Essays: Scientific, Political, & Speculative; Vol. 1 of 3: Library Edition (1891), Containing Seven Essays not before Republished, and Various other Additions.Spencer, Herbert
Philosophy
Essays: Scientific, Political, & Speculative; Vol. 1 of 3: Library Edition (1891), Containing Seven Essays not before Republished, and Various other Additions.
Spencer, Herbert
Philosophy; Political science; Science
Comparative Psychology, while it raises this inquiry, prepares the way
for answering it. When observing the differences between races, we can
scarcely fail to observe also how these differences correspond with
differences between their conditions of existence, and consequent
activities. Among the lowest races of men, love of property stimulates
to the obtainment only of such things as satisfy immediate desires, or
desires of the immediate future. Improvidence is the rule: there is
little effort to meet remote contingencies. But the growth of
established societies having gradually given security of possession,
there has been an increasing tendency to provide for coming years: there
has been a constant exercise of the feeling which is satisfied by a
provision for the future; and there has been a growth of this feeling so
great that it now prompts accumulation to an extent beyond what is
needful. Note, again, that under the discipline of social life--under a
comparative abstinence from aggressive actions, and a performance of
those naturally-serviceable actions implied by the division of
labour--there has been a development of those gentle emotions of which
inferior races exhibit but the rudiments. Savages delight in giving pain
rather than pleasure--are almost devoid of sympathy; while among
ourselves, philanthropy organizes itself in laws, establishes numerous
institutions, and dictates countless private benefactions.
From which and other like facts, does it not seem an unavoidable
inference, that new emotions are developed by new experiences--new
habits of life? All are familiar with the truth that, in the individual,
each feeling may be strengthened by performing those actions which it
prompts; and to say that the feeling is _strengthened_, is to say that
it is in part _made_ by these actions. We know, further, that not
unfrequently, individuals, by persistence in special courses of conduct,
acquire special likings for such courses, disagreeable as these may be
to others; and these whims, or morbid tastes, imply incipient emotions
corresponding to these special activities. We know that emotional
characteristics, in common with all others, are hereditary; and the
differences between civilized nations descended from the same stock,
show us the cumulative results of small modifications hereditarily
transmitted. And when we see that between savage and civilized races
which diverged from one another in the remote past, and have for a
hundred generations followed modes of life becoming ever more unlike,
there exist still greater emotional contrasts; may we not infer that the
more or less distinct emotions which characterize civilized races, are
the organized results of certain daily-repeated combinations of mental
states which social life involves? Must we not say that habits not only
modify emotions in the individual, and not only beget tendencies to like
habits and accompanying emotions in descendants, but that when the
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