Thus while the lower or egoistic fears are an original source of cowardice in action, the higher fears of the sentiments of love are, through their influence, the source of a noble courage, as well as of the virtue and quality of character that we name caution or prudence.

4. Of the Derivation of Cruelty from certain kinds of Anger.

If anger is an original source of courage, so is it one source of the acquired quality of cruelty. The primitive forms of anger are only inadvertently cruel. What is meant by cruelty implies enjoyment in inflicting pain, and the intention or desire to inflict it; and the first presupposes that we can distinguish the signs of pain in others, and the second, that we can form the idea, or foresee the possibility of inflicting it. Hence cruelty, in its proper sense, is only possible at a comparatively high stage of mental development—a stage which perhaps no other animals besides man and the apes and monkeys are able to reach. It is characteristic of that variety of anger which aims at inflicting pain as its end, and enjoys the sight of the pain it has caused. For the anger that is successful in attaining its end has the enjoyment of success, and, when this success coincides with the subjection of another, the enjoyment of pride.

It is sometimes remarked that the most deliberate forms of cruelty are not practised by brave men. A brave man may destroy his enemy, or even inflict pain as a punishment, but he will not degrade himself by unnecessarily prolonging it. But in those cases in which cowardice is a condition of cruelty, there must be some interaction between anger and fear to account for it. Fear by itself cannot account for cruelty in action. Fear manifests flight, or concealment, or a shrinking back, or a clinging to another for protection, or a crying out, or a keeping silent, or a pretence of death, but never aims at inflicting pain as such. But where fear restrains the impulse of anger, it tends to render anger first more painful, and afterwards revengeful and cruel: as if there were a desire of inflicting suffering in revenge for the pains of fear. For the painfulness of anger is soon forgotten if its initial stage passes at once into

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the excitement of the attack, and the attack into triumph. Men of a hasty temper are well known to bear little resentment. But when the initial and painful stage of anger is prolonged, when it is restrained by the most painful of all emotions, fear, so humiliating to pride, we can understand how the coward who dares not attack his enemy openly, or without superior advantages, broods over his revenge, and how his revenge becomes deliberate, implacable, and cruel. And thus it is that cowardly men are so often cruel because the same circumstances that tend to arouse their anger tend also to arouse fear, so that there arises a constant interaction between these emotions. But there are other timorous natures that, in general, are not cruel. Women are more under the influence of fear than men are, and from the most trivial causes. In some, subjection or ill-treatment arouses fear or sorrow, but not anger. They remain gentle and inoffensive to the last, patient under their wrongs, because the disposition to anger, which is an original source of cruelty, is so much lacking in them, or aroused by different causes.

There is then implied in this interaction between fear and anger a law of character which we must attempt to formulate: (45) Where fear restrains the impulse of anger, in a mind capable of reflection and foresight, it tends to render anger deliberately cruel; and in proportion as circumstances frequently evoke this experience, the character tends to acquire the qualities of deliberate cruelty and cowardice. For a man's acts may be occasionally cruel, or cruelty may be a vice of his character. Cruelty of character is a settled disposition, from which cruel acts proceed with little to account for them in external circumstances; whereas others only become cruel under exceptional provocation.

We have seen how cruelty may be a quality of a certain emotion, or a resultant of two emotions that interact, or an occasional quality of a man's conduct, or an acquired and settled quality of his character: we have now to notice that cruelty may become the object of a sentiment. History impresses on us the belief that some men develop a love of cruelty for itself,-as Caligula, Nero, or Ivan the Terrible of Russia. There are also ages in which the sports and games

in vogue foster this sentiment. What is remarkable is that this sentiment of cruelty often shows no trace of the emotion from which it was probably derived. Seneca, who was a frequent witness of the cruelty of his times, has given many instances of it. He says of Gaius Cæsar that he flogged and tortured people, "not to carry out any judicial sentence, but merely to amuse himself." "He beat senators with rods; he did it so often that men were able to say, 'It is the custom.' He tortured them with all the most dismal engines in the world, with the cord, the boots, the fire, and the sight of his own face." 1 And reflecting on this kind of cruelty, he inquires whether they who commit it feel anger, seeing that they do it to those "from whom they have received no injury, and who they themselves do not think have done them any injury." 2 And he concludes that "this evil takes its rise from anger; for anger, after it has by long use and indulgence made a man forget mercy, and driven all feelings of human fellowship from his mind, passes finally into cruelty. Such men therefore laugh, rejoice, enjoy themselves greatly, and are as unlike as possible in countenance to angry men, since cruelty is their relaxation." 3

Thus through anger, and especially through the interaction of anger and fear, do men come to feel enjoyment in inflicting pain, from the frequent enjoyment of it they develop a love of cruelty for itself, and through this love they become capable of enjoying the spectacle of suffering, without any incitement of anger; for all love enjoys the presence of its object. Hate, however deliberately cruel, could not accomplish its vengeance with such light-hearted enjoyment.

1 'De Ira,' L. iii. C. xviii. xix.

2 Op. cit. L. ii. C. v.

3 Ibid. There is another recognised source of cruelty in the sexual instinct which cannot be considered here.

CHAPTER VII

JOY

1. Of the Distinction between Joy and Pleasure.

We have now to treat of certain primary systems which, unlike those of Fear and Anger, do not seem to contain several instincts and acquired tendencies, with a variety of alternative types of behaviour resulting from them, but are comparatively simple and uniform. The systems of Joy, Repugnance, and Sorrow, we shall have occasion to think, not only include primary emotions, in the sense of these being underived from any others, but,-what is more important from our point of view,—are fundamental forces of character, having laws of action that constantly reappear in the higher and more complex systems into which they enter.

It may seem that we know what Joy and Sorrow are, as clearly as we know what Anger is, or Fear, and that no definitions can make them clearer to us, or even make us more consistent in the use of their terms. But fear and anger are more readily identified at low degrees of intensity than are joy and sorrow. We speak of 'being pleased' at things where if the feeling were stronger we should call it ' joy'; just as the weaker degree of sorrow is generally named 'sadness.' Thus men are sometimes pleased' at looking into shopwindows; but the child we think feels 'joy'; for we observe his rapt expression and eager exclamations, and find it so difficult to get him away. Yet the difference between the two cases is one of degree, not of kind: and where the system is the same, and manifests the same tendencies, we have decided

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to call it by the same name.

But there is a distinction between joy and pleasure, which, as it is often confused, we shall try to make clear.

Our general assumption and point of view, that all emotional systems are concrete facts and forces of the mind, and not abstract elements torn from their context, affords us a preliminary basis for distinguishing between pleasure and joy. Pleasure is an element that we abstract from the total fact to which it belongs: joy is one of the facts from which we abstract it. Joy is a system which indeed contains pleasure, and if there were no pleasure in it, it would not be joy. But joy has other things in its system. To consider first its emotional side, joy is an emotion, and, like all emotions, is an attitude of mind, a perception or a thought,-not merely sensation; and its perception or thought is pleasant to us. It is only afterwards, and through psychological analysis, that we discover that pleasant bodily sensation may be also comprised in it. Thus the joy of meeting a friend or of looking at some beautiful scene includes the perception of the object, and the joy of success includes the thought of it.

Joy has often no defined object. We are then inclined to wonder why we feel it. We cannot find a sufficient explanation in a change of our environment. There is nothing specially that we rejoice at ; but we feel more joy in everything than in our ordinary state. This is the character of our moods of joy. They often arise from some state of the body. All our sensations then are pleasant, and our thoughts take their colour and are also pleasant. At other times the mood arises from some great good fortune, so that even the days that succeed it inherit something that disposes us to adopt a joyful ✓ attitude to everything. Thus in these cases the attitude of mind indispensable to joy is at first without any steady and defined object, but is still in search of it, and, in the absence of one sufficiently stable and exclusive, spreads itself over several.

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This law of joy is not peculiar to itself. It is common to all emotional moods: (46) All moods of emotion arise at first without a defined object, but there is an inherent tendency in 1 'Manual of Psy.,' G. F. Stout, B. I. ch. i. 4.