act, it derives its peculiar flavour from being directed {93} against a sensitive agent. I have heard persons of a highly sympathetic cast of mind assert that a wrong act awakens in them only sorrow, not indignation; but though sorrow be the predominant element in their state of mind, I believe that, on a close inspection, they would find there another emotion as well, one in which there is immanent an element of hostility, however slight. It is true that the intensity of moral indignation cannot always be measured by the actual desire to cause pain to the offender; but its intensity seems nevertheless to be connected with the amount of suffering which the indignant man is willing to let the offender undergo in consequence of the offence. Which of us could ever, quite apart from any utilitarian considerations, feel the same sympathy with a person who suffers on account of his badness as with one who suffers innocently? It is one of the most interesting facts related to the moral consciousness of a higher type, that it in vain condemns the gratification of the very desire from which it sprang. It is like a man of low extraction, who, in spite of all acquired refinement, bears his origin stamped on his face. [Footnote 95: Sidgwick, _Methods of Ethics_, p. 364.] * * * * * Whilst resentment is a hostile attitude of mind towards a cause of pain, retributive kindly emotion is a friendly attitude of mind towards a cause of pleasure. Just as in the lower forms of anger there is hardly any definite desire to produce suffering, only a vehement desire to remove the cause of pain, so in the lower form of retributive kindly emotion there is hardly any definite desire to produce pleasure, only a friendly endeavour to retain the cause of the pleasure experienced. When the emotion contains a definite desire to give pleasure in return for pleasure received, and at the same time is felt by the favoured party in his capacity of being himself the object of the benefit, it is called gratitude. We often find intermingled with gratitude a feeling of indebtedness; he upon whom a benefit has been conferred feels himself as a debtor, and regards the benefactor as his creditor. This feeling has {94} even been represented as essential to, or as a condition of, gratitude;[96] but it is not implied in what I here understand by gratitude. It is one thing to be grateful, and another thing to feel that it is one's duty to be grateful. A depression of the "self-feeling," a feeling of humiliation, also frequently accompanies gratitude as a motive for requiting the benefit; but it is certainly not an element in gratitude itself. [Footnote 96: Horwicz, _Psychologische Analysen_, ii. 333: "Ohne dieses Gefühl des Verbundenseins . . . . kann keine Dankbarkeit auskommen." _Cf._ Milton, _Paradise Lost_, iv. 52 _sqq._]