is the actual determinant. Both of them are of supreme importance for the preservation of the species, and may consequently be regarded as elements in the animal’s mental constitution which have been acquired by means of natural selection in the struggle for existence. We have already noted that, originally, the impulse of attacking the enemy could hardly have been guided by a representation of the enemy as suffering. But, as a successful attack is necessarily accompanied by such suffering, the desire to produce it naturally, with the increase of intelligence, entered as an important element in resentment. The need for protection thus lies at the foundation of resentment in all its forms.
This view is not new. More than one hundred and fifty years before Darwin, Shaftesbury wrote of resentment in these words:—“Notwithstanding its immediate aim be indeed the ill or punishment of another, yet it is plainly of the sort of those [affections] which tend to the advantage and interest of the self-system, the animal himself; and is withal in other respects contributing to the good and interest of the species.”94 A similar opinion is expressed by Butler, according to whom the reason and end for which man was made liable to anger is, that he might be better qualified to prevent and resist violence and opposition, while deliberate resentment “is to be considered as a weapon, put into our hands by nature, against injury, injustice, and cruelty.”95 Adam Smith, also, believes that resentment has “been given us by nature for defence, and for defence only,” as being “the safeguard of justice and the security of innocence.”96 Exactly the same view is taken by several modern evolutionists as regards the “end” of resentment, though they, of course, do not rest contented with saying that this feeling has been given us by nature, but try to explain in what way it has developed. “Among members of the same species,” says Mr. Herbert Spencer, “those individuals which have not, in any considerable degree, resented aggressions, must have ever tended to disappear, and to have left behind those which have with some effect made counter-aggressions.”97 Mr. Hiram Stanley, too, quoting Junker’s statement regarding the pigmies of Africa, that “they are much feared for their revengeful spirit,”98 observes that, “other things being equal, the most revengeful are the most successful in the struggle for self-conservation and self-furtherance.”99 This evolutionist theory of revenge has been criticised by Dr. Steinmetz, but in my opinion with no success. He remarks that the feeling of revenge could not have been of any use to the animal, even though the act of vengeance might have been useful.100 But this way of reasoning, according to which the whole mental life would be excluded from the influence of natural selection, is based on a false conception of the relation between mind and body, and, ultimately, on a wrong idea of cause and effect.
94 Shaftesbury, ‘Inquiry concerning Virtue or Merit,’ ii. 2. 2, in Characteristicks, ii. 145.
95 Butler, ‘Sermon VIII.—Upon Resentment,’ op. cit. p. 457.
96 Adam Smith, Theory of Moral Sentiments, p. 113.
97 Spencer, Principles of Ethics, i. 361.
98 Junker, Travels in Africa during the Years 1882–1886, p. 85.
99 Hiram Stanley, op. cit. p. 180. Cf. also Guyau, Esquisse d’une Morale sans obligation ni sanction, p. 162 sq.
100 Steinmetz, Ethnol. Studien, &c. i. 135.
From non-moral resentment we shall pass to the emotion of moral indignation. That this is closely connected with anger is indicated by language itself: we may feel indignant on other than moral grounds, and we may feel “righteous anger.” The relationship between these emotions is also conspicuous in their outward expressions, which, when the emotion is strong enough, present similar characteristics. When possessed with strong moral indignation, a person looks as if he were angry,101 and so he really is, in the wider sense of the term. This relationship has not seldom been recognised by moralists, though it has more often been forgotten. Some two thousand years ago Polybius wrote:—“If a man has been rescued or helped in an hour of danger, and, instead of showing gratitude to his preserver, seeks to do him harm, it is clearly probable that the rest will be displeased and offended with him when they know it, sympathising with their neighbour and imagining themselves in his case. Hence arises a notion in every breast of the meaning and theory of duty, which is in fact the beginning and end of justice.”102 Hartley regarded resentment and gratitude as “intimately connected with the moral sense.”103 Adam Smith made the resentment of “the impartial spectator” a corner-stone of his theory of the moral sentiments.104 Butler found the essential difference between sudden and deliberate anger to consist in this, that the “natural proper end” of the latter is “to remedy or prevent only that harm which implies, or is supposed to imply, injury or moral wrong.”105 And to Stuart Mill, the sentiment of justice, at least, appeared to be derived from “the animal desire to repel or retaliate a hurt or damage to oneself, or to those with whom one sympathises.”106
101 Notice, for instance, Michelangelo’s Moses.
102 Polybius, Historiae, vi. 6.
103 Hartley, Observations on Man, i. 520.
104 Adam Smith, op. cit. passim.
105 Butler, op. cit. p. 458.
106 Stuart Mill, Utilitarianism, p. 79.
Moral indignation, or disapproval, like non-moral resentment, is a reactionary attitude of mind directed towards the cause of inflicted pain. In a subsequent chapter we shall see that both are in a similar way determined by the answer given to the question, What is the cause of the pain?—a fact which, whilst strongly confirming their affinity, throws light upon some of the chief characteristics of the moral consciousness. Nay, moral indignation resembles non-moral resentment even in this respect that, in various cases, the aggressive reaction turns against innocent persons who did not commit the injury which gave rise to it. The collective responsibility assumed in certain types of blood-revenge is an evidence of this in so far as such revenge is not merely a matter of individual practice, but has the sanction of custom. And even punishment, which, in the strict sense of the term, is a more definite expression of public, or moral, indignation than the custom of private retaliation, is often similarly indiscriminate.
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