CRUCIAL TRAITS IN SOCIAL LIFE

The interpenetration of human traits. This chapter is devoted to a consideration of a number of individual human traits—curiosity, pugnacity, leadership, fear, love, hate, etc., and some of their more important social consequences. These are seldom present in isolation. A man is not, under normal circumstances, simply and solely pugnacious, curious, tired, submissive, or acquisitive. One's desire to own a particular house at a particular location may be complicated by the presence of several of these traits at once. The house may be wanted simply as a possession, a crude satisfaction of our native acquisitiveness. It may be sought further as a mode of self-display, an indication of how one has risen in the world. Its attractiveness may be heightened by the fact that it is situated next door to the house of a rather particularly companionable old friend. It may be peculiarly indispensable to one's satisfaction because it is also being sought by a detested rival. Moreover, as we shall see in the discussion of the Self, these traits are interwoven with each other and attain varying degrees of power as motive forces in an individual's character.

But while these distinctive human traits are seldom apparent in isolation, it is worth while to consider them separately, not only because the elements of human behavior will thus stand out more clearly, but because in certain individuals one or another of these-traits may be natively of especial strength. And further, in differing social situations, the possession or the cultivation of one or another of these native endowments may be of particular social value or danger. And in any given situation, one or another of them may be predominant, as when a man is intensely angry, or curious, or tired. Thus an individual may have a marked capacity for leadership, or an extraordinarily tireless curiosity, or an abnormally developed pugnacity or acquisitiveness. The capacity for leadership, as will later be discussed in some detail, will be of particular social value in large enterprises; patient and persistent inquiry may produce science; pugnacity when freely expressed may provoke quarrels, bickerings, and war. In the following discussion, the continual interpenetration and qualification of these traits by one another in a complex situation must be recognized. Else it may appear in the discussion of any single trait, as if by means of it all human action were being explained. Rather the aim is to trace them as one might the elements in the pattern of a tapestry, or the recurrent themes in the development of a symphony. But as the symphony is more than a single melody, the tapestry more than one element of line or color, so is human life more than any single trait.[1]

[Footnote 1: Philosophers and others have time and again made the mistake of simplifying human life to a single motive or driving power. Hobbes rested his case on fear; Bain and Sutherland on sympathy; Tarde on imitation; Adam Smith and Bentham on enlightened self-interest. In our own day the Freudians interpret everything as being sexual in its motive. And most recently has come an interpretation of life, as in Bertrand Russell and Helen Marot, in terms of the "creative impulse."]

The fighting instinct. Almost all men exhibit in varying degrees the "fighting instinct"; that is, the tendency, when interfered with in the performance of any action prompted by any other instinct, to threaten, attack, and not infrequently, if successful in attack, to punish and bully the individual interfering.

The most mean-spirited cur will angrily resent any attempt to take away its bone, if it is hungry; a healthy infant very early displays anger if its meal is interrupted, and all through life most men find it difficult to suppress irritation on similar occasions. In the animal world the most furious excitement of this instinct is provoked in the male of many species by any interference with the satisfaction of the sexual impulse.[2]

[Footnote 2: McDougall: loc. cit., p. 60.]

This original tendency to fight is very persistent in human beings, but is susceptible of direction, and is not, in civilized life, frequently revealed in its crude and direct form, save among children and among adults under intense provocation and excitement. Occasionally, however, pugnacity is displayed in its simple animal form. "Man shares with many of the animals the tendency to frighten his opponent by loud roars or bellowings.... Many a little boy has, without example or suggestion, suddenly taken to running with open mouth to bite the person who has angered him, much to the distress of his parents."[1] As the individual grows older, he learns to control the outward and immediate expression of this powerful and persistent human trait. He learns in his dealings with other people not to give way, when frustrated in some action or ambition, to mere animal rage. The customs and manners to which a child is early subjected in civilized intercourse are effective hindrances to uncontrolled display of anger and pugnacity; superior intelligence and education find more refined ways than kicking, pummeling, and scratching of overcoming the interferences of others. But even in gentle and cultured persons, an insult, a disappointment, a blow will provoke the tell-tale signs of pugnacity and anger, the flushing of the cheeks, the flash of the eye, the incipient clenching of the fists, the compressing of the teeth and lips, and the trembling of the voice. We substitute sarcasm for punching, and find subtly civilized, and, in the long run, more terrible, ways than bruises of punishing those who oppose us in our play, our passions, our professions. But our ancestors were beasts of prey, and there is still "fighting in our blood."

[Footnote 1: McDougall: loc. cit., p. 61.]

The fighting instinct is aroused by both personal and impersonal situations, and is occasioned even by very slight interferences, and even when the author of the interference is neither human nor animate. Quite intelligent men have been known to kick angrily at a door as if from pure malice it refused to open. Irate commuters have glared vindictively at trains they have just missed. The glint of anger is roused in our eye by an insolent stare, an ironic comment, or an impertinent retort. The "boiling point" varies in different individuals and races, and pugnacity is generally more readily roused in men than in women. There are some persons, like the proverbial Irishman, who, seeing the slightest opportunity for a fight, "want to know whether it is private, or whether anybody can get in." In most men pugnacity is more intense when it is provoked by persons; except for a moment, one does not try to fight a chair struck in the dark.

Under the conditions of civilized life the primitive expression of pugnacity in physical combat has been outlawed and made unnecessary by law and custom. Individuals are prevented by the fear of punishment, besides their early training and habits, from settling disputes by physical force. But as the instinct itself remains strong, it must find some other outlet. This it secures in more refined forms of rivalry, in business and sport, or, all through human history, in fighting between groups, from the squabbling and perpetual raids and killings, and the extermination of whole villages and tribes in Central Borneo, to the wars between nations throughout European history.

Pugnacity a menace when uncontrolled. The strength and persistency of this human tendency, when uncontrolled or when fostered between groups, make it a very serious menace. Like all the other instincts, and more than most, it is frustrated and continually checked in the normal peace-time pursuits of contemporary civilization. Participation, imaginative at least, in a great collective combat undoubtedly holds some fascination for the citizens of modern industrial society, despite the large-scale horror which war is in itself, and the desolation it leaves in its wake. During peace the fighting instinct for most men receives satisfaction on a small scale, sometimes in nothing more important than small bickerings and peevishness, or in seeing at first hand or on the ticker a championship prize-fight. The pessimism which many writers have expressed at the possibility of perpetual peace rests in part on their perception of the easy excitability and deep persistence of this impulse, especially among the vigorous and young.

Not only may the fighting instinct be aroused by the possibility of international wars, but it may be used by fomenters and agitators to add a sense of intense pugnacity and violent anger to the genuine friction that does exist between conflicting interests in the same society. The theory of a "class war" possibly finds its appeal for many minds as much in its picturesque stimulation of their instincts of pugnacity as in the logic of its economics.

Pugnacity as a beneficent social force. While the power of pugnacity and its easy stimulation makes this instinct a peculiarly inflammable and dangerous motive force in civilized society, it is, on the other hand, an indispensable source of social progress. Many psychologists and sociologists, such as McDougall, Bagehot, and Lang, attribute the superiority in culture and social organization of the European races over, say, the Chinese and East Indians, to the fighting instinct. In the long series of wars that for centuries constituted much of the history of Europe, those nations which survived, as in earlier times those tribes which survived combat, were those which displayed marked qualities of superiority in allegiance, fidelity, and social coÖperation. The intensity and effectiveness of social coÖperation in our own country was never so well illustrated as during the Great War. In combat between groups those groups survive which do stand out in these respects.

William James in a famous essay[1] recognizes clearly the enormous value of the fighting instinct in stimulating action to an intense effectiveness exhibited under no other circumstances, and proposes a "moral equivalent for war"—an army devoted to constructive enterprises, reclaiming the waste places of the land, warring against poverty and disease and the like. Certainly every great reform movement has been intensely stimulated and has gathered about it the energies of men when it has become a "crusade for righteousness." Part of Theodore Roosevelt's power was in his picturesque phrasing of political issues as if they were great moral struggles. No one could forget, or fail to have his heart beat a trifle faster at Roosevelt's trumpet call in the 1912 campaign: "We stand at Armageddon and we battle for the Lord." His "Big Stick" became a potent political symbol. Astute political leaders have not failed to capitalize the fighting instinct, and any social project will enlist the wider enthusiasm and the more energetic support if it is hailed as a battle or fight against somebody or something.

[Footnote 1: "A Moral Equivalent of War," in Memories and Studies.]

In personal life also the instinct of pugnacity and the feeling of anger that goes with it seem to set loose immense floods of reserve energy. McDougall exaggerates but a trifle when he says it supplies the zest and determines the forms of all our games and recreations, and nine tenths of the world's work is done by it. "Our educational system is founded upon it; it is the social force underlying an immense amount of strenuous exertion; to it we owe in a great measure even our science, our literature, and our art; for it is a strong, perhaps an essential, element of ambition, that last infirmity of noble minds."[1] In the overcoming of obstacles, whether in the work itself, or in the difficulties that a surgeon or a scholar meets with, or in frustrations deliberately put in our way by other people, pugnacity is an invaluable stimulant and sustainer of action. Every great personality of strong convictions and dominant energy has possessed it to some extent; in characters of great moral energy it sometimes takes the form of a volcanic and virtuous wrath, as in the case of the Prophets of the Old Testament, or of later religious and social reformers who brought an earnest and bitter anger against the wrongs they saw and literally fought to overcome.

[Footnote 1: McDougall: loc. cit., p. 294.]

The "submissive instinct." Of great importance in the social relations of men is their original tendency to find satisfaction in following, partly submitting to, or completely surrendering to a person or cause more dominating than the individual. Thorndike describes this instinct in its simplest form:

There is an original tendency to respond to the situation, "the presence of a human being larger than one's self, of angry or mastering aspect," and to blows and restraint by submissive behavior. When weak from wounds, sickness, or fatigue, the tendency is stronger. The man who is bigger, who can outyell and outstare us, who can hit us without our hitting him, and who can keep us from moving, does originally extort a crestfallen, abashed physique and mind. Women in general are thus by original nature submissive to men in general. Every human being thus tends by original nature to arrive at a status of mastery or submission toward every other human being, and even under the more intelligent customs of civilized life somewhat of the tendency persists in many men.[1]

[Footnote 1: Thorndike: Educational Psychology, briefer course, p. 34.]

The impulse to follow and submit to something not ourselves and more dominating than ourselves is very strong in most men, and is called out by stimuli much less violent than those physical manifestations of power mentioned in the above quotation. Men instinctively long to be led, especially if, as happens in the case of most individuals, there is in them a marked absence of definite interest, conviction, or skill. This instinct is aroused by any sign of exceptional power, or, more generally still, by any exceptional conspicuousness, whether socially useful or not. Men follow leaders partly because men live in groups with common interests and in any large-scale organization leadership is necessary. But the power of demagogues, the faithfulness with which men will follow a bad leader as well as a good, are evidence that men find an instinctive satisfaction in submission. Self-dependence stands out as a virtue or an accomplishment precisely because most men feel so utterly at sea without any loyalty, allegiance, or devotion. Any one who has spent a summer at a boy's camp will recall the helplessness of youngsters to mark out a program for themselves and to keep themselves happy on the one afternoon when there was no official program of play. Half the mischief performed on such occasions is initiated by some boy with just a little more independence and persuasiveness than the others. And it is not only among children that there is evinced an almost pathetic bewilderment and unrest in the absence of a leader. There is an equally pathetic and sometimes dangerous attachment among adults to the first sign of leadership that makes its appearance. The demoralizing authority of the ward heeler is sometimes dependent on no more trustworthy an index of real power than a booming voice, a rough camaraderie, and a physically "big" personality. And there are, on the other hand, instances where lack of leadership seemed to be the chief reason why certain classes of labor were unable to make their demands effective at a much earlier date than they did. In the first really big strike in the telephone industry in Boston during the autumn of 1918 success seems to have been chiefly due to the remarkable leadership of one of the young women operators, a type of leadership which seems to have appeared nowhere else in the telephone industry.[1]

[Footnote 1: See the article by Wm. Hard in the New Republic, May 3, 1919.]

The instinct of submissiveness, as has been pointed out in connection with the discussion of all the other of man's original tendencies, is not only strong, but may find its outlets in attachment, both to desirable and to undesirable persons or objects. Once aroused, attachment and submission may become as stanch as they are blind. The signs which arouse our loyalty may be and most frequently are glaring rather than important. As Trotter phrases it:

The rational basis of the relation [following a leader] is, however, seen to be at any rate open to discussion when we consider the qualities in a leader upon which his authority so often rests, for there can be little doubt that their appeal is more generally to instinct than to reason. In ordinary politics it must be admitted that the gift of public speaking is of more decisive value than anything else. If a man is fluent, dextrous, and ready on the platform, he possesses the one indispensable requisite for statesmanship; if in addition he has the gift of moving deeply the emotions of his hearers, his capacity for guiding the infinite complexities of national life becomes undeniable. Experience has shown that no exceptional degree of any other capacity is necessary to make a successful leader. There need be no specially arduous training, no great weight of knowledge, either of affairs or the human heart, no receptiveness to new ideas, no outlook into reality.[1]

[Footnote 1: Trotter, p. 116.]

Though these be picturesquely exaggerated statements, they do indicate the fact that the outward signs of leadership, of a conspicuously emotional sort, may be more significant in determining the attachments and loyalties of human beings, than are genuine marks of capacity in the direction of political and social affairs.

This pronounced tendency on the part of human beings to follow a lead, and anybody's lead, as it were, has the most serious dangers. It means that a man with qualities that sway men's emotions and stir their imaginations can attach to himself the profoundest loyalties for personal or class ends. The gifts of personal magnetism, of a kindly voice, an air of confidence and calmness, exuberant vitality, and a sensitivity to other people's feelings, along with some of the genuine qualities of effective and expert control of men and affairs, may be used by a demagogue as well as by a really devoted servant of the popular good, by an Alcibiades as well as by a Garibaldi, by a conquering Napoleon as well as by a Lincoln.

Our instincts of following and submission, apart from education, are as easily aroused by specious signs of social power and conspicuousness as by signs of mental effectiveness and genuine altruistic interest. The exploitation of these tendencies by selfish leaders is therefore particularly easy. The large circulation of the "yellow press," the power in politics of the unscrupulous, the selfish, and the second-rate, are symptoms of how men's natural tendency to follow has been played upon in support of plans and ambitions which would not be sanctioned by their reason. The genius for leadership has been exhibited in criminal gangs, in conquests and in fanaticism, as well as in the promotion of good government, of better labor conditions and better education.

But progress in these last-named is dependent on the utilization of men's submissiveness by leaders interested in the promotion of desirable social enterprises. While men may be so easily led, they are responsive to leadership in good directions as well as bad. No great social movements, the freeing of slaves, the gaining of universal suffrage, the bettering of factory conditions, freedom of thought and action, could have gained headway if men had been born unwilling to follow. There are (see chapter IX) ineradicable differences in capacity between men, and if the uninformed and the socially helpless could not be aroused to follow those great both in mind and magnanimity, it is difficult to see how the lot of mankind ever could have, or ever can improve. A good leader may make men support, out of instinctive loyalty, purposes and plans which, if they completely understood them, they would support out of reason. Up to the present most people have been, and will probably remain for a long time to come, too ill-educated or too poorly endowed by nature to understand the bearings of the great social movements in which they are involved. In consequence, it is a matter of congratulation that their instinct of submission can be utilized in the interests of their welfare which they frequently not only do not know how to obtain, but do not understand. The Roman populace, enchanted by Augustus, follow him to greatness, without comprehending the imperial destiny which they are helping to build. The barbarian hordes affectionately following the lead of Charlemagne incidentally help to build the whole edifice of European civilization.

Men display qualities of leadership. The obverse of man's tendency to follow a lead is, of course, his tendency to take it. Individuals tend to display persistently and conspicuously just those qualities which will win them the allegiance of others.

The instinct of self-display is manifested by many of the higher social or gregarious animals.... Perhaps among mammals the horse displays it most clearly. The muscles of all parts are strongly innervated, the creature holds himself erect, his neck is arched, his tail lifted, his motions become superfluously vigorous and extensive, he lifts his hoofs high in air as he parades before the eyes of his fellows.... Many children clearly exhibit this instinct of self-display; before they can walk or talk the impulse finds its satisfaction in the admiring gaze or plaudits of the family circle as each new acquirement is practiced; a little later it is still more clearly expressed by the frequently repeated command, "See me do this," or "See how well I can do so and so"; and for many a child more than half the delight of riding on a pony, of wearing a new coat, consists in the satisfaction of this instinct, and vanishes if there be no spectators.[1]

[Footnote 1: McDougall; loc. cit., pp. 62-64.]

Individuals thus instinctively love to stand out from their fellows, to outdistance and outclass them. And the qualities of leadership are not infrequently stimulated by this competition with others, for place, power, distinction. To win the allegiance and loyal affection of men means that one's own personality is enhanced; one stands out as a man of affairs, a social or political leader, a guide to others in action or thought. As has already been pointed out, the qualities that will win the submission and loyalty of others vary widely. In the case of one man it may be a charming smile and a gift of saying striking and stirring rather than significant things. In the case of another it may be his air of immense confidence, restraint, and reserve. It may be brute force or a terrible earnestness; it may even be, as in the case of certain religious reformers, extraordinary gentleness. Garibaldi "inspired among men of the most various temperaments love that nothing could shake, and devotion that fell little short of idolatry." "He enjoyed the worship and cast the spell of a legendary hero." Alcibiades charmed, despite the patent evil he wrought, by his magical personal beauty and grace. Vandamme said of Napoleon: "That devil of a man exercises on me a fascination that I cannot explain to myself, and in such a degree that, though I fear neither God nor devil, when I am in his presence I am ready to tremble like a child, and he could make me go through the eye of a needle to throw myself into the fire." Augereau is stupefied at their first meeting, and confesses afterwards that "this little devil of a general" has inspired him with awe.[1]

[Footnote 1: See chapter XXI on "Personality" in Ross's Social Control.]

Men's qualities of leadership depend, however, not only on their personal charm, but on certain seeming or genuine symptoms of effectiveness. Evidences of strong determination, of a sweeping imagination, of calm, of confidence, of enthusiasm, of qualities possessed by the vast majority only in minor degrees, win men's admiration and devotion because they are associated with the ability to accomplish great ends, to do the unusual, to succeed where most people fail. Most men are so conscious of their limitations and the difficulties of any enterprise which they undertake that at any sign of exceptional talent, whether real or apparent, they will commit their respect, their energies, and sometimes, as in the case of a religious crusade, their lives.

For good or evil, the possession, the cultivation, and the exhibition of the qualities of leadership give men enormous power. There was in the nineteenth century a historical fashion, brilliantly exemplified by Carlyle, to assume that history was made by great men. Latterly, there has been wide dissent from this simplification of the processes of history, but it is clear that innovations must be started by individuals, and that a powerful leader is a matchless instrument for initiating, and getting wide and enthusiastic support for changes, whether good or bad. To quote Carlyle's eloquent exaggeration:

For, as I take it, Universal History, the history of what man has accomplished in this world, is at the bottom the History of the Great Men who have worked here. They were the leaders of men, ... the creators of whatsoever the general mass of men contrived to do or to attain; all things that we see standing accomplished in the world are properly the outer material result, the practical realization and embodiment, of thoughts that dwelt in the Great Men sent into the world: the soul of the whole world's history, it may justly be considered, was the history of these.... Could we see them well, we should get some glimpses into the very marrow of the world's history.[1]

[Footnote 1: Carlyle: Heroes and Hero-Worship, Lecture I.]

Later Nietzsche made much of this same idea, of the Superman striding through the world and changing its destiny, although in Nietzsche the Superman was an end in himself rather than the servant of the world in which he lived.

To most historical writers to-day the forces at work in history are much too complex to be dismissed with any such simple melodrama. But there remain striking testimonies of the influence of leaders. The sweep of Mohammedanism into Europe was initiated by the burning and contagious zeal of one religious enthusiast. The campaign against slavery in this country assumed large proportions through the strenuous leadership of the Garrisons and the Wendell Phillipses. In our own day we have seen the same phenomenon; the great political and social changes of the last generation have all had their special advocates and leaders who, if they were merely expressing the "spirit of the times," yet did give that spirit expression. Every reform or revolution has its leading spirits. That leadership is not the one essential goes without saying; there have been great guides of repeatedly lost causes. But many great causes may have been lost through the want of good leadership.

In contemporary life leadership is not always directly personal, but is carried on through the medium of the newspapers and periodicals. But this merely means that a leader may reach a wider audience; he reaches thousands through picture and print, instead of hundreds by word of mouth.

Qualities of leadership may be utilized in the support of the customary or the established, as well as in initiation and support of the novel. People ape the great, or those that pass for great, in manners and morals. The words of a distinguished public man have prestige in the maintenance of the established. Men will follow, and if the socially conspicuous lead them along the ways of the established, they will follow there as readily and, being creatures of habit, often more readily than along new paths. The immense following among the lower social classes that the Conservative Party had in England all through the nineteenth century in the face of proposed changes that would have bettered their own conditions, is an interesting illustration of this. This is partly because the influence of leaders is dependent on their social status as well as their personal qualities. The opinions of inventors and big business men are taken with eagerness and credulity even when touching matters outside their own field. A man is made, as it were, ipso facto, a leader, by being rich, powerful, of a socially distinguished family, or the director of a large industry, although he may have, besides, qualities of leadership that do not depend on his social position.

Man pities and protects weak and suffering things. Nearly all human beings exhibit a tendency to protect weak and suffering things. This impulse is closely related to, and probably has its origin in the parental instinct, more common, of course, in women than in men. The feeling of affectionate pity and the impulse to rescue from pain are most intense when the distressed thing is a child, and particularly one's own. One of the most poignant instances extant is the speech of Andromache, one of the Trojan women in Euripides's play of that name, to her child who is about to be slain by the Greeks:

And none to pity thee!... Thou little thing,
That curlest in my arms, what sweet scents cling
All round thy neck! Beloved; can it be
All nothing, that this bosom cradled thee
And fostered; all the weary nights wherethrough
I watched upon thy sickness, till I grew
Wasted with watching? Kiss me. This one time;
Not ever again. Put up thine arms and climb
About my neck; now kiss me, lips to lips...
O ye have found an anguish that outstrips
All tortures of the East, ye gentle Greeks!
Why will ye slay this innocent that seeks
No wrong?...[1]

[Footnote 1: Euripides: ''Trojan Women'' (Gilbert Murray translation), p. 49.]

But the "tender emotion" as McDougall calls it, is aroused by other children than one's own, and by others than children. It is called out particularly by things that are by nature helpless and delicate, but may be aroused by adults who are placed in situations where they are suffering and powerless. Samson, shorn of his strength, has been a traditional occasion for pathos. The sick, the bereaved, the down-and-outers, the failures, the forlorn and broken-hearted, call out in most men an impulse to befriend and protect. Those who have been dealt with unjustly or severely by their associates and society and who have no redress, the poverty-stricken, the criminal who has been punished and remains an exile, the maimed and deformed, the widow and orphan, all these, arouse, apart from the restraining force exercised by other instincts and habits, such as anger and disgust, a natural tendency to pity and aid.

The parental instinct in its direct and primitive form is responsible for the closeness of family relations, a most important consideration in the case of humans who have, as already discussed, a long period of infancy during which they are absolutely dependent on their elders. In the higher species, writes McDougall, "The protection and cherishing of the young is the constant and all-absorbing occupation of the mother, to which she devotes all her energies, and in the course of which she will at any time undergo privation, pain, and death. The instinct becomes more powerful than any other, and can override any other, even fear itself."[2] Wherever the power of the parental instinct has waned, as in Greek and Roman society, the civilization in which that degeneration occurred was subjected to rapid decay.[3]

[Footnote 2: McDougall: loc. cit., p. 67.]

[Footnote 3: Cf. Ibid., p. 271.]

The parental instinct in its more general form of pity and protectiveness toward all weak and suffering things is, in the minds of many moralists, the origin of all altruistic sentiments and actions, and at the same time the moral indignation which insists on the punishment of wrong-doers. It is clearly apparent in such movements as the Societies for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children or to Animals, the antivivisection crusade, and the like. But according to such a distinguished moralist as John Stuart Mill, the whole system of justice and punishment has its origins in this tender feeling for those who have been wronged.

Fear. Fear is one of the least specialized of human traits, being called out in a great variety of situations, and resulting in a great variety of responses. The most obvious symptom of fear is flight, but there may be a dozen other responses. "Crouching, clinging, starting, trembling, remaining stock still, covering the eyes, opening the mouth and eyes, a temporary cessation followed by an acceleration of the heart-beat, difficulty in breathing, paleness, sweating, and erection of the hair are responses of which certain ones seem bound, apart from training, to certain situations, such as sudden loud noises or clutches, the sudden appearance of strange objects, thunder and lightning, loneliness and the dark."[1]

[Footnote 1: Thorndike: loc. cit., p. 20.]

In general, the marked physical reactions and deep emotional disturbance that we call fear are aroused by anything loud or strange, or that has outward signs of possible danger to ourselves, such as a large wild animal approaching us. In civilized man, whose life is comparatively sheltered, there are considerable individual differences in susceptibility to fear, and in the intensity with which it controls the individual. But there are certain typical situations that call it forth. Among young children, and not much less so among adults, fear is aroused by any sudden loud noise, by strange men and strange animals, black things and dark places, "vermin," such as spiders and snakes, among a great many adults fear of high places, and, among a few agaraphobia or fear of open spaces.[1] The deep-seatedness of fear has been explained by the fact that most of the things which instinctively arouse fear were, in primitive life, the source of very real danger and that under those conditions, where it was absolutely essential to beware of the unfamiliar and the strange, only those animals survived who were equipped with such a protective mechanism as fear provides.

[Footnote 1: For a discussion of these, see James: Psychology, vol. II, p. 415 ff.]

The instinct of fear has important social consequences, especially as its influence is not infrequently clothed over with reasons. In savage life, as McDougall points out, "fear of physical punishment inflicted by the anger of his fellows must have been the great agent of discipline of primitive man; through such fear he must first have learned to control and regulate his impulses in conformity with the needs of social life."[2] In contemporary society fear is not so explicitly present, but it is still a deep-seated power over men's lives. Fear of punishment may not be the only reason why citizens remain law-abiding, but it is an important control over many of the less intelligent and the less socially minded. In an unideal society there are still many who will do as much evil as is "within the law," and fear of the consequences of failing a course is among some contemporary undergraduates still an indispensable stimulus of study.

[Footnote 2: McDougall: loc. cit., p. 303.]

Fear plays a part, however, not only in preventing people from breaking the law, but often from living their lives freely and after their own convictions. As has been strikingly pointed out by Hilaire Belloc and Hobson, one of the greatest evils of our present hit-or-miss methods of employment is the fear of "losing his job," the uncomfortable feeling of insecurity often felt by the workingman who, having so frequently nothing to store up against a rainy day, lives in perpetual fear of sickness or discharge.

In earlier times fear of the consequences of expressing dissent from established opinions and beliefs was one of the chief sources of social inertia. Where excommunication, torture, and death followed dissent, it is not surprising that men feared to be dissenters. In contemporary society under normal conditions men have much less to fear in the way of punishment, but may accept the traditional and conventional because they fear the consequences of being different, even if those consequences are not anything more serious than a personal snub.

While men fear to dissent because of the disapproval to which they may be subjected, dissent, the novel and strange in action and opinion are themselves feared by most men because of the unknown and unpredictable consequences to which they may lead. Men were at first afraid of the steam-engine and the locomotive. Men still fear novel political and social ideas before they can possibly understand what they have to be afraid of. The fact that thought so continually turns up the novel and the strange is, according to Bertrand Russell, precisely the reason why most men are afraid to think. And fear of the novel, the strange, the unaccustomed is, as in the case of many other instincts, a perfectly natural means of protection that would otherwise have to be sought by elaborate processes of reason. In what we call prudence, caution, and care, fear undoubtedly plays some part, and Plato long ago pointed out it is only the fool, not the brave man, who is utterly unafraid.[1]

[Footnote 1: Protagoras.]

Psychologists may be said to differ largely as to the utility of fear. They are nearly all agreed that in the forest life which was man's originally, fear had its specific marked advantages. Open spaces, dark caverns, loud noises were undoubtedly associated very frequently with danger to the primitive savage, and an instinctive recoil from these centers of disaster was undoubtedly of survival value. But there is an increasing tendency to discount the utility of fear in civilized life. "Many of the manifestations of fear must be regarded as pathological, rather than useful.... A certain amount of timidity obviously adapts us to the world we live in, but the fear paroxysm is surely altogether harmful to him who is its prey."[1]

[Footnote 1: James: Psychology, vol. II, p. 419.]

Fear and worry, which is a continuous form of fear, in general hinder action rather than promote it. In its extreme form it brings about complete paralysis, as in the case of terror-stricken hunted animals. When humans or animals are utterly terrified even death may result. This fact that fear hinders action, sometimes most seriously, seems to some philosophic writers, especially Bertrand Russell, a key fact for social life. "No institution," he writes, "inspired by fear, can further life."[2] And in another connection: "In the world as we have been imagining it, economic fear will be removed out of life.... No one will be haunted by the dread of poverty.... The unsuccessful professional man will not live in terror lest his children should sink in the scale.... In such a world, most of the terrors that lurk in the background of men's minds will no longer exist."[3] "In the daily lives of most men and women, fear plays a greater part than hope. It is not so that life should be lived."[4]

[Footnote 2: Bertrand Russell: Why Men Fight, p. 180.]

[Footnote 3: Russell: Proposed Roads to Freedom, p. 203.]

[Footnote 4: Ibid., p. 186. (Italics mine.)]

Love and hate. All human relations are qualified by the presence, more or less intense, of emotion. Human beings are not merely so many items that are coldly counted and handled, as one counts and handles pounds of sugar and pieces of machinery. A man may thus regard human beings when he deals with them in mass, or thinks of them in statistical tables or in the routine of a government office. But human beings experience some emotional accompaniment in their dealings with individuals, especially when face to face, and experience more especially, in varying degrees, the emotions of love or hate. These terms are here used in the general sense of the receptive, positive, or expansive attitude and the cold, negative, repellent, and contractual attitude toward others. These may both be intense and consciously noted, as in the case of long-cherished and deep affections or antipathies to different individuals. They may appear as a half-realized sense of pleasure in the mere presence and poise of a person, or a curious sense of discomfort and irritation at his appearance, his voice, or his gesture. These attitudes, even when slight, color and qualify our relations with other individuals. They may, in their larger manifestations, play so large a part, that they must be considered separately, and in detail.

Love. Love, used in this broad sense, varies in intensity. It may be nothing more—it certainly frequently starts as nothing more—than the feeling, so native as to be fairly called instinctive, of common sympathy, fellow feeling, immediate affinity with another. The psychological origins of this disposition have already been noted in connection with man's tendency to experience sympathetically immediately the emotions of others. Every business man, lawyer, teacher, any one who comes much into contact with a wide variety of people, knows how, antecedent to any experience with an individual's capacities or talents, or even before one had a chance to draw any inferences from a person's walk, his bearing, or his clothing, one may register an immediate like or dislike. Every one has had the experience in crossing a college campus or riding in a train or street car of noting, in passing some one whom one has never seen before, an immediate reaction of good-will and affection. This has been charmingly expressed by a well-known English poet:

"The street sounds to the soldiers' tread,
And out we troop to see;
A single redcoat turns his head,
He turns and looks at me.

"My man, from sky to sky's so far,
We never crossed before;
Such leagues apart the world's ends are,
We're like to meet no more.

"What thoughts at heart have you and I,
We cannot stop to tell;
But dead or living, drunk or dry,
Soldier, I wish you well."[1]

[Footnote 1: A. E. Housman: The Shropshire Lad (John Lane edition), p. 32.]

All affection for individuals probably starts in this immediate instinctive liking. "The first note that gives sociability a personal quality and raises the comrade into an incipient friend is doubtless sensuous affinity. Whatever reaction we may eventually make on an impression, after it has had time to soak in and to merge in some practical or intellectual habit, its first assault is always on the senses; and no sense is an indifferent organ. Each has, so to speak, its congenial rate of vibration, and gives its stimuli a varying welcome. Little as we may attend to these instinctive hospitalities of sense, they betray themselves in unjustified likes and dislikes felt for casual persons and things, in the je ne sais quai that makes instinctive sympathy."[2] From this immediate instinctive liking it may rise to deep personal attachments, strikingly manifested in friendship and love between the sexes, both immemorially celebrated by poets and novelists. Love is aroused chiefly by persons, and among persons, especially in the case of sexual love, most frequently by more or less physical beauty and attractiveness. But affection may be aroused and is certainly sustained by other than merely physical qualities.

[Footnote 2: Santayana: Reason in Society, p. 151.]

It is provoked by what we call personal or social charm, a genuine kindliness of manner, an open-handed sincerity and frankness, considerateness, gentleness, whimsicality. Which particular social graces will win our affections depends of course on our own interests, equipment, and fund of instinctive and acquired sympathies. Popular psychology has in various proverbs hit at and not entirely missed some of the obvious and contradictory elements: "Opposites attract," "Birds of a feather flock together," and so on. Intellectual qualities, in persons of marked intellectual interests, will also sustain friendship and deepen an instinctive liking. Friendships thus begin in accident and are continued through community of interest. It is to be questioned whether merely striking intellectual qualities initiate a friendship. They may command admiration and respect, but liking, friendship, and love have a more emotional and personal basis.

This same warm affectionate appreciation that nearly all people have for other persons, fewer people—great poets, philosophers, and enthusiastic leaders of men—have for causes, institutions, and ideas. One feels in the works of great thinkers the same warmth and loyalty to ideas and causes that ordinary people display toward their friends. Plato has given for all time the progress of love from attachment to a single individual through to institutions, ideas, and what he called mystically the idea of beauty itself.

For he who would proceed rightly in this matter should begin in youth to turn to beautiful forms; and first, if his instructor guide him rightly, he should learn to love one such form only—out of that he should create fair thoughts, and soon he will himself perceive that the beauty of one form is truly related to the beauty of another, and then if beauty in general is his pursuit, how foolish would he be not to recognize that the beauty in every form is one and the same! And when he perceives this he will abate his violent love of the one, which he will despise and deem a small thing, and will become a lover of all beautiful forms; this will lead him on to consider that the beauty of the mind is more honorable than the beauty of the outward form. So that if a virtuous soul have but a little comeliness, he will be content to love and tend him... until his beloved is compelled to contemplate and see the beauty of institutions and laws, and understand that all is of one kindred; and that personal beauty is only a trifle; and after laws and institutions, he will lead him on to the sciences, that he may see their beauty... until at length he grows and waxes strong, and at last the vision is revealed to him of a single science which is the science of beauty everywhere.[l]

[Footnote 1: Plato: Symposium (Jowett translation), p. 502.]

There have been again great scientists who have had the same warm affectionate devotion for their subject-matter that most men display toward persons. There are scholars almost literally in love with their subjects. There have been a greater number whose capacity for affection has extended to include the whole human race, and, indeed, all animate creation. Such a type of character is beautifully exemplified in Saint Francis of Assisi:

In Francis all living creatures may truly be said to have found a friend and benefactor; his great heart embraced all the men and women who sought his sympathy and advice, and his pity for the dumb helplessness of suffering animals was deep and true. He would lift the worm from his path lest a careless foot should crush it, and would encourage his "little sister grasshopper" to perch upon his hand, and chirp her song to his gentle ear. He tamed the fierce wolf of Gubbio, and fed the robins with crumbs from his table.[1]

[Footnote 1: Goff and Kerr-Lawson: Assisi of Saint Francis, p. 121.]

And Christ stands, of course, in the Christian world, as the supreme symbol of love for mankind.

In ordinary men it is this generalized affection which is at the basis of any sustained interest in philanthropic or altruistic enterprises. No less than a large and generous affection for humanity is required to enable men to endure for long the dreariness and disillusion so often incident to philanthropic work, the conflicts and disappointments of public administration. Certainly this is true of the first rank of statesmen; no characterization of Lincoln fails to emphasize his essential humanity and tenderness.

Disinterested love for humanity is normally most intense in the adolescent.[2] The pressure of private concerns, of one's narrowing interest in one's own career, one's own family, and small circle of friends, the restriction of one's sympathies by fixed habits and circumscribed experience, all tend to dampen by middle age the ardor of the man who as an undergraduate at eighteen set out to make the world "a better place to live in." But more effective in dampening enthusiasm is the disillusion and weariness that set in after a period of exuberant and romantic benevolence to mankind in general. "We call pessimists," writes a contemporary French philosopher, "those who are in reality only disillusioned optimists."[1] So the cynic may be fairly described as a disheartened lover of men. It is only an unusual gift of affectionate good-will that enables mature men, after rough and disillusioning experiences in public life, to maintain without sentimentality a genuine and persistent interest in the welfare of others. Those in whom the fund of human kindness is slender will, and easily do, become cynical and hard.

[Footnote 2: Simeon Strunsky has somewhere remarked: "At eighteen a man is interested in causes; at twenty-eight in commutation tickets."]

[Footnote 1: Georges Sorel: Reflection on Violence (English translation), p. 9.]

The attitude of affection for others is profoundly influential in stimulating our interest in specific individuals, and modifying our attitudes toward them. We cannot help being more interested in those for whom we entertain affection than in those to whom we are indifferent. In the same way our judgments of our own friends, families, and children are qualified by our affection for them. Parents and lovers are notoriously partial, and a fair judgment of the work of our friends demands unusual clarity, determination, and poise.

In a larger way the generally friendly attitude towards others, genial expansive receptivity, is at the basis of what is called "charity for human weakness." The gentle cynic can see and tolerate other men's weaknesses:

"He knows how much of what men paint themselves
Would blister in the light of what they are;
He sees how much of what was great now shares
An eminence transformed and ordinary;
He knows too much of what the world has hushed
In others, to be loud now for himself."[2]

[Footnote 2: Edwin Arlington Robinson: "Ben Jonson Entertains a Man from Stratford," in his Man Against the Sky.]

The devoutly religious have displayed keen psychological insight when they made man's salvation dependent on God's charity, and identified, as did Dante, charity with love.[3]

[Footnote 3: "Love and the gentle heart are one and the same thing." The New Life. XX (son XI) Amore e cor gentile son una cosa. To Dante the spontaneous impulse to love is the basis of all altruism. To feel and to follow this impulse is to be truly noble, to have a "cor gentile," a gentle heart.]

Hate. Hate may be described as an extreme form of disaffection usually provoked by some marked interference with our activities, desires, or ideals. But in less intense degree the negative feeling towards others may be provoked immediately and unmistakably by most casual evidence of voice, manner, or bearing. Such immediate revulsions of feeling contrast with the instances of "instinctive sympathy" previously cited, and are as direct and uncontrollable. Even kindly disposed persons cannot help experiencing in the presence of some persons they have never seen before, a half-conscious thrill of repulsion or a dislike colored with dread. A shifting gaze, a noticeably pretentious manner, a marked obsequiousness, a grating voice, a chillness of demeanor, a physical deformity, these, however little they may have to do with a person's genuine qualities, do affect our attitudes toward them. As the familiar verse has it:

"I do not like you, Dr. Fell,
The reason why I cannot tell,
But this I know, and know full well,
I do not like you, Dr. Fell."

We may later revise our estimates, but the initial reaction is made, and often remains as a subconscious qualification of our general attitude toward another. People of worldly experience learn to trust their first reactions, to "size a man up" almost intuitively, and to be surprised if their first impressions go astray.

From this merely instinctive revulsion the negative attitude may rise to that terrible form of destructive antipathy which is "hate," as popularly understood. In between lie degrees of dislike depending partly on the strength of the initial antipathy, but equally so on the degree to which others, whether persons, institutions, or ideas, interfere with our activities, desires, or ideals. The man who seriously obstructs our love, our pleasure, or our ambition, or who tries to do so, provokes hate, and its concomitants of jealousy, rage, and pugnacity. It is not only that we dislike the mere presence of the person (in the opposite case the mere presence of the beloved object is a joy), but we dislike it for what it portends in danger and threat to ourselves. The more serious the evil or disaster for which a person comes to stand, the more violent the hatred for him, despite his personal fascinations. The villain is not infrequently a "damned smiling villain."

The provocation of hate is complicated by the fact that it is closely associated with fear. We dislike those who threaten our happiness partly because we fear them. And we fear, as was pointed out in more detail in the discussion of that powerful human trait, the unfamiliar, the strange, the startling, the unexpected. The facility with which sensational newspapers can work up in an ignorant population a hate for foreign nations, especially those of a totally alien civilization, is made possible by the fear which these uninformed readers can feel at the dangerous possibilities of mysterious foreign hordes. The fomenting of fear is in nearly all such cases a prerequisite to the fomenting of hate. And the promotion of hate has historically been one of the frequent ingredients of international conflicts.

Like love, hate is profoundly influential in modifying our interest in persons and situations. To dislike a person moderately is, in his absence, to be indifferent to him. To dislike him intensely, in a sense increases our interest in him, though perversely. Just as we wish the beloved person to succeed, to gain honor and reputation and wealth, so we long for and rejoice in the downfall and discomfiture of our enemies. Thus writes the Psalmist:

Arise, O Lord, save me, my God; for thou has smitten all mine enemies upon the cheekbone; thou hast broken the teeth of the ungodly....

Thou hast also given me the necks of mine enemies that I might destroy those that hate me.

Hate may be directed against persons, and usually it is. But hatred may be directed against institutions and ideas as well. For many persons it will be impossible for a decade to listen to German music or the German language, so closely have these become associated in their minds with ideas and practices which they detest. To a dogmatic Calvinist in the sixteenth century, both an heretical creed and its practitioners, were objects of abomination. Disappointed men may take out in a spleen and hatred of mankind their personal pique and balked desires.

Great hates may be present at the same time and in the same persons as great loves. Indeed for some persons strength in the one passion is impossible without a corresponding strength in its opposite. We cannot help hating, more or less, not only those who interfere with our own welfare, but with the welfare of those who, being dear to us, have become, as we say, a part of our lives. Thus writes Bertrand Russell in the introduction to his treatment of some of the radical social tendencies of our own day:

Whatever bitterness or hate may be found in the movements which we are to examine, it is not bitterness or hate, but love, that is their mainspring. It is difficult not to hate those who torture the objects of our love. Though difficult, it is not impossible; but it requires a breadth of outlook, and a comprehensiveness of understanding which are not easy to preserve amid a desperate contest.[1]

[Footnote 1: Russell: Proposed Roads to Freedom, pp. xvii-xviii.]

Hate may thus be, as great religious and social reformers illustrate, invoked on the side of good as well as evil. The prophets burned with a "righteous indignation." But hate is a violent and consuming passion, bent on destroying obstacles rather than solving problems. It consumes in hatred for individuals such energy as might more expeditiously be devoted to the improvement of the circumstances which make people do the mean or small or blind actions which arouse our wrath. The complete meekness and humility preached by Christ have not been taken literally by the natively pugnacious peoples of Europe. But as James says suggestively:

"Love your enemies!" Mark you not simply those who do not happen to be your friends, but your enemies, your positive and active enemies. Either this is a mere Oriental hyperbole, a bit of verbal extravagance, meaning only that we should, in so far as we can, abate our animosities, or else it is sincere and literal. Outside of certain cases of intimate individual relation, it seldom has been taken literally. Yet it makes one ask the question: Can there in general be a level of emotion so unifying, so obliterative of differences between man and man, that even enmity may come to be an irrelevant circumstance and fail to inhibit the friendlier interests aroused. If positive well-wishing could attain so supreme a degree of excitement, those who were swayed by it might well seem superhuman beings. Their life would be morally discrete from the lives of other men, and there is no saying... what the effects might be: they might conceivably transform the world.[1]

[Footnote 1: James: Varieties of Religious Experience, p. 283.]

Dislikes, disagreements, native antipathies are not to be abolished, human differences being ineradicable and human interests, even in an ideal society, being in conflict. But a keener appreciation of other viewpoints, which is possible through education, a less violent concern with one's own personal interests to the exclusion of all others, may greatly reduce the amount of hate current in the world, and free men's energies in passions more positive in their fruits.