Chapter 31

It is, I think, amply manifest that the processes here indicated are not to be taken as intellectual processes--not as processes in which recognized relations between pleasures and their antecedents, or intelligent adaptations of means to ends, form the dominant elements. The state of mind produced by an aggregate of picturesque objects is not one resolvable into propositions. The sentiment does not contain within itself any consciousness of causes and consequences of happiness. The vague recollections of other beautiful scenes and other delightful days which it dimly rouses, are not aroused because of any rational co-ordinations of ideas that have been formed in bygone years. Mr. Hutton, however, assumes that in speaking of the genesis of moral feelings as due to inherited experiences of the pleasures and pains caused by certain modes of conduct, I am speaking of reasoned-out experiences--experiences consciously accumulated and generalized. He overlooks the fact that the genesis of emotions is distinguished from the genesis of ideas in this; that whereas the ideas are composed of elements that are simple, definitely related, and (in the case of general ideas) constantly related, emotions are composed of enormously complex aggregates of elements that are never twice alike, and which stand in relations that are never twice alike. The difference in the resulting modes of consciousness is this:--In the genesis of an idea the successive experiences, be they of sounds, colours, touches, tastes, or be they of the special objects which combine many of these into groups, have so much in common that each, when it occurs, can be definitely thought of as like those which preceded it. But in the genesis of an emotion the successive experiences so far differ that each of them, when it occurs, suggests past experiences which are not specifically similar, but have only a general similarity; and, at the same time, it suggests benefits or evils in past experience which likewise are various in their special natures, though they have a certain community in general nature. Hence it results that the consciousness aroused is a multitudinous, confused consciousness, in which, along with a certain kind of combination among the impressions received from without, there is a vague cloud of ideal combinations akin to them, and a vague mass of ideal feelings of pleasure or pain which were associated with these. We have abundant proof that feelings grow up without reference to recognized causes and consequences, and without the possessor of them being able to say why they have grown up; though analysis, nevertheless, shows that they have been formed out of connected experiences. The familiar fact that a kind of jam which was, during childhood, repeatedly taken after medicine, may become, by simple association of sensations, so nauseous that it cannot be tolerated in after-life, illustrates clearly the way in which repugnances may be established by habitual association of feelings, without any belief in causal connexion; or rather, in spite of the knowledge that there is no causal connexion. Similarly with pleasurable emotions. The cawing of rooks is not in itself an agreeable sound: musically considered, it is very much the contrary. Yet the cawing of rooks usually produces in people feelings of a grateful kind--feelings which most of them suppose to result from the quality of the sound itself. Only the few who are given to self-analysis are aware that the cawing of rooks is agreeable to them because it has been connected with countless of their greatest gratifications--with the gathering of wild flowers in childhood; with Saturday-afternoon excursions in school-boy days; with midsummer holidays in the country, when books were thrown aside and lessons were replaced by games and adventures in the fields; with fresh, sunny mornings in after-years, when a walking excursion was an immense relief from toil. As it is, this sound, though not causally related to all these multitudinous and varied past delights, but only often associated with them, can no more be heard without rousing a dim consciousness of these delights, than the voice of an old friend unexpectedly coming into the house can be heard without suddenly raising a wave of that feeling that has resulted from the pleasures of past companionship. If we are to understand the genesis of emotions, either in the individual or in the race, we must take account of this all-important process. Mr. Hutton, however, apparently overlooking it, and not having reminded himself, by referring to the _Principles of Psychology_, that I insist upon it, represents my hypothesis to be that a certain sentiment results from the consolidation of intellectual conclusions! He speaks of me as believing that "what seems to us now the 'necessary' intuitions and _a priori_ assumptions of human nature, are likely to prove, when scientifically analysed, nothing but a similar conglomeration of our ancestors' _best observations and most useful empirical rules_." He supposes me to think that men having, in past times, come to _see_ that truthfulness was useful, "the habit of approving truth-speaking and fidelity to engagements, which was first based on this ground of utility, became so rooted, that the utilitarian ground of it was forgotten, and _we_ find ourselves springing to the belief in truth-speaking and fidelity to engagements from an inherited tendency." Similarly throughout, Mr. Hutton has so used the word "utility," and so interpreted it on my behalf, as to make me appear to mean that moral sentiment is formed out of _conscious generalizations_ respecting what is beneficial and what detrimental. Were such my hypothesis, his criticisms would be very much to the point; but as such is not my hypothesis, they fall to the ground. The experiences of utility I refer to are those which become registered, not as distinctly recognized connexions between certain kinds of acts and certain kinds of remote results, but those which become registered in the shape of associations between groups of feelings that have often recurred together, though the relation between them has not been consciously generalized--associations the origin of which may be as little perceived as is the origin of the pleasure given by the sounds of a rookery; but which, nevertheless, have arisen in the course of daily converse with things, and serve as incentives or deterrents.

In the paragraph which Mr. Hutton has extracted from my letter to Mr. Mill, I have indicated an analogy between those effects of emotional experiences out of which I believe moral sentiments have been developed, and those effects of intellectual experiences out of which I believe space-intuitions have been developed. Rightly considering that the first of these hypotheses cannot stand if the last is disproved, Mr. Hutton has directed part of his attack against this last. But would it not have been well if he had referred to the _Principles of Psychology_, where this last hypothesis is set forth at length, before criticising it? Would it not have been well to give an abstract of my own description of the process, instead of substituting what he _supposes_ my description must be? Any one who turns to the _Principles of Psychology_ (first edition, pp. 218-245), and reads the two chapters, "The Perception of Body as presenting Statical Attributes", and "The Perception of Space", will find that Mr. Hutton's account of my view on this matter has given him no notion of the view as it is expressed by me; and will, perhaps, be less inclined to smile than he was when he read Mr. Hutton's account. I cannot here do more than thus imply the invalidity of such part of Mr. Hutton's argument as proceeds upon this incorrect representation. The pages which would be required for properly explaining the doctrine that space-intuitions result from organized experiences may be better used for explaining this analogous doctrine at present before us. This I will now endeavour to do; not indirectly by correcting misapprehensions, but directly by an exposition which shall be as brief as the extremely involved nature of the process allows.

An infant in arms, when old enough to gaze at objects around with some vague recognition, smiles in response to the laughing face and soft caressing voice of its mother. Let there come some one who, with an angry face, speaks to it in loud, harsh tones. The smile disappears, the features contract into an expression of pain, and, beginning to cry, it turns away its head, and makes such movements of escape as are possible. What is the meaning of these facts? Why does not the frown make it smile, and the mother's laugh make it weep? There is but one answer. Already in its developing brain there is coming into play the structure through which one cluster of visual and auditory impressions excites pleasurable feelings, and the structure through which another cluster of visual and auditory impressions excites painful feelings. The infant knows no more about the relation existing between a ferocious expression of face, and the evils which may follow perception of it, than the young bird just out of its nest knows of the possible pain and death which may be inflicted by a man coming towards it; and as certainly in the one case as in the other, the alarm felt is due to a partially-established nervous structure. Why does this partially-established nervous structure betray its presence thus early in the human being? Simply because, in the past experiences of the human race, smiles and gentle tones in those around have been the habitual accompaniments of pleasurable feelings; while pains of many kinds, immediate and more or less remote, have been continually associated with the impressions received from knit brows, and set teeth, and grating voice. Much deeper down than the history of the human race must we go to find the beginnings of these connexions. The appearances and sounds which excite in the infant a vague dread, indicate danger; and do so because they are the physiological accompaniments of destructive action--some of them common to man and inferior mammals, and consequently understood by inferior mammals, as every puppy shows us. What we call the natural language of anger, is due to a partial contraction of those muscles which actual combat would call into play; and all marks of irritation, down to that passing shade over the brow which accompanies slight annoyance, are incipient stages of these same contractions. Conversely with the natural language of pleasure, and of that state of mind which we call amicable feeling: this, too, has a physiological interpretation.[35]

Let us pass now from the infant in arms to the children in the nursery. What have the experiences of each been doing in aid of the emotional development we are considering? While its limbs have been growing more agile by exercise, its manipulative skill increasing by practice, its perceptions of objects growing by use quicker, more accurate, more comprehensive; the associations between these two sets of impressions received from those around, and the pleasures and pains received along with them, or after them, have been by frequent repetition made stronger, and their adjustments better. The dim sense of pain and the vague glow of delight which the infant felt, have, in the urchin, severally taken shapes that are more definite. The angry voice of a nursemaid no longer arouses only a formless feeling of dread, but also a specific idea of the slap that may follow. The frown on the face of a bigger brother, along with the primitive, indefinable sense of ill, brings the ideas of ills that are definable as kicks, and cuffs, and pullings of hair, and losses of toys. The faces of parents, looking now sunny, now gloomy, have grown to be respectively associated with multitudinous forms of gratification and multitudinous forms of discomfort or privation. Hence these appearances and sounds, which imply amity or enmity in those around, become symbolic of happiness and misery; so that eventually, perception of the one set or the other can scarcely occur without raising a wave of pleasurable feeling or of painful feeling. The body of this wave is still substantially of the same nature as it was at first; for though in each of these multitudinous experiences a special set of facial and vocal signs has been connected with a special set of pleasures or pains; yet since these pleasures or pains have been immensely varied in their kinds and combinations, and since the signs that preceded them were in no two cases quite alike, it results that even to the end the consciousness produced remains as vague as it is voluminous. The thousands of partially-aroused ideas resulting from past experiences are massed together and superposed, so as to form an aggregate in which nothing is distinct, but which has the character of being pleasurable or painful according to the nature of its original components: the chief difference between this developed feeling and the feeling aroused in the infant being, that on bright or dark background forming the body of it, may now be sketched out in thought the particular pleasures or pains which the particular circumstances suggest as likely.

What must be the working of this process under the conditions of aboriginal life? The emotions given to the young savage by the natural language of love and hate in the members of his tribe, gain first a partial definiteness in respect to his intercourse with his family and playmates; and he learns by experience the utility, in so far as his own ends are concerned, of avoiding courses which call from others manifestations of anger, and taking courses which call from them manifestations of pleasure. Not that he consciously generalizes. He does not at that age, probably not at any age, formulate his experiences in the general principle that it is well for him to do things which bring smiles, and to avoid doing things which bring frowns. What happens is that having, in the way shown, inherited this connexion between the perception of anger in others and the feeling of dread, and having discovered that certain acts of his bring on this anger, he cannot subsequently think of committing one of these acts without thinking of the resulting anger, and feeling more or less of the resulting dread. He has no thought of the utility or inutility of the act itself: the deterrent is the mainly vague, but partially definite, fear of evil that may follow. So understood, the deterring emotion is one which has grown out of experiences of utility, using that word in its ethical sense; and if we ask why this dreaded anger is called forth from others, we shall habitually find that it is because the forbidden act entails pain somewhere--is negatived by utility. On passing from domestic injunctions to injunctions current in the tribe, we see no less clearly how these emotions produced by approbation and reprobation come to be connected in experience with actions which are beneficial to the tribe, and actions which are detrimental to the tribe; and how there consequently grow up incentives to the one class of actions and prejudices against the other class. From early boyhood the young savage hears recounted the daring deeds of his chief--hears them in words of praise, and sees all faces glowing with admiration. From time to time also he listens while some one's cowardice is described in tones of scorn, and with contemptuous metaphors, and sees him meet with derision and insult whenever he appears. That is to say, one of the things that come to be associated in his mind with smiling faces, which are symbolical of pleasures in general, is courage; and one of the things that come to be associated in his mind with frowns and other marks of enmity, which form his symbol of unhappiness, is cowardice. These feelings are not formed in him because he has reasoned his way to the truth that courage is useful to the tribe, and, by implication, to himself, or to the truth that cowardice is a cause of evil. In adult life he may perhaps see this; but he certainly does not see it at the time when bravery is thus joined in his consciousness with all that is good, and cowardice with all that is bad. Similarly there are produced in him feelings of inclination or repugnance towards other lines of conduct that have become established or interdicted, because they are beneficial or injurious to the tribe; though neither the young nor the adults know why they have become established or interdicted. Instance the praiseworthiness of wife-stealing, and the viciousness of marrying within the tribe.

We may now ascend a stage to an order of incentives and restraints derived from these. The primitive belief is that every dead man becomes a demon, who is often somewhere at hand, may at any moment return, may give aid or do mischief, and has to be continually propitiated. Hence among other agents whose approbation or reprobation are contemplated by the savage as consequences of his conduct, are the spirits of his ancestors. When a child he is told of their deeds, now in triumphant tones, now in whispers of horror; and the instilled belief that they may inflict some vaguely-imagined but fearful evil, or give some great help, becomes a powerful incentive or deterrent. Especially does this happen when the story is of a chief, distinguished for his strength, his ferocity, his persistence in that revenge on enemies which the experiences of the savage make him regard as beneficial and virtuous. The consciousness that such a chief, dreaded by neighbouring tribes, and dreaded, too, by members of his own tribe, may reappear and punish those who have disregarded his injunctions, becomes a powerful motive. But it is clear, in the first place, that the imagined anger and the imagined satisfaction of this deified chief, are simply transfigured forms of the anger and satisfaction displayed by those around; and that the feelings accompanying such imaginations have the same original root in the experiences which have associated an average of painful results with the manifestation of another's anger, and an average of pleasurable results with the manifestation of another's satisfaction. And it is clear, in the second place, that the actions thus forbidden and encouraged must be mostly actions that are respectively detrimental and beneficial to the tribe; since the successful chief is usually a better judge than the rest, and has the preservation of the tribe at heart. Hence experiences of utility, consciously or unconsciously organized, underlie his injunctions; and the sentiments which prompt obedience are, though very indirectly and without the knowledge of those who feel them, referable to experiences of utility.

This transfigured form of restraint, differing at first but little from the original form, admits of immense development. Accumulating traditions, growing in grandeur as they are repeated from generation to generation, make more and more superhuman the early-recorded hero of the race. His powers of inflicting punishment and giving happiness become ever greater, more multitudinous, and more varied; so that the dread of divine displeasure, and the desire to obtain divine approbation, acquire a certain largeness and generality. Still the conceptions remain anthropomorphic. The revengeful deity continues to be thought of in terms of human emotions, and continues to be represented as displaying these emotions in human ways. Moreover, the sentiments of right and duty, so far as they have become developed, refer mainly to divine commands and interdicts; and have little reference to the natures of the acts commanded or interdicted. In the intended offering-up of Isaac, in the sacrifice of Jephthah's daughter, and in the hewing to pieces of Agag, as much as in the countless atrocities committed from religious motives by various early historic races, as by some existing savage races, we see that the morality and immorality of actions, as we understand them, are at first little recognized; and that the feelings, chiefly of dread, which serve in place of them, are feelings felt towards the unseen beings supposed to issue the commands and interdicts.

Here it will be said that, as just admitted, these are not the moral sentiments properly so called. They are simply sentiments that precede and make possible those highest sentiments which do not refer either to personal benefits or evils to be expected from men, or to more remote rewards and punishments. Several comments are, however, called forth by this criticism. One is, that if we glance back at past beliefs and their correlative feelings, as shown in Dante's poem, in the mystery-plays of the middle ages, in St. Bartholomew massacres, in burnings for heresy, we get proof that in comparatively modern times right and wrong meant little else than subordination or insubordination--to a divine ruler primarily, and under him to a human ruler. Another is, that down to our own day this conception largely prevails, and is even embodied in elaborate ethical works--instance the _Essays on the Principles of Morality_, by Jonathan Dymond, which recognizes no ground of moral obligation save the will of God as expressed in the current creed. And yet a further is, that while in sermons the torments of the damned and the joys of the blessed are set forth as the dominant deterrents and incentives, and while we have prepared for us printed instructions "how to make the best of both worlds," it cannot be denied that the feelings which impel and restrain men are still largely composed of elements like those operative on the savage: the dread, partly vague, partly specific, associated with the idea of reprobation, human and divine, and the sense of satisfaction, partly vague, partly specific, associated with the idea of approbation, human and divine.