Studies in the Evolutionary Psychology of FeelingStanley, Hiram Miner
Philosophy
Studies in the Evolutionary Psychology of Feeling
Stanley, Hiram Miner
Emotions
Hate then is at first much the same in its elements as anger. It is
always objective. Hate is always of something, though extreme passion
dulls perception, yet at its normal tension hate, like other emotions,
is incentive to beneficial cognition. We are closely observant of those
we hate. Beside sense of object, there is the will-stirring, the
hostility, which is prominent in anger, though here more controlled and
not so impetuous and naïve. Hate thus often allies itself with fear, but
anger is very rarely coincident with it, though there may be rapid
alternations. There is also a hate pain which is a parallel complex to
the anger pain already analysed. We might term hate a distilled anger,
and yet this signifies little, for the innermost emotion seems very
distinct. Like fear and anger, hate seems a _genus_ by itself, and in
its essential feature as emotion-reaction, quite beyond scientific
analysis, which can point out its conditions, but not account for their
total value or for the peculiar quality of hate disturbance by which
hate is hate. Hate can be appreciated only by realization, but no matter
how long we reflect upon and try to catch its exact nature in some
definite formula, the essence of hate always eludes, and presents itself
as only a bare simple psychosis wholly indefinable and inexplicable in
its essential nature.
But if we turn now to the origin and development of hate, shall we
arrive at anything more satisfactory? Is hate a modified anger, or is it
from the first a wholly distinct emotion and not slowly differentiated
from any preceding psychosis? Hate evidently belongs with anger as
aggressive emotional reaction, but it is very hard to see how it could
originate by any slow growth, and it seems easier and simpler to regard
it as being a unique response to some very pressing demand in the
struggle of existence.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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