Sometimes animals show a remarkable degree of discrimination in finding out the proper object for their resentment. It is hardly surprising to read that a baboon, which was molested in its cage with a stick, tried to seize, not the stick, but the hand of its tormentor.85 More interesting is the “revenge” which an elephant at Versailles inflicted upon a certain artist who had employed his servant to tease the animal by making a feint of throwing apples into its mouth:—“This conduct enraged the elephant; and, as if it knew that the painter was the cause of this teasing impertinence, instead of attacking the servant, it eyed the master, and squirted at him from its trunk such a quantity of water as spoiled the paper on which he was drawing.”86
80 Darwin, Descent of Man, p. 69.
81 Romanes, Animal Intelligence, p. 478.
82 Brehm, Thierleben, i. 156. Idem, From North Pole to Equator, p. 305. Rengger (Naturgeschichte der Säugethiere von Paraguay, p. 52) gives the following information about the Cay:—“Fürchtet er … seinen Gegner, so nimmt er seine Zuflucht zur Verstellung, und sucht sich erst dann an ihm zu rächen, wenn er ihn unvermuthet überfallen kann. So hatte ich einen Cay, welcher mehrere Personen die ihn oft auf eine grobe Art geneckt hatten, in einem Augenblicke lass, wo sie im besten Vernehmen mit ihm zu sein glaubten. Nach verübter That kletterte er schnell auf einen hohen Balken, wo man ihm nicht beikommen konnte, und grinste schadenfroh den Gegenstand seiner Rache an.” See, moreover, Watson, The Reasoning Power in Animals, especially pp. 20, 21, 24, 156 sq.; Romanes, op. cit. p. 387 sqq.; but also Morgan, Animal Life and Intelligence, p. 401 sq.
83 Palgrave, Narrative of a Year’s Journey through Central and Eastern Arabia, i. 40.
84 Watson, op. cit. p. 26 sq.
85 Aas, Sjaeleliv og intelligens hos Dyr, i. 72.
86 Smellie, Philosophy of Natural History, i. 448.
I find it inconceivable that anybody, in the face of such facts, could still believe that the revenge of early man was at first essentially indiscriminating, and became gradually discriminating from considerations of social expediency. But by this I certainly do not mean to deny that violation of the “self-feeling” is an extremely common and powerful incentive to resentment. It is so among savage87 and civilised men alike; even dogs and monkeys get angry when laughed at. Nothing more easily rouses in us anger and a desire for retaliation, nothing is more difficult to forgive, than an act which indicates contempt, or disregard of our feelings. Long after the bodily pain of a blow has ceased, the mental suffering caused by the insult remains and calls for vengeance. This is an old truth often told. According to Seneca, “the greater part of the things which enrage us are insults, not injuries.”88 Plutarch observes that, though different persons fall into anger for different reasons, yet in nearly all of them is to be found the idea of their being despised or neglected.89 “Contempt,” says Bacon, “is that which putteth an edge upon anger, as much, or more, than the hurt itself.”90 But, indeed, there is no need to resort to different principles in order to explain the resentment excited by different kinds of pain. In all cases revenge implies, primordially and essentially, a desire to cause pain or destruction in return for hurt suffered, whether the hurt be bodily or mental; and, if to this impulse is added a desire to enhance the wounded “self-feeling,” that does not interfere with the true nature of the primary feeling of revenge. There are genuine specimens of resentment without the co-operation of self-regarding pride;91 and, on the other hand, the reaction of the wounded “self-feeling” is not necessarily, in the first place, concerned with the infliction of pain. If a person has written a bad book which is severely criticised, he may desire to repair his reputation by writing a better book, not by humiliating his critics; and if he attempts the latter rather than the former, he does so, not merely in order to enhance his “self-feeling,” but because he is driven on by revenge. Dr. Boas tells us that the British Columbia Indian, when his feelings are hurt, sits down or lies down sullenly for days without partaking of food, and that, “when he rises his first thought is, not how to take revenge, but to show that he is superior to his adversary.92
87 Turner, ‘Ethnology of the Ungava District,’ in Ann. Rep. Bur. Ethn. xi. 270 (Hudson Bay Indians). Georgi, Russia, iii. 205 (Aleuts). Sarasin, Ergebnisse naturwiss. Forschungen auf Ceylon, iii. 537 (Veddahs). von Wrede, Reise in Ḥadhramaut, p. 157 (Bedouins). Winterbottom, Native Africans in the Neighbourhood of Sierra Leone, i. 211.
88 Seneca, De ira, iii. 28.
89 Plutarch, De cohibenda ira, 12.
90 Bacon, ‘Essay LVII. Of Anger,’ in Essays, p. 514.
91 Bain, Emotions and the Will, p. 177.
92 Boas, First General Report on the Indians of British Columbia, read at the Newcastle-upon-Tyne meeting of the British Association, 1889, p. 19.
In the feeling of gratification which results from successful resentment, the pleasure of power or superiority also may form a very important element, but it is never the exclusive element.93 As the satisfaction of every desire is accompanied by pleasure, so the satisfaction of the desire involved in resentment gives a pleasure by itself. The angry or revengeful man who succeeds in what he aims at, delights in the pain he inflicts for the very reason that he desired to inflict it.
93 Cf. Ribot, op. cit. p. 221 sq.
Revenge thus only forms a link in a chain of emotional phenomena, for which “non-moral resentment” may be used as a common name. In this long chain there is no missing link. Anger without any definite desire to cause suffering, anger with such a desire, more deliberate resentment—all these phenomena are so inseparably connected with each other that no one can say where one passes into another. Their common characteristic is that they are mental states marked by an aggressive attitude towards the cause of pain.
As to their origin, the evolutionist can hardly entertain a doubt. Resentment, like protective reflex action, out of which it has gradually developed, is a means of protection for the animal. Its intrinsic object is to remove a cause of pain, or, what is the same, a cause of danger. Two different attitudes may be taken by an animal towards another which has made it feel pain: it may either shun or attack its enemy. In the former case its action is prompted