The commonest forms of imaginative hostility are grounded on social self-feeling, and come under the head of resentment. We impute to the other person an injurious thought regarding something which we cherish as a part of our self, and this awakens anger, which we name pique, animosity, umbrage, estrangement, soreness, bitterness, heart-burning, jealousy, indignation, and so on; in accordance with variations which these words suggest. They all rest upon a feeling that the other person harbors ideas injurious to us, so that the thought of him is an attack upon our self. Suppose, for instance, there is a person who has reason to believe that he has caught me in a lie. It makes little difference, perhaps, whether he really has or not; so long as I have any self-respect left, and believe that he entertains this depreciatory idea of me, I must resent this idea whenever, through my thinking of him, it enters my mind. Or suppose there is a man who has met me running in panic from the field of battle; would it not be hard not to hate him? These situations are perhaps unusual, but we all know persons to whom we attribute depreciation of our characters, our friends, our children, our workmanship, our cherished creed or philanthropy; and we do not like them. The resentment of charity or pity is a good instance of hostile sympathy. If a man has self-respect, he feels insulted by the depreciating view of his manhood implied in commiserating him or offering him alms. Self-respect means that one’s reflected self is up to the social standard: and the social standard requires that a man should not need pity or alms except under very unusual conditions. So the assumption that he does need them is an injury—whether he does or not—precisely as it is an insult to a woman to commiserate her ugliness and bad taste, and suggest that she wear a veil or employ someone to select her gowns. The curious may find interest in questions like this: whether a tramp can have self-respect unless he deceives the one who gives him aid, and so feels superior to him, and not a mere dependent. In the same way we can easily see why criminals look down upon paupers. The word indignation suggests a higher sort of imaginative hostility. It implies that the feeling is directed toward some attack upon a standard of right, and is not merely an impulse like jealousy or pique. A higher degree of rationalization is involved; there is some notion of a reasonable adjustment of personal claims, which the act or thought in question violates. We frequently perceive that the simpler forms of resentment have no rational basis, could not be justified in open court, but indignation always claims a general or social foundation. We feel indignant when we think that favoritism and not merit secures promotion, when the rich man gets a pass on the railroad, and so on.