The Psychology of the Emotions

by Th. Ribot

III.

Transformation by composition is a general term including two different cases: mixture and combination. This process consists of additions, and can be thus formulated: When two or more intellectual states coexist, each having its own peculiar emotional colouring, there arises a complete emotional state; in other words, intellectual complexity involves emotional complexity. If we compare the primary emotions to the simplest perceptions of sight and hearing, the complex emotions will correspond to the perception of an extensive landscape or a symphony. It is thus formed by the addition or fusion of binary, tertiary, quaternary compounds, and so on, these terms implying the number of simple emotions which compose them. The composition may be brought about in two ways, which we shall distinguish by calling them respectively mixture and combination, in the sense in which these words are employed by writers on chemistry.

I. Composition by mixture.—In the emotions derived from this mental procedure, the constituent elements can be recovered from the compound; they embrace without interpenetrating one another, and a psychological analysis conducted with sufficient thoroughness is able to determine and enumerate them. For greater clearness, I distinguish two cases in the mixture of feelings.

(a.) The elements are homogeneous or convergent. If they are numerous, since they all tend in the same direction, the resultant emotion will be of great intensity. We have found one example of this in sexual love, an aggregate compound (according to Herbert Spencer’s analysis) of physical attraction, æsthetic impressions, sympathy, tenderness, admiration, self-love, love of approbation, love of possession, and desire of liberty.

(b.) The elements are heterogeneous or divergent. As an example I take jealousy, which many authorities consider primary, perhaps because it is manifested by animals and infants, which simply proves that it is precocious,—quite a different thing. A contemporary writer tries to define it by saying: “It is a morbid fear passing from inert stupidity to active or passive rage.” I greatly prefer Descartes’ definition: “Jealousy is a kind of fear related to the desire we have of keeping some possession” (Passions, art. 167). This passion deserves a monograph to itself, and one will certainly be written when this style of work comes to be applied more frequently to the psychology of the emotions. Our task at present is not to study its gradations, from mild cases up to madness and homicide, but to inquire into its composition. There is, firstly, the representation of some good, possessed or denied—a pleasurable element acting by way of excitement and attraction; and, secondly, the idea of dispossession or privation (e.g., of the lover with regard to his mistress, of the rejected candidate against his fortunate rival, and in general, of any who fail against all who succeed), an element of vexation which acts depressively; and, thirdly, the idea of the real or imaginary cause of this dispossession or privation, awakening, in various degrees, the destructive tendency (anger, hatred, etc.). In the passive or inert forms of jealousy this last element is very slight. This emotion is, therefore, a binary compound.

We might further mention the religious sentiment (a binary compound), the feeling of respect, composed of sympathy and a slight degree of fear, and the moral sentiment, which we are about to analyse in the next chapter.

I must remark that these derivative emotions, by reason of their complexity, ought logically to show as many shades of variety as they have constituent elements. In sexual love, where analysis discovers at least ten tendencies, whether primary or not, the predominance of one or more among these changes the aspect of the emotion according to times and individuals. The instability of the passions, of which we hear so much, is partly caused by their composite character.

II. Composition by combination.—The emotion resulting from this mental procedure differs, in its nature and characteristics, from its constituent elements, and appears in the consciousness as a new product, an irreducible unit. Here the analysis, uncertain and hazardous as it often is, cannot give us everything which we find in the synthesis—a psychological case which has well-known equivalents in chemistry.

A Danish psychologist, Sibbern, whom I believe to have been the first to point out this mode of composition of the emotions under the name of mixed sentiments, defines them as “Those in which the disagreeable excites the agreeable, and vice versâ, so that one is not antecedent to the other, but both act simultaneously, and the disappearance of the one involves the disappearance of the other.”[^[165]] In fact, there is not merely coexistence, but reciprocity of action; if you suppress a single term the emotion changes its nature, as we shall see by the following examples.

In the emotion accompanying all forms of activity in which we seek great difficulties to overcome, or risks to run (as in hunting wild animals, dangerous mountain climbing, exploring expeditions, etc.), if we suppress the unknown element, the risk, the danger, there is no longer any attraction. If we suppress this attraction and its accompanying pleasure we have nothing left but fear or disgust. This particular emotion exists only through the interdependence of its various elements. It can be produced in a modified form, but without changing its nature, in the spectators of bull-fights, wild beast tamers, violent struggles, and thrilling dramas, and in a lesser degree by mere recitation or reading.

I have already mentioned melancholy (in the ordinary, not the medical sense) as one form of the luxury of grief. It implies the calling up of pleasant states, past or distant, plus a state of present sadness which surrounds them. Suppress one or other of these elements and the melancholy vanishes. If the pleasurable element, however slight, disappears, nothing remains but grief pure and simple. In this combination sometimes the one element predominates, sometimes the other, and the resultant feeling receives a special emotional timbre, as the case may be.

The feeling of the sublime is usually considered as a form of the æsthetic sentiment, and we shall have to return to it later on. Whatever it may have for its object—whether the spectacle of sullen glaciers, of a boundless desert, or of a man who throws himself recklessly into some great act of self-devotion,—it is composed of discordant elements fused into a single synthesis: (1) a painful feeling of oppression, of lowered vitality, of annihilation, which drags us down and depresses us; (2) the consciousness of an upward rush, of unfolded energy, of an inward lifting up, of an increase of vital power; (3) the conscious or unconscious feeling of security in presence of a formidable power. Without the last-named the emotion would change its nature, and we should feel fear. These three co-existent and interdependent elements enter collectively into the consciousness, and present themselves to it as an irreducible unit.

Höffding (op. cit., p. 407) gives humour as an example of a combination, or, as he calls it, a mixed feeling. He defines it as “the sentiment of the ridiculous based on sympathy.” This state consists in seeing simultaneously and indissolubly the petty side of great events and the great side of the most trivial things. It is the synthesis of two antithetic elements: the destructive and contemptuous laugh which makes us feel ourselves superior; and the indulgence, pity, and compassion which place us on a footing of equality with others. This emotional manifestation may be simply a passing whim, or it may be a permanent trait of character, a peculiar manner of understanding nature and human life, striking an average between optimism, which finds everything too bright, and pessimism, which sees the ugly side of everything. The school of “irony,” which, with Solger, Schlegel, and others, played its part in German æsthetics at the opening of this century, proposed humour—negative and destructive in form, positive and constructive in reality—as its fundamental principle in the interpretation of the universe.

I am inclined to place in this group an emotional state which has given rise to many dissertations and discussions—I mean modesty. I look upon it as a binary compound capable of being resolved into two primary emotions: self-feeling and fear. Whatever may be thought of this explanation, the subject is worth the trouble of a little examination; it could scarcely be omitted from a treatise on the psychology of the feelings.

There is no lack of documents respecting the manifestations of modesty among different peoples; they may be found in the narratives of travellers, and in works on anthropology and ethnology. The psychological question of its nature and origin has been treated by Spencer, Sergi, James, Mantegazza, to mention contemporary writers only. The last-named even gives us a definition of it: “Modesty is physical self-respect.”

It has a physical mode of expression peculiar to it, or at least only met with in the emotions related to modesty (shame, timidity, shyness), viz., the sudden redness of the face due to momentary paralysis of the vaso-constrictor nerves. We know Darwin’s ingenious explanations of this point: a person who thinks others are looking at him directs his attention to his own face, whence results a flow of blood towards that part. These explanations are now rejected. The experiments of Mosso and others on the circulation of the blood rather justify the view taken by Wundt, who sees in the momentary relaxation of the vaso-motor innervation, causing the redness of the face, a compensation for the accelerated pulsations of the heart, produced by emotion.

Besides this special mode of expression, modesty shows itself by concentric, defensive movements, by a tendency to cover or disguise certain parts of the body. The means employed to this end are of the most various description, according to race, country, or period: some hide the whole body, some the sexual parts only, or the face, or the bosom, some paint the body, or the face, etc. It is impossible to determine the exact part played in this diversity by circumstances, climatic conditions, the association of ideas, compulsion, fashion, imitation, and even chance.

So far as psychology is concerned, it is especially the question of origin which has been discussed: Is modesty an instinct? is it innate or acquired, primary or derived? Some writers, rather carelessly, assume that it is an instinct, on no other evidence than its quasi-universal character, which they deduce, legitimately enough, from its multiple manifestations. Most, however, adopt the contrary opinion, alleging the example of children, and of certain primitive races who seem totally devoid of it. This second view seems the more tenable, though it is difficult to find a categoric solution which is free from objections. Modesty, being an ego-altruistic feeling (and the same applies to shame and shyness), presupposes some degree of reflection.

The conditions of its origin are little understood. H. Spencer, and, after him, Sergi, maintain that it results from the habit of wearing clothes, which began with men (not with women) from motives of ostentation and ornament. There are tribes where both sexes go naked, others where clothing is the privilege of the male sex: immodesty would thus be, in its origin, a lack of æsthetic feeling. Exclusively appropriated, at first, to the male sex, the feeling of modesty would then have transferred itself to the other. This explanation seems very precarious, not to mention the theory incidentally implied, that the feeling is not stronger in women than in men.[^[166]]

W. James proposes another, which is less simple, but more acceptable.[^[167]] Briefly, it is this: The emotional state which lies at the root of modesty, shame, and other similar manifestations, arises from the application in the second instance to ourselves of a judgment primarily passed upon others. The sight of certain parts of the body, and the ideas which they suggest, inspire repulsion, and “it is not easy to believe that even among the nakedest savages an unusual degree of cynicism and indecency in an individual should not beget a certain degree of contempt, and cheapen him in his neighbours’ eyes.” (In our opinion, this psychological state approximates to disgust, of which we have already seen the causes and the significance.) What is repugnant to us in others must be repugnant to them in us: whence the habit of covering certain parts and concealing certain bodily functions. Modesty cannot be considered an instinct in the strict sense of the word, i.e., as an excito-motor phenomenon. Under the influence of custom, public opinion, civilisation, it passes through its evolution, till it reaches “the New England pitch of sensitiveness and range, making us say stomach instead of belly, limb instead of leg, retire instead of go to bed, and forbidding us to call a female dog by name” (James, ii. p. 437).

Taken as a whole, this emotion approximates most by its external symptoms to fear. It also contains elements derived from self-feeling. Must we add other elements derived from the sex-instinct? This is only admissible in certain cases. In short, its composition is variable. We cannot consider it as instinctive, primitive, innate. On the other hand, analysis cannot clearly resolve it into its constituent parts; we are inclined to see in it a particular case of mental synthesis, a combination.

To conclude, with regard to the emotions formed by combination:—

They are based on an association of intellectual states, which is, in most cases, an association by contrast.

They presuppose a fusion, in varying proportions, of agreeable and disagreeable states, which justly entitles them to be called mixed emotions.

The whole differs from the sum of its constituent elements.

Analysis ascertains and isolates these elements, but cannot boast of having discovered them all.

CHAPTER VIII.
THE SOCIAL AND MORAL FEELINGS.

Origin of the Social Feelings—Animal societies—Nutritive societies—The individual and society—Domestic societies—Social instinct has its source neither in sexual nor in maternal love—Gregarious societies—Attraction of like for like—Origin of social tendencies—Accidental and transitory unions, of variable duration, and voluntary—The social tendencies arise from the conditions of existence—Social life does not spring from domestic life—The higher societies among animals: they exclude family relations—Human societies—Two opposite theories of their origin: the family, the horde—Evolution of the family—Evolution of social life—The family and the clan not similar institutions—The moral sense. Two views of its origin: (a) the intellectual, (b) the emotional—They correspond to two stages in its development—Its innateness and its necessity belong to the motor, not the intellectual order—Genesis of the benevolent feeling. Psychological analysis of its generative elements. Facts in support of this—Discoverers in morality—Genesis of the sense of justice—Phases of its development—Conclusion: complexity of the moral sense—Pathology. Elimination of the questions of criminal anthropology. Moral insensibility.

At the moment of beginning the study of the composite emotions which have had the most brilliant career, and played the most important part in human life, it will be well to indicate the course which will be followed, once for all. We cannot, in dealing with the social, moral, religious, æsthetic and intellectual sentiments, discuss the numerous questions which they suggest, and so lose ourselves in endless details. The allotted task of psychology seems to me to be quite clearly defined—viz., to take each feeling at its origin and try to determine its nature and follow its development, in its principal phases, by the help of the documents supplied to us by ethnology, and the history of morals, of religions, and of æsthetic and scientific culture, thus avoiding vagueness and a priori reasoning, without losing our way in an inextricable tangle of facts.

In conformity with this plan, we shall begin with the simplest forms of the social instinct in animals, passing from them to man, and thence to the evolution of moral tendencies.

Even if we admit the transformist hypothesis, zoological evolution has not proceeded in a straight line. This point, it is true, is contested, but it is all the more important to remember, because the development of the organisation and that of the social instincts do not always go on pari passu. Thus the social aptitudes of ants and bees are far superior to those of certain mammals considered of a far higher type of organisation. Without troubling ourselves, therefore, about the frequent disagreements between zoological taxinomy and sociological psychology, we shall follow the ascending march of the social instinct, no matter in what order or class or at what point of the genealogical tree it shows itself.

We thus find four principal forms of animal societies: at the lowest stage, those founded on nutrition; further on, those based on reproduction; then, unstable, gregarious societies; and finally, societies with a stable and complete organisation.[^[168]] Some special question will be put with regard to each of them, so as to show us the social question under some one particular aspect.

“The idea of a society,” says Espinas, “is that of permanent co-operation between separate living beings, engaged in the same action” (op. cit., p. 157). The character of permanence even is not necessary for the inferior forms; there are temporary societies differing in toto from those heterogeneous, fortuitous, momentary aggregates which we call crowds. Reciprocity and solidarity are the two fundamental conditions, a fact which excludes from human and animal societies two forms somewhat approximating to them: parasites, in whose case there is no reciprocity, and who show a modified form of the struggle for life; and messmates, where community of life, though it involves no injurious action, likewise implies no helpful one.

I. In animal societies founded on nutrition, it is this function which constitutes the social tie; the individuals composing it are attached to one another in a permanent manner, from their birth onwards, and the nutritive liquid circulates from one to another, thus establishing a material community. It is found in the hydroid polypes, the Bryozoa and the Tunicata. As examples of the superior forms, we may quote the hydractinia, composed of individuals each of which has its own special and exclusive function: some, that of feeding; others, that of feeling and exploring; others, of defending the colony; others, again, of reproducing it—the last-named being divided into males and females. The siphonophora present an analogous division of labour, and the community, over a metre in length, suspended to a floating bladder, executes well co-ordinated collective movements.

Is there—at any rate in the higher forms of these colonies—a social instinct? Solidarity and reciprocity can indeed be perceived, in an objective, material way, in the form of adherence, and vascular communication; but nothing proves that there is anything more than an organic solidarity and reciprocity. Perhaps, in circumstances such as the nautical manœuvres just mentioned, in which a general obedience to one directing individual has been ascertained, there is a momentary consent—a certain unity of representation. To be accurate, the terms individual and community are diverted from their ordinary acceptation and used in an equivocal sense. Our notion of the individual is that of an organised whole living independently by itself: this no longer corresponds to the present case. Our notion of a community is an assemblage of individuals, and as these are, in the case under consideration, of a peculiar nature, it might thus be contended with equal force that these aggregates deserve, or that they do not deserve, the name of animal communities: it is a question of the point of view.[view.] On the one hand, one may regard the hydractinia or the siphonophora as a complex individual whose organs are the fishing, the piloting, the reproductive, etc., individuals. On the other hand, it may be maintained that the food-providers, pilots, etc., are true individuals whose aggregation forms a society. In short, it is an undifferentiated state, in which individuals and community are hardly to be distinguished from one another, and are only two different aspects of the same whole. The social instinct, also, if existing at all, is not yet differentiated from the conservative instinct under its simplest forms—the search for food, defence, attack. In fact, the two coincide. This stage has nothing more to teach us. Let us now pass on to social forms whose psychology is clearer.

II. These are the societies founded on reproduction—domestic societies, or families, under their various forms. I prefer to begin with these rather than with the gregarious state; first, on account of their universality; then because they are the first to appear in chronological order. Common opinion finds in them the first manifestation of the social sentiments, their origin, their source, and their moment of entry into the world. I reject this view in order to adopt that which connects the social instinct with the gregarious state.

If we take, one after another, the conditions of every aggregate founded on reproduction, we shall find three stages: that of sexual approach, that of maternal love, and lastly, but in the case of animals only exceptionally, paternal love. The social instinct—i.e., the more or less vague consciousness of at least a temporary solidarity and reciprocity—does not, as we shall see, make its appearance at any of these stages.

1. Sexual approach results from one particular instinct; it unites two individuals only: can we consider it as the embryo of a society? “Around sexuality are co-ordinated the altruistic instincts of which the animal is capable.” This formula of Littré’s needs defining with more precision. First, in the immense majority of cases the connection is not lasting; the blind instinct satisfies itself, and all is over. Higher up there are more permanent forms, such as polygamy and polyandry; but these small communities founded on sex-attraction are closed, and have no power of radiation or extension, no future. Higher still we find monogamy, as among wolves, many birds, etc.; but the monogamic aggregate is still more of a close corporation than the others. Let us note, in passing, that these two forms, polygamy and monogamy, are distributed through the animal world in an apparently fortuitous manner, having no relation to the intellectual development—as, for instance, the monogamy of the stork and the polygamy of the monkey.

Finally, this first stage yields us no result, tending rather towards social restriction than social extension.

2. Maternal love is of much greater importance. In domestic societies it is the universal and permanent element, the vital bond. This emotion is so widespread, so well known, we might say so trite, that it seems to involve no mystery, and yet, if we descend into animal psychology, we find nothing more enigmatical. The development of sympathy and intelligence partly explains it in the human species and the higher animals; but in the lower orders the difficulty becomes extreme. Yet it shows itself among the annelids, the crustacea, the mollusca, and even the echinoderms, which carry their eggs about adhering to their bodies. Frequently it shows itself as a feeling which, though vague, is tenacious, devoted, heroic. We do not indicate all the difficulties of the question, as for instance: How can an insect take such care of its eggs when it cannot recognise its own form in a creature which in nowise resembles itself, and has not even a living form?[^[169]]

Most naturalists content themselves with ascertaining the fact, without inquiring into its origin. Darwin declares that it is useless to speculate on this subject. Others connect maternal affection with parasitism—scarcely a legitimate hypothesis, since the parasite is the enemy of its host and lives against his will at his expense. Romanes seems to have recourse to the principle of serviceable variations; an animal which takes care of its eggs or carries them about with it, has a better chance of preserving them; and if this way of acting becomes a fixed habit in its descendants, an instinct has been established. This explanation reduces itself to chance and to the hereditary transmission—an open question—of acquired modifications.

Excluding the insects and those analogous cases which, as Espinas has shown (op. cit., pp. 334-339), require a special explanation, it is preferable to admit, with this author and Bain, the prominent part played by contact. “It seems to me that there must be at the foundation that intense pleasure in the embrace of the young which we find to characterise the parental feeling throughout. The origin of the pleasure may be as purely physical as in the love of the sexes; ... [there is] an initial satisfaction in the animal embrace, heightened by reciprocation.”[^[170]] “The female, at the moment when she gives birth to little ones resembling herself, has no difficulty in recognising them as the flesh of her flesh; the feeling she experiences towards them is made up of sympathy and pity, but we cannot exclude from it an idea of property which is the most solid support of sympathy. She feels and understands up to a certain point that these young ones which are herself at the same time belong to her; the love of herself extended to those who have gone out from her changes egoism into sympathy and the proprietary instinct into an affectionate impulse. As sexual love implies the idea of mutual ownership, so maternal love supposes that of subordinated ownership. It is because this other self is so feeble that the interest felt for it takes the form of pity.”[^[171]] This last remark relates to an emotional manifestation which Spencer regards as the source of maternal love—tenderness for the weak. This seems to me rather one of its elements than its sole basis. On the other hand, Bain maintains that “an intensified attraction towards the weak is not merely consistent with the gregarious situation, but seems to be required by its varying exigencies.... An interest or solicitude about weak members would be almost the necessary completion of the social system” (Bain, op. cit., pp. 138, 139). This granted, maternal love and social instinct would have an element in common, but they nevertheless remain distinct and mutually independent.

I have insisted to some extent on maternal love, because it is one of the most important manifestations of the emotional life. It is clear that it belongs to the category of the tender emotions, of which it is a well-determined form and remarkable by reason of its intensity; but it is not the source of the social instinct, because it implies neither solidarity nor reciprocity. It might be maintained that it is the gate by which the feeling of benevolence made its entrance into the world, and that its appearance is the earliest in date; but other conditions are needed for the social instinct to reveal itself.

3. The third stage, marked by the entrance of the father into the domestic community, does not affect our conclusion. In the animal world taken as a whole, paternal affection is rare and far from permanent, and among the lower representatives of humanity the feeling is a very weak one and the tie very loose. It exists, however, and its origin is much more difficult to assign than in the case of maternal love.[^[172]] Though it may be maintained that in man it originates in pride and the feeling of ownership (Bain), this hypothesis is not applicable to animals; we cannot say, as in the case of the mother, that there is a material and visible relation, so that the offspring seems to be a separated portion of the parent. It remains to establish the significance of sympathy for weakness, as a primary cause of this feeling. We might add another element if we admit, with Spencer, that the life in common of the father and mother (paternal affection being only found where unions are permanent) creates a current of affection in proportion to the services rendered. Whatever origin we may assign to it, it adds nothing to our discussion, and has no efficacity in arousing the social instinct.

To sum up: what we find at the base of domestic aggregates is tender emotion, the genesis of altruism, but restricted to a closed group, without expansive force or elasticity.

III. The gregarious life—i.e., that of the animals who live in troops or hordes—is founded on the attraction of like for like, irrespective of sex, and for the first time manifests the true social tendencies, through the habit of acting in common.

In its lowest degree it consists of accidental and unstable assemblages which are, as it were, an attempt at life in common. Every one knows that certain pelagic animals travel in vast numbers, their course being determined by the temperature of the water or the direction of the currents. We also know what happens in the migrations of processionary caterpillars, of crickets, and more especially of birds. Numerous species of animals assemble together in the morning and evening to sing, utter their various cries, pursue each other and gambol about, living dispersed at other times. This shows, says Espinas, “a latent social tendency, always ready to show itself when not combated by any other tendency.”

Higher still, we find assemblages of variable duration, but voluntarily formed and maintained, in view of a common aim. They have all the characteristics of a society—community of effort, synergy, reciprocity of services. Darwin[^[173]] has given many examples of this: Pelicans fish in concert, and close in round their prey like a living net; wolves and wild dogs hunt in packs, and help each other to attack their victims. These communities are to some extent accidental and unstable, and may come to an end in a final competition for the sharing of the spoil. Much more stable are those which have the common defence for their aim: rabbits warn one another of danger; many mammals and birds place sentinels (it is well known how difficult it is to approach a herd or drove of animals); monkeys remove vermin or take out thorns from one another’s skins, form a chain to cross the gap between two trees, unite their forces to raise a heavy stone, and finally, gathered into bands under the direction of a leader, they defend themselves energetically and risk their lives to save their companions. We might enumerate endless facts of this kind. No doubt, we have not yet found the permanent organisation, the fixed division of labour, the continuity, which are peculiar to the higher animal societies; but the instability and intermittence of these social forms help us to understand why they exist and whence they originate.

Social tendencies are derived from sympathy; they arise in determinate conditions. The facts already given supply the answer to the questions: how do they arise? what is their source? They arise from the nature of things, from the conditions of the animal’s existence; they are not based on pleasure, but on the unconscious affirmation of the will to live; they are auxiliary to the instinct of conservation. Society, as Spencer justly remarks, is founded on its own desire—i.e., on an instinct.

The gregarious life, as this writer has shown in detail, predominates among the herbivora and graminivora, who, as a rule, being ill armed for strife and finding food in abundance, find it to their advantage to live in herds.

The contrary is the case with the carnivora; they are well armed, and need ample space in which to hunt down their prey, so that it is to their advantage to live in isolation, except in those cases already mentioned, where they associate together for a difficult chase, or for defence against a dangerous enemy.[^[174]]

We may add that there are animals which, as they find it to their advantage or otherwise, live alternately in communities or isolated. “Certain sociable birds in Australia build bowers of branches, where they assemble in great numbers during the day. In pairing-time the society is broken up, and each couple retires by itself to construct its own separate nest. While the temporary families last there is no longer any assemblage, nor any life in common; it only begins again when the young are able to try their wings. This is only one of numberless examples which might be mentioned.”[^[175]]

In short, gregarious life depends on stature, strength, means of defence, kind and distribution of food, and mode of propagation. Derived from necessity, this habit of life in common creates a solidarity which is not mechanical and external, but psychological: the sight, the touch, the smell of his companions constitute in each individual a part of his own consciousness, of which he feels the want in its absence; the distressed state and the lamentations of an animal separated by chance from the herd are well known.

Here a disputed question suggests itself. It has been already settled by implication in the course of the statements already made, but it cannot be thus treated retrospectively and merely in passing. For the moment I may confine myself to indicating it. If we compare family societies and gregarious societies, what relation is there between them? We find ourselves in presence of two opinions or theories—one in favour of unity, the other of duality.

The first, the most ancient and widespread, derives social life from domestic life. The family is the social molecule: by its increase are formed aggregates of a more or less complex character, whose life in common creates a solidarity and an exchange of services—i.e., the conditions of a community.

The second admits two groups of irreducible feelings and tendencies, mutually independent, though there are points of contact. The social instinct is not derived from the domestic feelings, while the latter are not derived from the social feelings. They are distinct by nature, having their respective sources in the attraction of like for like, irrespective of sex, and in the sexual appetite and the development of the tender emotions.

More than this: some writers, especially zoologists, have maintained that there is not merely dualism but antagonism. When the feelings of domestic life are strong, social solidarity is lax or non-existent. When social solidarity is close and rigorous, the family tendencies are transitory, effaced, or nil—e.g., in ants and bees. The case of the Australian birds shows us this antagonism in an alternating form, the domestic and the social tendency predominating by turns. No doubt this antagonism is not irremediable and is compatible with various modifications and compromises; but there is, in fact, a dualism not to be explained away. I shall return later on to this question, only remarking in anticipation that the dualist view seems to me the only admissible one.

IV. The higher societies are those in which the animal world has attained its loftiest degree of social development. In them we find division of labour, solidarity, stability, and continuity through several generations. Such are bees, wasps, ants, termites, beavers, etc. It is not part of our subject to study them, since our only aim is to follow the social tendencies to their highest point; but the problem already suggested again arises: On what foundation do these higher societies rest? Espinas, who admits the view of the family as the source of social life, classes them among societies having reproduction for their purpose. For my own part, I refer them to the gregarious state, in which they mark the stage of the highest perfection. Let me take this opportunity of pointing out the inconveniences of a false position and the factitious difficulties arising from it. The author draws out (pp. 370 et seq.) a detailed comparison between the societies of bees and those of ants; he demonstrates the superiority of the latter, who, according to circumstances, dig, carve, build, hunt, store up food, reap harvests, keep slaves and cattle, and when they carry on war against the wasps (the warlike representatives of the bees) gain the victory. He also clearly shows that this superiority is due to their terrestrial habits, in which every contact, every march, leaves them a precise indication of the nature of their surroundings. But he finds something perplexing in this superiority. As a matter of fact, a hive is a perfect domestic society, since the queen-bee—i.e., the common mother—is the visible soul of social life among the bees. An ant-heap is imperfect, “inferior” as a domestic society, as containing several females. The apparent contradiction disappears, if we consider that in both cases, especially in the second, the essential element is the solidarity among the members, the mutual attraction between similar beings, and that, consequently, we must refer them to the gregarious, and not to the domestic type. For the rest, in neither case does the family, in the true sense of the word, exist: it is needless to demonstrate this at length, it is quite sufficient to note the absence of maternal love. And so certain writers have made use of this argument—as I have already said—to prove that such a high development of the social tendencies has only been possible through the suppression of the family tendencies.