While it is evident enough that animal anger is one of those instincts that are readily explained as conducive to self-preservation, it is not, perhaps, so obvious that socialized anger has any such justification. I think, however, that, though very liable to be excessive and unmanageable, and tending continually to be economized as the race progresses, so that most forms of it are properly regarded as wrong, it nevertheless plays an indispensable part in life.
The mass of mankind are sluggish and need some resentment as a stimulant; this is its function on the higher plane of life as it is on the lower. Surround a man with soothing, flattering circumstances, and in nine cases out of ten he will fail to do anything worthy, but will lapse into some form of sensualism or dilettanteism. There is no tonic, to a nature substantial enough to bear it, like chagrin—“erquickender Verdruss,” as Goethe says. Life without opposition is Capua. No matter what the part one is fitted to play in it, he can make progress in his path only by a vigorous assault upon the obstacles, and to be vigorous the assault must be supported by passion of some sort. With most of us the requisite intensity of passion is not forthcoming without an element of resentment; and common-sense and careful observation will, I believe, confirm the opinion that few people who amount to much are without a good capacity for hostile feeling, upon which they draw freely when they need it. This would be more readily admitted if many people were not without the habit of penetrating observation, either of themselves or others, in such matters, and so are enabled to believe that anger, which is conventionally held to be wrong, has no place in the motives of moral persons.
I have in mind a man who is remarkable for a certain kind of aggressive, tenacious and successful pursuit of the right. He does the things that everyone else agrees ought to be done but does not do—especially things involving personal antagonism. While the other people deplore the corruption of politics, but have no stomach to amend it, he is the man to beard the corrupt official in his ward, or expose him in the courts or the public press—all at much pains and cost to himself and without prospect of honor or any other recompense. If one considers how he differs from other conscientious people of equal ability and opportunity, it appears to be largely in having more bile in him. He has a natural fund of animosity, and instead of spending it blindly and harmfully, he directs it upon that which is hateful to the general good, thus gratifying his native turn for resentment in a moral and fruitful way. Evidently if there were more men of this stamp it would be of benefit to the moral condition of the country. Contemporary conditions seem to tend somewhat to dissipate that righteous wrath against evil which, intelligently directed, is a main instrument of progress.
Thomas Huxley, to take a name known to all, was a man in whom there was much fruitful hostility. He did not seek controversy, but when the enemies of truth offered battle he felt no inclination to refuse; and he avowed—perhaps with a certain zest in contravening conventional teaching—that he loved his friends and hated his enemies.[[69]] His hatred was of a noble sort, and the reader of his Life and Letters can hardly doubt that he was a good as well as a great man, or that his pugnacity helped him to be such. Indeed I do not think that science or letters could do without the spirit of opposition, although much energy is dissipated and much thought clouded by it. Even men like Darwin or Emerson, who seem to wish nothing more than to live at peace with everyone, may be observed to develop their views with unusual fulness and vigor where they are most in opposition to authority. There is something analogous to political parties in all intellectual activity; opinion divides, more or less definitely, into opposing groups, and each side is stimulated by the opposition of the other to define, corroborate, and amend its views, with the purpose of justifying itself before the constituency to which it appeals. What we need is not that controversy should disappear, but that it should be carried on with sincere and absolute deference to the standard of truth.
A just resentment is not only a needful stimulus to aggressive righteousness, but has also a wholesome effect upon the mind of the person against whom it is directed, by awakening a feeling of the importance of the sentiments he has transgressed. On the higher planes of life an imaginative sense that there is resentment in the minds of other persons performs the same function that physical resistance does upon the lower.[[70]] It is an attack upon my mental self, and as a sympathetic and imaginative being I feel it more than I would a mere blow; it forces me to consider the other’s view, and either to accept it or to bear it down by the stronger claims of a different one. Thus it enters potently into our moral judgments.
“Let such pure hate still underprop
Our love that we may be
Each other’s conscience.”[[71]]
I think that no one’s character and aims can be respected unless he is perceived to be capable of some sort of resentment. We feel that if he is really in earnest about anything he should feel hostile emotion if it is attacked, and if he gives no sign of this, either at the moment of attack or later, he and what he represents become despised. No teacher, for instance, can maintain discipline unless his scholars feel that he will in some manner resent a breach of it.
Thus we seldom feel keenly that our acts are wrong until we perceive that they arouse some sort of resentment in others, and whatever selfish aggression we can practise without arousing resistance, we presently come to look upon as a matter of course. Judging the matter from my own consciousness and experience, I have no belief in the theory that non-resistance has, as a rule, a mollifying influence upon the aggressor. I do not wish people to turn me the other cheek when I smite them, because, in most cases, that has a bad effect upon me. I am soon used to submission and may come to think no more of the unresisting sufferer than I do of the sheep whose flesh I eat at dinner. Neither, on the other hand, am I helped by extravagant and accusatory opposition; that is likely to put me into a state of unreasoning anger. But it is good for us that everyone should maintain his rights, and the rights of others with whom he sympathizes, exhibiting a just and firm resentment against any attempt to tread upon them. A consciousness, based on experience, that the transgression of moral standards will arouse resentment in the minds of those whose opinion we respect, is a main force in the upholding of such standards.