One of the problems in all work is to place things in their right order, in the order of origin and importance. This difficulty is almost insoluble when one studies the character of man. As we see him in operation, the synthesis is so complete that we can hardly discern the component parts. Inheritance, social pressure, excitement, interest, love, hate, self-interest, duty and obligation, --these are not unitary in the least and there is constantly a false dissection to be made, an artefact, in order that clearness in presentation may be obtained.
We see men as discharging energy in work and play, in the activities that help or hurt themselves and the race. They obtain that energy from the world without, from the sunshine, the air, the plants and the animals; it is built up in their bodies, it is discharged either because some inner tension builds up a desire or because some outer stimulus, environmental or social, directs it. Though we have no way of measuring one man's energy against another, we say, perhaps erroneously, "He is very energetic," or "He is not"; "He is tireless," or "He breaks down easily." As students of character, we must take this question of the energies of men into account as integral in our study.
Granting that the human being takes in energy as food and drink and builds it up into dischargeable tissues, we are not further concerned with the details of its physiology. How does the feeling of energy arise, what increases the energy discharge and what blocks, inhibits or lowers it? For from day to day, from hour to hour, we are conscious either of a desire to be active, a feeling of capacity or the reverse. We depend on that feeling of capacity to guide us, and though it is organic, it has its mysterious disappearances and marvelous reenforcements.
It arises, so we assume, from the visceral-neuronic activities, subconsciously, in the sense we have used that word. It therefore fluctuates with health, with fatigue, with the years. We marvel at the energy of childhood and youth, and the deepest sadness we have is the depletion of energy-feeling in old age. We love energy in ourselves and we yield admiration, willing or unwilling, to its display in others. The Hero, the leader, is always energetic. In our times, in America, we demand "pep," action and energy-display as an essential in our play and in our work, and we worship quite too frankly where all men have always worshiped.
What besides the organic activity, besides health and well-being, excites the feeling of energy and what depresses it?
1. This feeling is excited by the society of others, by the herd-feeling, and depressed by long-continued solitude or loneliness. The stimuli that come from other people's faces, voices, contacts--their emotions, feelings and manifestations of energy--are those we are best adapted to react to, those most valuable in stirring us up. Scenery, the grandeur of the outer world, finally depress the most of us, and we can bear these things best in company. Who has not, on a long railroad journey, watched with weariness and flickering interest valley and hill and meadow swing by and then sat up with energy and definite attention as a human being passed along on some rural road? Lacking these stimuli there is monotony and monotony always has with it as one of its painful features a subjective sense of lowered energy, of fatigue. This is the problem of the housewife and the solitary worker everywhere,--there is failure of the sense of energy due to a failure to receive new stimuli in their most potent form, our fellows.
2. The disappearance or injury of desire and purpose. Let there be a sudden blocking of a purpose or an aim, so that it seems impossible of fulfillment, and energy-feeling drops; movement, thought, even feeling seem painful. The will flags, and the whole world becomes unreal. This is part of the anhedonia we spoke of.
In reality, we have the disappearance of hope as basic in this adynamia. Hope and courage are in part organic, in part are due to the belief that a desired goal can be reached. Whether that goal is health, when one is sick, or riches, or fame, or love and possession, if it is a well-centralized goal toward which our main energies are bent, and then seems suddenly impossible to reach, there is a corresponding paralysis of energy.
Here is where a great difference is seen between individuals and between one time of life and another. There are some to whom hope is a shining beacon light never absent; whatever happens, hope remains, like the beautiful fable of Pandora's box. There are others to whom any obstruction, any discouraging feature, blots out hope, and who constantly need the energy of others; their persuasions and exhortations, for a renewal of energy. Here, as elsewhere in life, some are givers and others takers of energy. In the presence of the hopeless it is hard to maintain one's own feeling of energy and that is why the average man shuns them. He guards as priceless his own enthusiasm.
Curiously enough, when energy tends to disappear in the face of disaster to one's plans, a tonic is often enough the reflection, "it might have been worse" or "there are others worse off."[1] Though one rebels against the encouraging effect of the last statement, it does console, it does renew hope. For hope and energy and desire are competitive, as is every other measure of value. So long as one is not the worst off, then there is something left, there is a hopeful element in the situation. Similarly a certain rough treatment helps, as when Job is told practically, "After all, who is Man that he should ask for the fulfillment of his hopes?" A sense of littleness with the rest of the race acts to bring resignation, and after that has been established, hope can reappear. For resignation is rarely a prolonged state of mind; it is a doorway through which we reenter into the vista-chambers of Hope.
[1] A humorous use of this fact is in the popular "Cheer up, the worst is yet to come!" This acts as a rough tonic.
And one clearly sees the benefit of a belief, a faith in God. "Gott in sein Mizpah ist gerecht," cries the orthodox Jew when his hope is shattered,--"God's decree is just." This is Hope Eternal; "my purposes are blocked, but were they God's purposes? No. He would not then block them. I must seek God's purposes." Faith is really a transcendent Hope, renewing the feeling of energy.
3. The belief that one has the good opinion of others is a powerful stimulus to energy and feeling. We have already considered the effect of praise and blame. Some are so constituted that they need the approval of others at all times; they are at the mercy of any one who gives them a cold look or a harsh word. Others cling to the need of their own self-approval; they are aristocrats, firm and secure in their self-estimate. Let their self-esteem crumble, and these proud and haughty ones are humble, weak, inefficient. We fiercely resent criticism because in it is a threat to our source of energy, our very feeling of being alive.
One has shrewdly to examine his fellow men from this angle: "Does he work up his own steam; are his boilers of energy heated by his own enthusiasm and his own self-approval? Or does he borrow; can he work only if others add their fire to his; does his light go out if his neighbors turn away or are too busy to help him?" One type of man may be as admirable as another in his gifts, but the types need different treatment.
Self-valuation is to a large extent our opinion of the valuation of others of ourselves.[1] We believe people like us, think we are fine and able, or beautiful, and we react with energy to difficulties. We may be wrong; they may call us a conceited ass and laugh at us behind our backs, but so long as we do not find it out, it doesn't matter. There is, however, no blow quite so severe as the sudden realization that we have mistaken the opinion of others, we have been "fooled." To be fooled is to be lowered in one's own self-esteem, and we like sincerity and hate insincerity largely because our self-esteem stands on some solid basis in the one case and on none whatever in the other. Most of us would rather have people say bad things of us to our face than run the risk of the ridicule and the foolish feeling that comes with insincerity. There are some who are always suspicions that people are insincere in praise or friendly words; they hate being fooled, they know of no criterion of sincerity and such people are in an adynamic state most of the time. The difference between the trusting and the suspicious is that one responds with energy and belief to the manifestations of friendliness in everybody, and the other has no such inner response to guide his energy and his actions. Trust in others is a releaser of energy; distrust paralyzes it.
[1] To paraphrase Doctor Holmes the biggest factor in John's self-valuation is HIS idea of Jane's idea of John.
4. Doubt and inability to choose may be contrasted with certitude and clear choice in their effect on energy release. Of course, one of the signs of lowered energy is doubt, as a sign of high energy is certainty. Nevertheless, a situation of critical importance, in which choice is difficult or digagreeable, inhibits energy feeling[1] and discharge perhaps as much as any other mental factor. Especially is this true when the inhibition concerns a moral situation--"Ought I to do this or that"--and where the fear of being wrong or doing wrong operates so that the individual does nothing and develops an obsession of doubt. This "to be or not to be" attitude is typical of many intelligent people, yes, even intellectual people. They we so many angles to a situation, they project so far into the future in their thoughts, that a weary discouragement comes. To such as these, the counsel of "action right or wrong but action anyway!" is good, but the difficulty is to make them overcome their doubts. Their cerebral oscillation makes them weary but they cannot seem to stop it; their pendulum of choice never stops at action.
[1] See William James' "Varieties of Religious Experiences," for beautiful examples. The Russian writers are often narrators of this struggle.
If one wishes to destroy the energy of any one, the best way to do it is to sow the seeds of doubt. "Your ideal is a fine one, my friend, but--isn't it a little sophomoric?" "A nice piece of work, but--who wants it?" On the other hand, to one obsessed by doubt it may happen that a whole-hearted endorsement, a resolution of the doubt, brings with it first relief and then a swing of energy into the channels of action.
5. Competition is a great factor in energy release. Every one has seen a horse ambling along, apparently without sufficient energy to go more than four miles an hour. Suddenly he cocks up his ears as the sounds of the hoof beats of a rapidly traveling horse are heard. He shakes his head and to the amazement or amusement of his driver sets off in rivalry at a two-minute clip. Intensely cooperative and gregarious as man is, he is as intensely competitive, spurred on by his observations of the other fellow. Introduce a definite system of rivalry into a school or an office, and you release energies never manifested before. There are some to whom this is the main releaser of energy; struggle, competition and victory over another is their stimulus. They can play no game unless there is competition, and the solitary pleasures and satisfactions, like reading, exploring, a row on the river or a walk in the woods, cannot arouse them. Others dislike rivalry or competition; they are too sympathetic to wish victory over another and also they dread to lose. They prefer team play and cooperation. The world will always seem different to these two types. This may be said now that for most of us, who are somewhat of a blend in this matter, rivalry is pleasant and stimulating when there is a show of success, but we prefer cooperation when we foresee failure.
This brings up the interesting phase of precedent in energy release. Early success, unless it brings too high a self-valuation, which is its great danger, is remarkably valuable in releasing energy, and failure establishes a precedent that may bring doubt, fear and the attendant inhibition of energy. Of course, failure may bring with it caution and a recasting of plans and thus constitute the most valuable of experiences. But if it is too great, or if there is lacking a certain fortitude, it may act as a paralyzer of energy thenceforth. In the prize ring this is often noted; the spirit of a man goes with a defeat and he never again has self-confidence; thereafter his energy is constantly inhibited.
Emotions have long been studied in their effects on energy. In fact, every animal that bristles and snarls as it faces a foe is, unconsciously, attempting to paralyze with fear its opponent, to render it helpless through the inhibition of action. So with the lurking tiger; it waits in silence for the prey and seeks the fascination of surprise as a factor in victory. On the other hand, the emotion of fear may be a releaser of energy for the prospective victim; it may release the energies of flight and add to the power of the animal. In this, there is a unique and neglected phase of emotion, i.e., if you shake your fist at your enemy and he runs away or knocks you down, then your manifestation of anger has been unsuccessful for you but his reaction has been successful for him. If he becomes so paralyzed with fear that you can work your will with him, then your anger is successful while his fear is not. Most of the psychologists have neglected this phase of emotion. Thus it is hard to understand the use fainting from terror has to the victim. The answer is it is useful to him who has caused the victim to faint.
6. For the individual, the emotion of fear has as its function a preparation for a danger that is foreseen to be too powerful to be met with effective resistance. Fear says, "It's no use to fight, fly or hide." Therefore, normally there is a heightening of energy feeling and action in these two directions. There are plenty of recorded incidents where fear has enabled men to run distances utterly impossible to them otherwise. In the fear states of mental disease, the resistance a frail woman will offer to her attendants is such that the utmost strength of several people is required to restrain her. Under these circumstances fear acts as an energizer, causing physical reactions not ordinarily within the will of the person. "Fear lends wings," is the time-honored way of expressing this. The trapped animal makes "frantic" efforts to escape.
Fear is extraordinarily contagious, perhaps because as herd members the cry of fear sets us all racing for safety. This is the grimmest danger from fires in public places or the presence of a coward in a military unit. Panic occurs with its blind unreasoning flight, and the result is disastrous. I emphasize again that emotions are poorly adapted to the welfare of the individual. Business panics are in large measure the result of the contagiousness of fear; timidity spreads like wildfire, distrust and suspicion are aroused and stagnation results without a "real" basis. In President Wilson's phrase, the panic is "purely psychological."
Intellectualized, fear becomes one of the driving forces of life, as Hobbes[1] pointed out. Fear of punishment undoubtedly deters from crime, though it is not in itself sufficient, and the kind of punishment becomes important. Fear of hunger has brought prudence, caution, agriculture into the world. Life insurance has its root in fear for others, who are really part of one's self; the fear of the rainy day is back of most of the thrift, though the acquisitive feeling and duty may also operate powerfully. Fear of venereal disease impels many a man to continence who otherwise would follow his desire. And fear of the bad opinion of others is the most powerful deterrent force in the world. "What will people say" is, at bottom, fear that they will say bad things, and though it keeps men from the "bad" conduct, it inhibits the finer nobler actions as well. There is a great deal of unconventional untrammeled belief in the world that never finds expression because of fear.
How deeply the fear of death modifies the life of people it is impossible to state. To every one there comes the awful reflection that he, that warmly pulsating being, in love with the world and with living, "center of the universe," HE himself must die, must be cold and still and have no will, no power, no feeling; be buried in the ground. Most of the essential melancholy of the world is due to this realization, and most of the feeling of pessimism and futility thus has its origin. Mortal man--a worm of the earth--a brief flower doomed to perish--and all of it finds final expression in Gray's marvelous words:
"The boast of heraldry, the pomp of pow'r, And all that beauty, all that wealth e'er gave, Await alike the inevitable hour. The paths of glory lead but to the grave."
[1] Hobbes made fear the most important motive in the conduct of man.
"Why strive, thou poor creature, for wealth and power; sink thyself in the, Godhead!" "Turn, turn from vain pursuits; fame, the bubble, is bound to break as thou art." This is one type of reaction against this fear,--for men react to the fear of death variously. If man is mortal, God is not, and there is a life everlasting. The life everlasting--whether a reality or not--is conjured up and believed in by an effort to compensate for the fear of death.
I have a son who, when he was three, manifested great emotion if death were to enter in a story. "Will anything happen?" he would ask, meaning, "Will death enter?" And if so, he would beg not to have that story told. But when he was four, he heard some one say that there were people who took old automobiles apart, fixed up the parts and these were then placed in other automobiles.
"That's what God does to us," he cried triumphantly. "When we die, He takes us apart and puts us into babies, and we live again." Thereafter he would discuss death as fearlessly as he spoke of dinner, and all his fears vanished. Here was a typical rationalization of fear, one that has helped to shape religion, philosophies, ways of living. And the widespread belief in immortality is a compensation and a rationalization of the fear of death.
If some men rationalize in this fashion, others take directly opposite means. "Eat, drink and be merry, for to-morrow we die." The popularity of Omar Khayyam rests upon the aptness of his statement of this side of the case of Man vs. Death, and many a man who never heard of him has recklessly plunged into dissipation on the theory, "a short life and a merry one." This is more truly a pessimism than is the ascetic philosophy.
"Well, then, I must die," says another. "Oh, that I might achieve before death comes!" So men, appalled by the brief tenure of life and the haphazard way death strikes, work hard, spurred on by the wish to leave a great work behind them. This work becomes a Self, left behind, and here the fear of death is compensated for by a little longer life in the form of achievement.
Many a father and mother, looking at their children, feel this as part of their compensation for parenthood. "I shall die and leave some one behind me," means, "I shall die and yet I shall, in another form, live." Part of the incentive to parenthood, in a time which knows how to prevent parenthood and which shirks it as disagreeable, is the fear of death, of personal annihilation. For there is in death a blow to one's pride, an indignity in this annihilation,--Nothingness.
There is a still larger reaction to the fear of death. I have stated that the feeling of likeness is part of the feeling of brotherhood and in death is one of the three great likenesses of man. We are born of the labor of our mothers, our days are full of strife and trouble and we die. Men's minds have lingered on these facts. "Man that is born of a woman, is of few days, and full of trouble." Job did not add to this that he dies, but elsewhere it appears as the bond for mankind. Reacting to this, the reflective minds of the race have felt that here was the unity of man, here the basis of a brotherhood. True, the Fatherhood of God was given as a logical reason, but always in every appeal there is the note, "Do we not all die? Why hate one another then?"
So to the fear of death, as with every other fear, man has reacted basely and nobly. Man is the only animal that foresees death and he is the only one to elaborate ethics and religion. There is more than an accidental connection between these two facts.
Fear in its foreseeing character is termed worry. As a phase of character, the liability to worry is of such importance that book after book has dealt with the subject,--emphasizing the dangers, the futility and cowardice of it. It is surely idle to tell people not to worry who live continually on the brink of economic disaster, or who are facing real danger. But there are types who find in every possibility of injury a formidable threat, who are thrown into anguish when they contemplate any evil, remote or unlikely as it may be. The present and future are not faced with courage or equanimity; they present themselves as a never-ending series of threats; threat to health, to fortune, to family, reputation, everything. Horace Fletcher called this type of forethought "fear thought." Men and women, brave enough when face to face with actualities, are cowards when confronting remote possibilities. The housewife especially is one of these worriers, and her mind has an affinity for the terrible. I have described her elsewhere,[1] but she has her prototype among men.
[1] "The Nervous Housewife."
Fear of this type is an injury to the body and character both and is one of the causes and effects of the widespread neurasthenia of our day. For fear injures sleep, and this brings on fatigue and fatigue breeds more fear, --a vicious circle indeed. Fear disturbs digestion and the energy of the organism is thereby lowered. The greatest damage by worry is done in the hypochondriac, the worrier about health. Here, in addition to the effects of fear, introspection and a minute attention to every pain and ache demoralize the character, for the sufferer cannot pay attention to anything else. He becomes selfish, ego-centric and without the wholesome interest in life as an adventure. I doubt if there is enough good in too minute a popular education on disease and health preservation. Morbid attention to health often results, an evil worse than sickness.
Sometimes, instead of the indiscriminate fear of worry, there are localized fears, called phobias, which creep or spring into a man's thoughts and render him miserable. Thus there is fear of high places, of low places, of darkness, of open places, of closed places,--fear of dirt, fear of poison and of almost everything else. A bright young man was locked, at the age of fourteen, in a closed dark shanty; when released he rushed home in the greatest terror. Since then he has been afflicted with a fear of leaving home. He dares venture only about fifty feet and then is impelled to run back. If anybody hinders his return he attacks them; if the door is locked he breaks through a window. He is in a veritable panic, and yet presents no other fears; is a reader and thinker, clever at his work (he is a painter), but his fear remains inaccessible and uncontrollable. Often one experience of this kind builds up an obsessive fear; the associations left by the experience give the fear an open pathway to consciousness, without any inhibiting power. As in this case, the whole life of the individual becomes changed.
Throughout history the man without fear has been idolized. The hero is courageous, that he must be; the coward is despised, whatever good may be in him. Consequently, there is in most men a fear of showing fear; and pride, self-respect, often urge men on when they really fear. This pride is greater in some races than others--in the Indian and the Anglo-Saxon--but the Oriental does not think it wrong to be afraid. In the Great War this fear of showing fear played a great role in producing shell shock, in that men shrank from actual cowardice but easily developed neuroses which carried them from the fighting line.
There is this to add to this little sketch of fear: it turns easily to anger for both are responses to a threat. I remember in my boyhood being mortally afraid of a larger boy who one day chased me, caught me and started to "beat me up." Before I knew it, the fear had gone and I was fighting him with such fierceness and fury that in amazement he ran away. So a rat, cornered, becomes fierce and blood-thirsty and there is always the danger, in the use of fear as a weapon, that it become changed quite readily into the fighting spirit.
7. Anger is a primitive reaction and is the backbone of the fighting spirit. It tends to displace fear, though it may be combined with it, in one of the most unhappy --because helpless--mental states. Anger in its commonest form is a violent energizer and in the stiffened muscles, the set jaw, bared teeth, and the forward-thrust head and arms one sees the animal prepared to fight. Anger is aroused at any obstruction, any threat or injury, from physical violences to the so-called "slight." In fact, it is the intent of the opponent as understood that makes up the stimulus to anger in the human being. We forgive a blow if it is accidental, but even a touch, if in malice or in contempt, arouses a fierce reaction.
We call becoming angry too readily "losing the temper," and there is a type known as the irascible in whom anger is the readiest emotion. The bluff English squire, the man in authority, is this type, and his anger lasts. In its lesser form anger becomes irritability, a reaction common to the neurotic and the weak. When anger is not frank, but manifests itself by a lowered brow and sidelong look, we speak of sullenness or surliness. The sullen or surly person, chronically ill-tempered and hostile, is regarded as unsocial and dangerous, whereas the most lovable persons are quick to anger and quick to repent.
As a man's anger, so is he. There are some whose anger is always a reaction against interference with their comfort, their dignity, their property and their will; it never by any chance is aroused by the wrongs of others. Usually, however, these folk camouflage their motive. "It's the principle of the thing I object to," is its commonest social disguise, which sometimes successfully hides the real motive from the egoist himself. Wherever wills and purposes meet in conflict, there anger, or its offshoot, contempt, is present, and the more egoistic one is, the more egoistic the sources of anger.
The explosiveness of the anger will depend on the power of inhibition and the power of the intelligence, as well as on the strength of the opponent. There are enough whose temper is uncontrolled in the presence of the weak who manage to be quite calm in the presence of the strong. I believe there is much less difference amongst races in this respect than we suspect, and there is more in tradition and training. There was a time when it was perfectly proper for a gentleman to lose his temper, but now that it is held "bad form," most gentlemen manage to control it.
If it is common for men to become angry at ego-injury, there are in this world, as its leaven of reform, noble spirits who become angry at the wrongs of others. The world owes its progress to those whose anger, sustained and intellectualized, becomes the power behind reform; to those like Abraham Lincoln, who vowed to destroy slavery because he saw a slave sold down the river; to the Pinels, outraged by the treatment of the insane; to the sturdy "Indignant Citizen," who writes to newspapers about what "is none of his business," but who is too angry to keep still, and whose anger makes public opinion. Whether anger is useful or not depends upon its cause and the methods it employs. Righteous anger, whether against one's own wrongs or the wrongs of others, is the hall-mark of the brave and noble spirit; mean, egoistic anger is a great world danger, born of prejudice and egoism. A violent-tempered child may be such because he is outraged by wrong; if so, teach him control but do not tell him in modern wishy-washy fashion that "one must never get angry." Control it, intellectualize it, do not permit it to destroy effectiveness, as it is prone to do; but it cannot be eliminated without endangering personality.
Fear and anger have this in common: whenever the controlling energy of the mind goes, as in illness, fatigue or early mental disease, they become more prominent and uncontrolled. This cannot be overemphasized. When a man (or woman) finds himself continually getting apprehensive and irritable, then it is the time to ask, "What's the matter with me," and to get expert opinion on the subject.
These two emotions are in more need of rationalizing and intelligent control than the other emotions, for they are more explosive. Certainly of anger it is truly said that "He who is master of himself is greater than he who taketh a city." The angry man is disliked, he arouses unpleasant feelings, he is unpopular and a nuisance and a danger in the view of his fellows. The underlying idea underneath courtesy and social regulations is to avoid anger and humiliation. Controversial subjects are avoided, and one must not brag or display concern because these things cause anger and disgust. Politeness and tact are essential to turn away wrath, to avoid that ego injury that brings anger.
We contrast with the brusque type, careless of whether he arouses anger, the tactful, which conciliates by avoiding prejudice, and which hates force and anger as unpleasant. Against the quick to anger there is the slow type, whose anger may be enduring. We may contrast egoistic anger with the altruistic and oppose the anger which is effective with the anger that disturbs reason and judgment; intellectual anger against brute anger. Rarely do men show anger to their superiors; extreme provocation and desperation are necessary. Men flare up easily against equals but more easily and with mingled contempt against the inferior. Anger, though behind the fighting spirit, need not bluster or storm; usually that is a "worked up" condition intended in a naive way to frighten and intimidate, or through disgust, to win a point. Anger is not necessarily courage, which replaces it the higher up one goes in culture.
8. Disgust, also a primary emotion, is one of the basic reactions of life and civilization. Literally "disagreeable taste," its facial expression, with mouth open and lower lip drawn down,[1] is that preliminary to vomiting. We eject or retract when disgusted; we are not afraid nor are we angry. We say "he--or she, or it--makes me sick," and this is the stock phrase of disgust. Inelegant as it is, it exactly expresses the situation. Disgust easily mingles with fear and anger; it is often dispelled by curiosity and interest, as in the morbid, as in medical science, and it of ten displaces less intense curiosity and interest.
[1] See Darwin's "The Expression of Emotions in Man and Animals," --a great book by a great man.
After anything has been accepted as standard in cleanliness, a deviation in a "lower" direction causes disgust. Those who are accustomed to clean tablecloths, clean linen are disgusted by dirty tablecloths, dirty linen. The excreta of the body have been so effectively tabooed, in the interest perhaps of sanitation, that their sight or smell is disgusting, and they are used as symbols of disgust in everyday language. Indeed, the so-called animal functions have to be decorated and ceremonialized to avoid disgust. We turn with ridicule and repugnance from him who eats without "manners" and one of the functions of manners is to avoid arousing disgust.
Disgust kills desire and passion, and from that fact we may trace a large part of moral progress. Satiety brings a slight disgust; thus after a heavy meal there may be contentment but the sight of food is not at all appealing and often enough rather repelling. In the sex field, a deep repulsion is often felt when lust alone has brought the man and woman together or when the situation is illegal or unhallowed. With satisfaction of desire, the inhibiting forces come to their own, and the violence of repentance and disgust may be extreme. Stanley Hall, Havelock Ellis and other writers lay stress on this; and, indeed, one of the bases of asceticism is this disgust. Further, when we have no desires or passion, the sight of others hugging and kissing, or acting "intimate" in any way, is usually disgusting, an offense against "good taste" based on the "bad taste" it arouses in the observer. In memory we are often disgusted at what we did in the heat of desire, but usually memory itself does not prevent us from repeating the act; desire itself must slacken. Thus the old are often intensely disgusted at the conduct of the young, and it is never wise for a young couple to live with older people. For in the early days of married life the intensity of the intimate feelings needs seclusion in order to avoid disgusting others. It is no accident that Dame Grundy is depicted as an elderly person with a "sour look"; her prudishness has an origin in disgust at that which she has outlived. Sometimes the old are wise--not often enough--and then their humor, love and sympathy keeps them from disgust.
Love counteracts disgust. The young girl who turns in loathing from uncleanliness finds it easy and a pleasure to care for her soiled baby. In fact, tender feeling of any kind overcomes--or tends to overcome--disgust; and pity, the tenderest of all feelings and without passion, impels us to march into the very jaws of disgust. The angry may have no pity,--but they are not less unkind in commission than the disgusted are unkind in omission. Thus a too refined breeding leads people away from effective pity and that sturdiness of conduct which is real philanthropy. Indeed, too much of refinement increases the number of disgusting things in the world; he who must have this or that luxury is not so much pleased with it as disgusted without it. Raising standards in things material cannot increase the happiness or contentment of the world, for it merely makes men impatient and disgusted at lesser standards. We cannot hope to increase happiness through the material improvements of civilization.
Self-disgust and shame are not identical but are so kindred that shame may well be studied here. Shame is lowered self-valuation, brought on by social or self-disapproval. Usually it is acute and, like fear, it tends to make the individual hide or fly. It is based on insight, and there are thus some who are never ashamed, simply because they do not understand disapproval. Shame is essentially a feeling of inferiority, and when we say to a man, "Shame on you," we say, "You have done wrong, humble yourself, be little!" When we say, "I am ashamed of you," we say, "I had pride in you; I enlarged myself through you, and now you make me little." When the community cries shame, it uses a force that redresses wrong by the need of the one addressed to vindicate himself. When a man feels shame he feels small, inferior in his own eyes and in the eyes of others. He feels impelled, if he is generous, to make amends or to do penance, and thus he recovers his self-esteem. Unfortunately, shame arises more frequently and often more violently from a violation of custom and manner than from a violation of ethics or morals. Thus we are more ashamed of the so-called "bad break" than of our failures to be kind. Sometimes our fellow feeling is so strong that we avoid seeing any one who is humiliated or embarrassed, because sympathy spreads his feeling to us. Gentle people are those who dislike to shame any one else, and often one of this type will endure being wronged rather than reprimand or cause humiliation and shame. Let something be said to shame any member of a company and a feeling of shame spreads through the group, except in the case of those who are very hostile.
Disgust, too, is extremely contagious, especially its manifestations. One of the most crude of all manifestations, to spit upon some one, is a symbol taken from disgust, though it has come to mean contempt, which is a mixture of hatred and disgust.
To raise the tastes and not raise the acquisitions is a sure way to bring about chronic disgust, which is really an angry dissatisfaction mixed with disgust. This type of reaction is very common as a factor in neurasthenia. In fact, my motto is "search for the disgust" in all cases of neurasthenia and "search for it in the intimate often secret desires and relationships. Seek for it in the husband-wife relationship, especially from the standpoint of the wife." Women, we say, are more refined in their feelings than men, which is another way of saying they are more easily disgusted and therefore more easily injured. For disgust is an injury, when chronic or too easily elicited, and is then a sign and symbol of weakness.
Thus disgust is a great reenforcer of social taboo and custom, as well as morality. Just as it fails to keep us from eating the wrong kind of foods, so it may fail to keep us from the wrong conduct. Like every emotion it is only in part adapted to our lives, and in those people where it becomes a prominent emotion it is a great mischief worker, subordinating life to finickiness and hindering the growth of generous feeling.
9. We come to two opposite emotions, very readily considered together. One of the linkings of opposites is in the connection of Joy and Sorrow. Whether these are primary emotions or outgrowths of Pleasure and Pain I leave to others. For Shand the fact that Joy tends to prolong a situation in which it occurs raises it into an active emotion.
Joy is perhaps the most energizing of the emotions for it tends to express itself in shouts, smiles and laughter, dancing and leaping. Sorrow ordinarily is quite the reverse and expresses itself by immobility, bowed head and hands that shut out from the view the sights of the world. There is, however, a quiet joy called relief, which is like sailing into a smooth, safe harbor after a tempestuous voyage; and there is an agitated grief, with lamentation, the wringing of hands and self-punishment of a frantic kind. Joy and triumph are closely associated, sorrow and defeat likewise. There are some whose rivalry-competitive feelings are so widespread that they cannot rejoice even at the triumph of a friend, and a little of that nature is in even the noblest of us. There are others who find sorrow in defeat of an enemy, so widespread is their sympathy. This is the generous victor. For the most of us youth is the most joyous period because youth finds in its pleasures a novelty and freshness that tend to disappear with experience. For the same reason the sorrow of youth, though evanescent, is unreasoning and intense.
Joy and sorrow are reactions and they are noble or the reverse, according to the nature of the person. Joy may be noble, sensuous, trivial or mean; many a "jolly" person is such because he has no real sympathy. At the present time not one of us could rejoice over anything could we SEE and sympathize deeply with the misery of Europe and China, to say nothing of that in our own country. Nay, any wrong to others would blast all our pleasure, could we really feel it. Fortunately only a few are so cursed with sympathy. When the capacity for joyous feeling is joined with fortitude or endurance, then we have the really cheerful, who spread their feeling everywhere, whom all men love. Where cheerfulness is due to lack of sympathy and understanding, we speak of a cheerful idiot; and well does that type merit the name. There is a modern cult whose followers sing "La, la, la" at all times and places, who minimize all misfortune, crime, suffering, who find "good in everything,"--the "Pollyana" tribe. My objection to them is based on this,--that mankind must see clearly in order to rid itself of unnecessary suffering. Hiding one's head (and brains) in a desert of optimism merely perpetuates evil, even though one sufferer here and there is deluded into happiness.
Sorrow may enrich the nature or it may embitter and narrow it. Wisdom may spring from it; indeed, who can be wise who has not sorrowed? Says Goethe:
"Wer nie sein Brot in Thranen ass Wer nie die kummervollen Nachte Auf seinem Bette weinend sass Er weiss Euch nicht--himmelischen Machte."
The afflicted in their sorrow may turn from self-seeking to God and good deeds. But sorrow may come in a trivial nature from trivial causes; the soul may be plunged into despair because one has been denied a gift or a pleasure. The demonstrativeness of grief or sorrow is not at all in proportion to the emotion felt; it is more often based on the effort to get sympathy and help. For sorrow is "Help, help" in one form or another, even though one refuses to be comforted. All our emotions, because they are socially powerful, become somewhat theatrical; in some completely theatrical. We are so constituted that emotional display is not indifferent to us; it pleases, repels, annoys, angers, frightens, disgusts or awes us according to the kind of emotion displayed, the displayer and the circumstances.
The psychologists speak of sympathy as this susceptibility to the emotions of others, but there is an antipathy to their emotions, as well. If we feel that our emotions will be "well received," we do not fear to display them, and therein is one of the uses of the friend. If we feel that they will be poorly received, that they will annoy or anger or disgust, we strive to repress them. The expression of emotion, especially of fear and sorrow, has become synonymous with weakness, and a powerful self-feeling operates against their display, especially in adults, men and certain races. It is no accident that the greatest actors are from the Latin and Hebrew races, for there is a certain theatricality in fear and sorrow that those schooled to repression lose. We resent what we call insincerity in emotional expression because we fear being "fooled," and there are many whose experiences in being "fooled" chill sympathy with doubt. We resent insincere sympathy, on the other hand, because we regret showing weakness before those to whom that weakness is regarded as such and who perhaps rejoice at it as ridiculous. We like the emotional expression of children because we can always sympathize, through our tender feeling with them, and their very sincerity pleases as well.
Is there a harm in the repression of emotion?[1] Is emotion a heaped-up tension which, unless it is discharged, causes damage? Shall man inhibit his anger, fear, joy, sorrow, disgust, at least in some measure, or shall he express them in gesture, speech and act? The answer is obvious: he must control them, and in that term control we mean, not inhibition, not expression in its naive sense, but that combination of inhibition, expression and intelligent act we call adjustment. To express fear in the face of danger or anger at an offense might thwart the whole life's purpose, might bring disaster and ruin. The emotions are poor adjustments in their most violent form, their natural form, and invite disaster by clouding the intelligence and obscuring permanent purposes. Therefore, they must be controlled. To establish this control is a primary function of training and intelligence and does no harm unless carried to excess. True, there is a relief in emotional expression, a wiping out of sorrow by tears, an increase of the pleasure of joy in freely laughing, a discharge of anger in the blow or the hot word, even the profane word. There is a time and a place for these things, and to get so "controlled" that one rarely laughs or shows sadness or anger is to atrophy, to dry up. But the emotional expression makes it easy to become an habitual weeper or stormer, makes it easy to become the over-emotional type, whose reaction to life is futile, undignified and a bodily injury. For emotion is in large part a display of energy, and the overemotional rarely escape the depleted neurasthenic state. In fact, hysteria and neurasthenia are much more common in the races freely expressing emotion than in the stolid, repressed races. Jew, Italian, French and Irish figure much more largely than English, Scotch or Norwegian in the statistics of neurasthenia and hysteria.
[1] Isador N. Coriat's book, "The Repression of Emotions" deals with the subject from psychoanalytic. point of view.
10. I have said but little on other emotions,--on admiration, surprise and awe. This group of affective states is of great importance. Surprise may be either agreeable or disagreeable and is our reaction to the unexpected. Its expression, facially and of body, is quite characteristic, with staring eyes and mouth slightly open, raised eyebrows, hands hanging with fingers tensely spread apart, so that a thing held therein is apt to drop. Surprise heightens the feeling of internal tension, and in all excitement it is an element, in that the novel brings excitement and surprise, whereas the accustomed gives little excitement or surprises. In all wit and humor surprise is part of the technique and constitutes part of the pleasure. Surprise usually heightens the succeeding feeling, whether of joy, sorrow, anger, fear, pleasure or pain, or in any form. But sometimes the effect of surprise is so benumbing that an incapacity to feel, to realize, is the most marked result and it is only afterward that the proper emotion or feeling becomes manifest.
The reaction to the unexpected is an important adjustment in character. There are situations beyond the power of any of us quickly to adjust ourselves to and we expect the great catastrophe to surprise and overwhelm. Nevertheless, we judge people by the way they react to the unexpected; the man who rallies quickly from the confusion of surprise is, we say, "cool-headed," keeps his wits about him; and the man who does not so rally or adjust "loses his head,"--"loses his wits." Part of this cool-headedness is not only the rallying from surprise but also the throwing off of fear. A warning has for its purpose, "Don't be surprised!" and training must teach resources against the unexpected. "If you expect everything you are armed against half the trouble of the world." The cautious in character minimize the number of surprises they may get by preparing. The impulsive, who rarely prepare, are always in danger from the unforeseen. Aside from preparation and knowledge, there is in the condition of the organism a big factor in the reaction to the unexpected. Fatigue, neurasthenia, hysteria and certain depressed conditions render a man more liable to react excessively and badly to surprise. The tired soldier has lessened resources in wit and courage when surprised, for fatigue heightens the confusion and numbness of surprise and decreases the scope of intelligent conduct. Choice is made difficult, and the neurasthenic doubt is transformed to impotence by surprise.
Face to face with what is recognized as superior to ourselves in a quality we hold to be good, we fall into that emotional state, a mingling of surprise and pleasure, called admiration. In its original usage, admiration meant wonder, and there is in all admiration something of that feeling which is born in the presence of the superior. The more profound the admiration, the greater is the proportion of wonder in the feeling.
We find it difficult to admire where the competitive feeling is strongly aroused, though there are some who can do so. It is the essence of good sportsmanship, the ideal aimed at, to admire the rival for his good qualities, though sticking fast to one's confidence in oneself. The English and American athletes, perhaps also the athletes of other countries, make this part of their code of conduct and so are impelled to act in a way not entirely sincere. Wherever jealousy or envy are strongly aroused, admiration is impossible, and so it comes about that men find it easy to praise men in other noncompetitive fields or for qualities in which they are not competing. Thus an author may strongly admire an athlete or a novelist may praise the historian; a beautiful woman admires another for her learning, though with some reservation in her praise, and a successful business man admires the self-sacrificing scientist, albeit there is a little complacency in his approval.
He is truly generous-hearted who can admire his competitor. I do not mean lip-admiration, through the fear of being held jealous. Many a man joins in the praise of one who has outstripped him, with envy gnawing at his heart, and waits for the first note of criticism to get out the hammer. "He is very fine--but" is the formula, and either through innuendo, insinuation or direct attack, the "subordinate" statement becomes the most sincere and significant. But there are those who can admire their conqueror, not only through the masochism that lurks in all of us, but because they have lifted their ideal of achievement and character higher than their own possibilities and seek in others the perfection they cannot hope to have in themselves. In other words, where competition is hopeless, in the presence of the greatly superior, a feeling of humility which is really admiration to the point of worship comes over us, and we can glory in the quality we love. To admire is to recede the ego-feeling, is to feel oneself in an ecstasy that becomes mystical, and in that sense the contradiction arises that we feel ourselves larger in a unification with the admired one.
Each age, each country, each group and each family set up the objects and qualities for admiration, in a word, the ideals. Out of these the individual selects his specialties in admiration, according to his nature and training. All the world admires vigor, strength, courage and endurance,--and these in their physical aspects. The hero of all times has had these qualities: he is energetic, capable of feats beyond the power of others, is fearless and bears his ills with equanimity. Beauty, especially in the woman, but also in man, has received an over-great share of homage, but here "tastes differ." We have no difficulty in agreement on what constitutes strength, and we have objective tests for its measurement; but who can agree on beauty? What one race prizes as its fairest is scorned by another race. We laugh at the ideal of beauty of the Hottentot, and the physical peculiarity they praise most either disgusts or amuses us. But what is there about a white skin more lovely than a black one, and why thrill over blue eyes and neglect the brown ones? What is the rationale for the admiration of slimness as against stoutness? Indeed, there are races who would turn with scorn from our slender debutante[1] and worship their more buxom heavy-busted and wide-hipped beauties. The only "rational" beauty in face and figure is that which stands as the outer mask of health, vigor, intelligence and normal procreative function. The standards set up in each age and place usually arise from local pride, from the familiar type. The Mongolian who finds beauty in his slanting-eyed, wide-cheek boned, yellow mate has as valid a sanction as the Anglo-Saxon who worships at the shrine of his wide-eyed, straight-nosed blonde.
[1] The peasant type, greatly admired by the agricultural folk of Central Europe, is stout and ruddy. This is a better ideal of beauty than the lily-white, slender and dainty maid of the cultured, who very often can neither work nor bear and nurse children.
When we leave the physical qualities and pass to the mental we again find a lack of agreement as to the admirable. All agree that intelligence is to be admired, but how shall that intelligence be manifested? In practice, the major part of the world admires the intelligence that is financially and socially successful, and the rich and powerful have the greatest share of the world's praise. Power, strength, and superiority command admiration, even from the unwilling, and the philosopher who stands aloof from the world and is without real strength finds himself admiring a crude, bustling fellow ordering men about. True, we admire such acknowledged great intelligences as Plato, Galileo, Newton, Pascal, Darwin, etc., but in reality only a fragment of the men and women of any country know anything at all about these men, and the admiration of most is an acceptance of the authority of others as to what it is proper to admire. Genuine admiration is in proportion to the intelligence and idealism of the admirer. And there are in this country a thousand intense admirers of Babe Ruth and his mighty baseball club to one who pours out his soul before the image of Pasteur. You may know a man (or woman) not by his lip-homage, but by what he genuinely admires, by that which evokes his real enthusiasm and praise. Judge by that and then note that the most constant admiration of the women of our country goes out to actresses, actors, professional beauties, with popular authors and lecturers a bad second, and that of the men is evoked by prize fighters, ball players and the rich. No wonder the problems of the world find no solution, for it is only by fits and starts that men and women admire real intelligence and real ability. The orator has more admirers than the thinker, and this is the curse of politics; the executive has more admirers than the research worker, and this is the bane of industry; the entertainer is more admired than the educator, and that is why Charlie Chaplin makes a million a year and President Eliot received only a few thousand. The race and the nation has its generous enthusiasms and its bursts of admiration for the noble, but its real admiration it gives to those whom it best understands. Fortunately the leaders of the race have more of generosity and fine admiration than have the mass they lead. Left to itself, the mass of the race limits its hero-worship to the lesser, unworthy race of heroes.
The school histories, which should emphasize the admirable as well as point out the reverse, have played a poor role in education. The hero they depict is the warrior, and they fire the hearts of the child with admiration and desire for emulation. They say almost nothing of the great inventors, scientists and philanthropists. The teaching of history should, above all, set up heroes for the child to study, admire and emulate. "When the half-gods go the gods arrive." The stage of history as taught is cluttered with the tin-plate shedders of blood to the exclusion of the greater men.[1]
[1] Plutarch's Lives are an example of the praise and place given to the soldier and orator; and many a child, reading them, has burned to be an Alexander or a Caesar. Wells' History, with all its defects, pushes the "conquerors" to their real place as enemies of the race.
When the object that confronts us is so superior, so vast, that we sink into insignificance, then admiration takes on a tinge of fear in the state or feeling of awe. All men feel awe in the presence of strength and mystery, so that the concept of God is that most wrapped up with this emotion, and the ceremonies with which kings and institutions have been surrounded strike awe by their magnificence and mystery into the hearts of the governed. We contemplate natural objects, such as mountains, mighty rivers and the oceans, with awe because we feel so little and puny in comparison, and we do not "enjoy" contemplating them because we hate to feel little. Or else we grow familiar with them, and the awe disappears. The popular and the familiar are never awe-full, and even death loses in dignity when one has dissected a few bodies. So objects viewed by night or in gloom inspire awe, though seen by day they are stripped of mystery and interest. To the adolescent boy, woman is a creature to be regarded with awe,--beautiful, strangely powerful and mysterious. To the grown-up man, enriched and disillusioned by a few experiences, woman, though still loved, is no longer worshiped.
Though the reverent spirit is admirable and poetic, it is not by itself socially valuable. It has been played upon by every false prophet, every enslaving institution. It prevents free inquiry; it says to science, "Do not inquire here. They who believe do not investigate. This is too holy a place for you." We who believe in science deny that anything can be so holy that it can be cheapened by light, and we believe that face to face with the essential mysteries of life itself even the most assiduous and matter-of-fact must feel awe. Man, the little, has probed into the secrets of the universe of which he is a part. What he has learned, what he can learn, make him bow his head with a reverence no worshiper of dogmatic mysteries can ever feel.