idea of inflicting pain is present to its mind. As we proceed still lower down the scale of animal life we find the conative element itself gradually dwindle away until nothing is left but mere reflex action.
1 Cf. Ribot, Psychology of the Emotions, p. 220 sqq.
2 There are some good remarks on this in Mr. Hiram Stanley’s Studies in the Evolutionary Psychology of Feeling, p. 138 sq.
3 Romanes, Animal Intelligence, p. 246 sqq.
That the fury of an injured animal turns against the real or assumed cause of its injury is a matter of notoriety, and everybody knows that the same is the case with the anger of a child. No doubt, as Professor Sully observes, “hitting out right and left, throwing things down on the floor and breaking them, howling, wild agitated movements of the arms and whole body, these are the outward vents which the gust of childish fury is apt to take.”4 But, on the other hand, we know well enough that Darwin’s little boy, who became a great adept at throwing books and sticks at any one who offended him,5 was in this respect no exceptional child. Towards the age of one year, according to M. Perez, children “will beat people, animals, and inanimate objects if they are angry with them; they will throw their toys, their food, their plate, anything, in short, that is at hand, at the people who have displeased them.”6 That a similar discrimination characterises the resentment of a savage is a fact upon which it is necessary to dwell at some length for the reason that it has been disputed, and because there are some seeming anomalies which require an explanation.
4 Sully, Studies in Childhood, p. 232 sq.
5 Darwin, ‘Biographical Sketch of an Infant,’ in Mind, ii. 288.
6 Perez, First Three Years of Childhood, p. 66 sq.
In a comprehensive work,7 Dr. Steinmetz has made the feeling of revenge the object of a detailed investigation, which cannot be left unnoticed. The ultimate conclusions at which he has arrived are these: Revenge is essentially rooted in the feeling of power and superiority. It arises consequently upon the experience of injury, and its aim is to enhance the “self-feeling” which has been lowered or degraded by the injury suffered. It answers this purpose best if it is directed against the aggressor himself, but it is not essential to it that it should take any determinate direction, for, per se, and originally, it is “undirected.”8
7 Ethnologische Studien zur ersten Entwicklung der Strafe.
8 Strictly speaking, this theory is not new. Dr. Paul Rée, in his book Die Entstehung des Gewissens, has pronounced revenge to be a reaction against the feeling of inferiority which the aggressor impresses upon his victim. The injured man, he says (ibid. p. 40) is naturally reluctant to feel himself inferior to another man, and consequently strives, by avenging the aggression, to show himself equal or even superior to the aggressor. A similar view was previously expressed by Schopenhauer (Parerga und Paralipomena, ii. 475 sq.). But Dr. Steinmetz has elaborated his theory with an independence and fulness which make any question of priority quite insignificant.
We are told, in fact, that the first stage through which revenge passed within the human race was characterised by a total, or almost total, want of discrimination. The aim of the offended man was merely to raise his injured “self-feeling” by inflicting pain upon somebody else, and his savage desire was satisfied whether the man on whom he wreaked his wrath was guilty or innocent.9 No doubt, there were from the outset instances in which the offender himself was purposely made the victim, especially if he was a fellow-tribesman; but it was not really due to the feeling of revenge if the suffering was inflicted upon him, in preference to others. Even primitive man must have found out that vengeance directed against the actual culprit, besides being a strong deterrent to others, was a capital means of making a dangerous person harmless. However, Dr. Steinmetz adds, these advantages should not be overestimated, as even indiscriminate revenge has a deterring influence on the malefactor.10 In early times, then, vengeance, according to Dr. Steinmetz, was in the main “undirected.”
9 Steinmetz, op. cit. i. 355, 356, 359, 561.
10 Ibid. i. 362.
At the next stage it becomes, he says, somewhat less indiscriminate. A proper victim is sought for even in cases of what we should call natural death, which the savage generally attributes to the ill-will of some foe skilled in sorcery;11 though indeed Dr. Steinmetz doubts whether in such cases the unfortunate sufferer is really supposed to have committed the deed imputed to him.12 At all events, a need is felt of choosing somebody for a victim, and “undirected” vengeance gradually gives way to “directed” vengeance. A rude specimen of this is the blood-feud, in which the individual culprit is left out of consideration, but war is carried on against the group of which he is a member, either his family or his tribe. And from this system of joint responsibility we finally come, by slow degrees, says Dr. Steinmetz, to the modern conception, according to which punishment should be inflicted upon the criminal and nobody else.13 Dr. Steinmetz believes that the vis agens in this long process of evolution lies in the intellectual development of the human race: man found out more and more distinctly that the best means of restraining wrongs was to punish a certain person, namely, the wrong-doer.14 On this utilitarian calculation our author lays much stress in the latter part of his investigation; whereas in another place he observes that a revenge which is directed against the offender is particularly apt to remove the feeling of inferiority, by effectually humiliating the hitherto triumphant foe.15
11 Ibid. i. 356 sq.
12 Ibid. i. 359 sq.
13 Steinmetz, op. cit. i. 361.
14 Ibid. i. 358, 359, 361 sq.