The Foundations of Personality by Abraham Myerson (color ebook reader .TXT) 📕

self-feeling. We do not extend the ego to the piteous object. We

desire to help, even though the object of pity is an enemy or

disgusting. One of the commonest struggles of life is that

between self-interest and pity,—and the selfish resent any

situation that arouses their pity, because they dislike to give.

Pity tends to disappear from the life of the soldier and is,

indeed, a trait he does not need; in the lives of the strong and

successful, pity is apt to be a hindering quality. In a world in

which competition is keen, the cooperative gentle qualities

hinder success. The weak seek the pity of others; they need it;

and the pity-seeker is a very distinct type. The strong and proud

hate to be pitied, and when wounded they hide, shun their friends

and keep the semblance of strength with a brave face. Pity

directed toward oneself as the object is self-pity,—a quality

found in children and in a certain amiable, weak, egoistic type,

whose eyes are always full of tears as they talk of themselves.

Of course, at times, we are all prone to this vice of character,

but there are some chronically afflicted.

Certain so-called sentimentalists are those who die, tribute

their pity in an erratic fashion. These are the vegetarians who

are sad because it is wrong to kill for food; yet they wear

without compunction the leather of cattle who have neither

committed suicide nor died of old age. And the

anti-vivisectionists view without any stir of pity the children

of the slums and the sick of all kinds. Pity raises man to the

divine but, like all the gentle qualities, it needs guidance by

reason and common sense before it is of any value.

Just as there are objects and individuals recognized or believed

to be as somehow favorable and who evoke tender feeling, so there

are objects and individuals regarded as unfavorable, perhaps

dangerous, who arouse aversion and hatred. The feeling thus

produced is the other great sentiment of life, which on the whole

organizes character and conduct on a great plane. Hatred, a

decidedly primitive reaction, still is powerful in the world and

is back of dissension of all kinds, from lawsuits to war. When

one hates he is attached to the hated object in a fashion just

the reverse of the attachment of love; joy, anger, fear and

sorrow arise under exactly the opposite circumstances, and the

aim and end of hate is to block, thwart and destroy the hated

one. The earlier history of man lays emphasis on the activities

of hate,—war, feats of arms, individual feuds. Hate, unlike

love, needs no moral code or teaching to bring it into activity;

it springs into being and constantly needs repression. Unlikeness

alone often brings it to life; to be too different from others is

recognized as a legitimate reason for hatred. The most important

cause is conflict of interest and wounding of self-feeling and

pride. Revengeful feeling, fostered by tradition and

“patriotism,” caused many wars and in its lesser spheres of

operation is back of murders, assaults, insults and the lesser

categories of injuries of all kinds.

The prime emotion of hatred is anger; in its less intense aspect

of aversion it is disgust. The aim and end of anger is

destruction of the offending object; the aim and end of aversion

is removal, ejection. Hate may be and often is a noble sentiment,

though the trend of modern thought, as it minimizes personal

responsibility, is to eliminate hate against persons and

intellectualize hate so that it is reserved for the battle

against ideas. Whether you can really summon all your effort

against any one, against his plans, opinions and actions, unless

you have built up the steady sentiment of hatred for him, is a

nice psychological question. Hate is most intense in little

people, in persons absolutely convinced that their interests,

opinions and plans are sacred, sure of their superiority and

righteousness. Once let insight into yourself, your weakness and

your real motives creep into your mind and your hate against

opponents and obstructors must lessen. Those who realize most the

fallibility of men and women, to whom Pilate’s question “What is

truth?” has added to it a more sceptical question, “What is

right,” find it hard to hate. Therefore, such persons, the

broadminded and the most deeply wise, are not the best fighters

for a cause, since their efforts are lessened by sympathy for the

opponent. Here is the marvel of Abraham Lincoln; rich with

insight, he could hate slavery and secession and yet not hate the

southern people. In that division of himself lies his greatness

and his suffering.

The disappearance of personal hate from the world can only come

when men realize the essential unity of mankind. For part of the

psychological origin of hate lies in unlikeness. Great unlikeness

in color and facial line seems to act as a challenge to the

feeling of superiority. Wherever a “different” group challenges

another’s superiority, or enters into active competition for the

goods of life, there hate enters in its most virulent form. The

disappearance of the “unlike” feeling is very slow and is

hindered by the existence of small “particular” groups. Little

nationalities,[1] small sects, even exclusive clubs and circles

are means of generating difference and thus hate.

[1] The more nationalities, each with its claim to a great

destiny, the more wars! There is the essential danger and folly

of tribal patriotism.

We shall not enter into the origin of hate through the danger to

purpose, through rivalry among those not separated by unlikeness.

Hate seems to be a chronic anger, or at least that emotion kept

at a more or less constant level by perception of danger and the

threat at personal dignity and worth. Obstructed love or passion

and the feeling of “wrong,” i. e., injury done that was not

merited, that the personal conscience does not justify, furnish

the most virulent types of hatred. “Love thine enemies” is still

an impossible injunction for most men.

We cannot hope to trace the feeling of revenge in its effects on

human conduct. Though at present religion and law both prohibit

revengeful acts, the desire “to get even” flames high in almost

every human breast under all kinds of injury or insult. This form

of hate may express itself crudely in the vendetta of the

Sicilian, the feud of the Tennessee mountaineer, or the assault

and battery of an aggrieved husband; it is behind the present-day

conflict in Ireland, and it threatened Europe for forty years

after the Franco-Prussian War, —and no man knows how profoundly

it will influence future world affairs because of the Great War.

Often it disguises itself as justice, the principle of the thing,

in those who will not admit revenge as a motive; and the eclipsed

and beaten take revenge in slander, innuendo and double-edged

praise. To some revenge is a devil to be fought out of their

hearts; to others it is a god that guides every act. We may

define nobility of character as the withdrawal from revenge as a

motive and the substitution for it of justice.

Some hatred expresses itself openly and fearlessly and as such

gains some respect, even from its own object. Other hatred plots

and schemes, the intelligence lends itself to the plans

completely and the whole personality suffers in consequence. Some

hatred, weak and without self-confidence, or seeking the effect

of surprise, is hypocritical, dissimulates, affects friendly

feeling, rubs its hands over insults and awaits the opportune

moment. This type is associated in all minds with a feeling of

disgust, for at bottom we rather admire the “good” hater.

We have spoken of these three specialized and directed outgrowths

of excitement, interest, love and hatred as if they were

primarily directed to the outside world, though in a previous

chapter we discussed the introspective interest. What shall we

call the love and hatred a man has for himself? Is the

self-regarding sentiment any different than the sentiment of love

for others? Is that hate and disgust we feel for ourselves, or

for some action or thought, different from the hate and disgust

we have for others?

Judged by Shand’s dicta that anger and fear are aroused if the

object of love is threatened, joy is aroused as it prospers, and

sorrow if it is deeply injured or lost, self-love remarkably

resembles other-love. The pride we take in our own achievements

is unalloyed by jealousy, and there is always a trace of jealousy

in the pride we take in the achievements of others, but there is

no difference in the pride itself. There is no essential

difference in the “good” we seek for ourselves and in the good we

seek for others, for what we seek will depend on our idea of

“good.” Thus the ambitious mother seeks for her daughter a rich

husband and the idealist seeks for his son a career of devotion

to the ideal. And the sensualist devoted to the good of his belly

and his pocket loves his child and shows it by feeding and

enriching him.

There seems to be lacking, however, the glow of tender feeling in

self-love. The projection of the self-interest to others has a

passion, a melting in it that self-love never seems to possess,

though it may be constant and ever-operating. Self-regard,

self-admiration or conceit may be very high and deeply felt, but

though more common than real admiration for others, it seldom

reaches the awe and reverence that the projected emotion reaches.

In mental disease, of the type known as Maniac Depressive

insanity, there is a curious oscillation of self-love and

self-admiration. This disease is cyclic, in that two opposing

groups of symptoms tend to appear and displace each other. In the

manic, or excited state, there is greatly heightened activity

with correspondingly heightened feeling of power. Self-love and

admiration reach absurd levels: one is the most beautiful, the

richest and wisest of persons, infallible, irresistible, aye,

perhaps God or Christ. Sometimes the feeling of grandeur, the

euphoria, is less fantastic and the patient imagines himself a

great inventor, a statesman of power and wisdom, a writer of

renown, etc. Suddenly, or perhaps gradually, the change comes;

self-feeling drops into an abyss. “I am the most miserable of

persons, the vilest sinner, hated and rightly by God and man,

cause of suffering and misery. I am no good, no use, a horrible

odor issues from me, I am loathsome to look at, etc., etc.”

Desperate suicidal attempts are made, and all the desires that

tend to preserve the individual disappear, including appetite for

food and drink, the power to sleep. It is the most startling of

transitions; one can hardly realize that the dejected, silent

person, sitting in a corner, hiding his face and hardly

breathing, is the same individual who lately tore around the

wards, happy, dancing, singing and boasting of his greatness of

power. Indeed, is he the same individual? No wonder the ancients

regarded such insanity as a possession by an evil spirit. We of a

later day who deal with this disease on the whole are inclined to

the belief that some internal factor of a physical kind is

responsible, some neuronic shift, or some strange, visceral

endocrinal disorder.

While self-hate in this pathological aspect is relatively

uncommon, in every person there are self-critical,

self-condemning activities which sometimes for short periods of

time reach self-hatred and disgust. McDougall makes a good deal

of the self-abasing instinct which makes us lower ourselves

gladly and willingly. This seems to me to be an aspect of the

emotion of admiration and wonder, for we do not wish ordinarily

to kneel at the feet of the insignificant, debased; or it is an

aspect of fear and the