Retributive Emotions. | ---------------------------------------- | | Resentment. Retributive Kindly Emotion. | | ----------------- --------------------------- | | | | Anger and Moral Moral Non-moral retributive Revenge. disapproval. approval Kindly Emotion, | | including Gratitude. --------------- | Moral Emotions. {22} That moral disapproval is a kind of resentment and akin to anger and revenge, and that moral approval is a kind of retributive kindly emotion and akin to gratitude, are, of course, statements which call for proof. An analysis of all these emotions, and a detailed study of the causes which evoke them, will, I hope, bear out the correctness of my classification. In this connection only the analysis can be attempted. The study of causes will be involved in the treatment of the subjects of moral judgments. Resentment may be described as an aggressive attitude of mind towards a cause of pain. Anger is sudden resentment, in which the hostile reaction against the cause of pain is unrestrained by deliberation. Revenge, on the other hand, is a more deliberate form of non-moral resentment, in which the hostile reaction is more or less restrained by reason and calculation.[1] It is impossible, however, to draw any distinct limit between these two types of resentment, as also to discern where an actual desire to inflict pain comes in. In its primitive form, anger, even when directed against a living being, contains a vehement impulse to remove the cause of pain without any real desire to produce suffering.[2] Anger is strikingly shown by many fish, and notoriously by sticklebacks when their territory is invaded by other sticklebacks. In such circumstances of provocation the whole animal changes colour, and, darting at the trespasser, shows rage and fury in every movement;[3] but we can hardly believe that any idea of inflicting pain is present to its mind. As we proceed still lower down the scale of animal life we find the conative element itself gradually dwindle away until nothing is left but mere reflex action. [Footnote 1: _Cf._ Ribot, _Psychology of the Emotions_, p. 220 _sqq._] [Footnote 2: There are some good remarks on this in Mr. Hiram Stanley's _Studies in the Evolutionary Psychology of Feeling_, p. 138 _sq._] [Footnote 3: Romanes, _Animal Intelligence_, p. 246 _sqq._]