target="_blank" rel="nofollow" href="#ulink_d0f418e0-ab19-568d-89ad-4a52d17788cc">96 Horwicz, Psychologische Analysen, ii. 333: “Ohne dieses Gefühl des Verbundenseins … kann keine Dankbarkeit auskommen.” Cf. Milton, Paradise Lost, iv. 52 sqq.
Retributive kindly emotion is a much less frequent phenomenon in the animal kingdom than is the emotion of resentment. In many animal species not even the germ of it is found, and where it occurs it is generally restricted within narrow limits. Anybody may provoke an animal’s anger, but only towards certain individuals it is apt to feel retributive kindliness. The limits for this emotion are marked off by the conditions under which altruistic sentiments in general tend to arise—a subject which will be discussed in another connection. Indeed, social affection is itself essentially retributive. Gregarious animals take pleasure in each other’s company, and with this pleasure is intimately associated kindly feeling towards its cause, the companion himself. Social affection presupposes reciprocity; it is not only a friendly sentiment towards another individual, but towards an individual who is conceived of as a friend.
The intrinsic object of retributive kindliness being to retain a cause of pleasure, we may assume that the definite desire to produce pleasure in return for pleasure received is due to the fact that such a desire materially promotes the object in question—exactly in the same way as the definite desire to inflict pain in return for pain inflicted has become an element in resentment because such a desire promotes the intrinsic object of resentment, the removal of the cause of pain. And as natural selection accounts for the origin of resentment, so it also accounts for the origin of retributive kindly emotion. Both of these emotions are useful states of mind; by resentment evils are averted, by retributive kindliness benefits are secured. That there is such a wide difference in their prevalence is explicable from the simple facts that gregariousness—which is the root of social affection, and, largely at least, a condition of the rise of retributive kindly emotions—is an advantage only to some species, not to all, and that even gregarious animals have many enemies, but few friends.
In some cases the friendly reaction in retributive kindliness is directed towards individuals who have in no way been the cause of the pleasure which gave rise to the emotion. So intimate is the connection between the stimulus and the reaction, that he who is made happy often feels a general desire to make others happy.97 But such an indiscriminate reaction is only an offset of the emotion with which we are here concerned. Moreover, retributive kindly emotion often confers benefits upon somebody nearly related to the benefactor, if he himself be out of reach, or in addition to benefits conferred on him. But in such cases the gratitude towards the benefactor is the real motive.
97 That a happy man wants to see glad faces around him, is also due to another cause, which has been pointed out by Dr. Hirn (Origins of Art, p. 83): from their expression he wants to derive further nourishment and increase for his own feeling.
That moral approval—by which I understand that emotion of which moral praise or reward is the outward manifestation—is a kind of retributive kindly emotion and as such allied to gratitude, will probably be admitted without much hesitation.98 Its friendly character is not, like the hostile character of moral disapproval, disguised by any apparently contradictory facts. To confer a benefit upon a person is not generally regarded as wrong, unless, indeed, it involves an encroachment on somebody’s rights or is contrary to the feeling of justice. And that moral approval sometimes bestows its favours upon undeserving individuals for the merits of others, can no more invalidate the fact that it is essentially directed towards the cause of pleasure, than the occasional infliction of punishments upon innocent individuals invalidates the fact that moral disapproval is essentially directed against the cause of pain. Unmerited rewards are explicable on grounds analogous to those to which we have traced unmerited punishments.
98 The relationship between gratitude and moral approval has been recognised by Hartley (Observations on Man, i. 520) and Adam Smith (Theory of Moral Sentiments, passim).
The doctrine of family solidarity leads, not only to common responsibility for crimes, but to common enjoyment of merits.
In Madagascar, exemption from punishment was claimed by the descendants of persons who had rendered any particular service to the sovereign or the State, as also by other branches of the family, on the same plea.99 According to Chinese ideas, the virtuous conduct of any individual will result, not only in prosperity to himself, but in a certain quantity of happiness to his posterity, unless indeed the personal wickedness of some of the descendants neutralise the benefits which would otherwise accrue from the virtue of the ancestor;100 and, conversely, the Chinese Government confers titles of nobility upon the dead parents of a distinguished son.101 The idea that the dead share in punya or pâpa, that is, the merit or demerit of the living, and that the happiness of a man in the next life depends on the good works of his descendants, was early familiar to the civilised natives of India; almost all legal deeds of gift contain the formula that the gift is made “for the increase of the punya of the donor and that of his father and mother.”102
99 Ellis, History of Madagascar, 376.
100 Giles, Strange Stories from a Chinese Studio, i. 426, n. 3; ii. 384, n. 63. Doolittle, Social Life of the Chinese, ii. 398.
101 Giles, op. cit. i. 305, n. 6. Wells Williams, Middle Kingdom, i. 422.
102 Barth, Religions of India, p. 52, n. 4.
But the vicarious efficacy of good deeds is not necessarily restricted to the members of the same family.
In a hymn of the Rig-Veda we find the idea that the merits or the pious may benefit their neighbours.103 According to one of the Pahlavi texts, persons who are wholly unable to perform good works are supposed to be entitled to a share of any supererogatory good works performed by others.104 The Chinese believe that whole kingdoms are blessed by benevolent spirits for the virtuous conduct of their rulers.105 Yahveh promised not to destroy Sodom for the sake of ten righteous, provided that so many righteous could be found in the town.106 The doctrine of vicarious reward or satisfaction through good works is, in fact, more prevalent than the doctrine of vicarious punishment. Jewish theology has a great deal more to say about the acceptance of the merits of the righteous on behalf of the wicked, than about atonement through sacrifice.107 The Muhammedans, who know nothing of vicarious suffering as a means of expiation, confer merits upon their dead by reciting chapters of the Koran and almsgiving, and some of them allow the pilgrimage to Mecca to be done by proxy.108 Christian theology itself maintains that salvation depends on the merit of the passion of Christ; and from early times the merits of martyrs and saints were believed to benefit other members of the Church.109