Human nature and the social order

by Charles Horton Cooley

But the doctrine of non-resistance, like all ideas that have appealed to good minds, has a truth wrapped up in it, notwithstanding what appears to be its flagrant absurdity. What the doctrine really means, as taught in the New Testament and by many individuals and societies in our own day, is perhaps no more than this, that we should discard the coarser weapons of resistance for the finer, and threaten a moral resentment instead of blows or lawsuits. It is quite true that we can best combat what we regard as evil in another person of ordinary sensibility by attacking the higher phases of his self rather than the lower. If a man appears to be about to do something brutal or dishonest, we may either encounter him on his present low plane of life by knocking him down or calling a policeman, or we may try to work upon his higher consciousness by giving him to understand that we feel sure a person of his self-respect and good repute will not degrade himself, but that if anything so improbable and untoward should occur, he must, of course, expect the disappointment and contempt of those who before thought well of him. In other words, we threaten, as courteously as possible, his social self. This method is often much more efficient than the other, is morally edifying instead of degrading, and is practised by men of address who make no claim to unusual virtue.

This seems to be what is meant by non-resistance; but the name is misleading. It is resistance, and directed at what is believed to be the enemy’s weakest point. As a matter of strategy it is an attack upon his flank, aggression upon an unprotected part of his position. Its justification, in the long run, is in its success. If we do not succeed in making our way into the other man’s mind and changing his point of view by substituting our own, the whole manœuvre falls flat, the injury is done, the ill-doer is confirmed in his courses, and you would better have knocked him down. It is good to appeal to the highest motives we can arouse, and to exercise a good deal of faith as to what can be aroused, but real non-resistance to what we believe to be wrong is mere pusillanimity. There is perhaps no important sect or teacher that really inculcates such a doctrine, the name non-resistance being given to attacks upon the higher self under the somewhat crude impression that resistance is not such unless it takes some obvious material form, and probably all teachers would be found to vary their tactics somewhat according to the sort of people with whom they are dealing. Although Christ taught the turning of the other cheek to the smiter, and that the coat should follow the cloak, it does not appear that he suggested to those who were desecrating the Temple that they should double their transactions, but, apparently regarding them as beyond the reach of moral suasion, he “went into the Temple, and began to cast out them that sold and bought in the Temple, and overthrew the tables of the money-changers and the seats of them that sold doves.” It seems that he even used a scourge on this occasion. I cannot see much in the question regarding non-resistance beyond a vague use of terms and a difference of opinion as to what kind of resistance is most effective in certain cases.

It is easy and not uncommon to state too exclusively the pre-eminence of affection in human ideals. No one, I suppose, believes that the life of Fra Angelico’s angels, such as we see them in his “Last Judgment,” circling on the flowery sward of Paradise, would long content any normal human creature. If it appears beautiful and desirable at times, this is perhaps because our world is one in which the supply of amity and peace mostly falls short of the demand for them. Many of us have seen times of heat and thirst when it seemed as if a bit of shade and a draught of cold water would appease all earthly wants. But when we had the shade and the water we presently began to think about something else. So with these ideals of unbroken peace and affection. Even for those sensitive spirits that most cherish them, they would hardly suffice as a continuity. An indiscriminate and unvarying amity is, after all, disgusting.

Human ideals and human nature must develop together, and we cannot foresee what either may become; but for the present it would seem that an honest and reasonable idealism must look rather to the organization and control of all passions with reference to some conception of right, than to the expulsion of some passions by others. I doubt whether any healthy and productive love can exist which is not resentment on its obverse side. How can we rightly care for anything without in some way resenting attacks upon it?

Apparently, the higher function of hostility is to put down wrong; and to fulfil this function it must be rationally controlled with a view to ideals of justice. In so far as a man has a sound and active social imagination, he will feel the need of this control, and will tend with more or less energy, according to the vigor of his mind, to limit his resentment to that which his judgment tells him is really unjust or wrong. Imagination presents us with all sorts of conflicting views, which reason, whose essence is organization, tries to arrange and control in accordance with some unifying principle, some standard of equity: moral principles result from the mind’s instinctive need to achieve unity of view. All special impulses, and hostile feeling among them, are brought to the bar of conscience and judged by such standards as the mind has worked out. If declared right or justifiable, resentment is endorsed and enforced by the will; we think of it as righteous and perhaps take credit with ourselves for it. But if it appears grounded on no broad and unifying principle, our larger thought disowns it, and tends with such energy as it may have to ignore and suppress it. Thus we overlook accidental injury, we control or avoid mere antipathy, but we act upon indignation. The latter is enduring and powerful because consistent with cool thought; while impulsive, unreasoning anger, getting no re-enforcement from such thought, has little lasting force.

Suppose, for illustration, one goes with a request to some person in authority, and meets a curt refusal. The first feeling is doubtless one of blind, unthinking anger at the rebuff. Immediately after that the mind busies itself more deeply with the matter, imagining motives, ascribing feelings and the like; and anger takes a more bitter and personal form, it rankles where at first it only stung. But if one is a fairly reasonable man, accustomed to refer things to standards of right, one presently grows calmer and, continuing the imaginative process in a broader way, endeavors to put himself at the other person’s point of view and see what justification, if any, there is for the latter’s conduct. Possibly he is one subject to constant solicitation, with whom coldness and abruptness are necessary to the despatch of business—and so on. If the explanation seems insufficient, so that his rudeness still appears to be mere insolence, our resentment against him lasts, reappearing whenever we think of him, so that we are likely to thwart him somehow if we get a chance, and justify our action to ourselves and others on grounds of moral disapproval.

Or suppose one has to stand in line at the postoffice, with a crowd of other people, waiting to get his mail. There are delay and discomfort to be borne; but these he will take with composure because he sees that they are a part of the necessary conditions of the situation, which all must submit to alike. Suppose, however, that while patiently waiting his turn he notices someone else, who has come in later, edging into the line ahead of him. Then he will certainly be angry. The delay threatened is only a matter of a few seconds; but here is a question of justice, a case for indignation, a chance for anger to come forth with the sanction of thought.

Another phase of the transformation of hostility by reason and imagination, is that it tends to become more discriminating or selective as regards its relation to the idea of the person against whom it is directed. In a sense the higher hostility is less personal than the lower; that is, in the sense that it is no longer aimed blindly at persons as wholes, but distinguishes in some measure between phases or tendencies of them that are obnoxious and others that are not. It is not the mere thought of X’s countenance, or other symbol, that arouses resentment, but the thought of him as exhibiting insincerity, or arrogance, or whatever else it may be that we do not like; while we may preserve a liking for him as exhibiting other traits. Generally speaking, all persons have much in them which, if imagined, must appear amiable; so that if we feel only animosity toward a man it must be because we have apprehended him only in a partial aspect. An undisciplined anger, like any other undisciplined emotion, always tends to produce these partial and indiscriminate notions, because it overwhelms symmetrical thought and permits us to see only that which agrees with itself. But a more chastened sentiment allows a juster view, so that it becomes conceivable that we should love our enemies as well as antagonize the faults of our friends. A just parent or teacher will resent the insubordinate behavior of a child or pupil without letting go of affection, and the same principle holds good as regards criminals, and all proper objects of hostility. The attitude of society toward its delinquent members should be stern, yet sympathetic, like that of a father toward a disobedient child.

It is the tendency of modern life, by educating the imagination and rendering all sorts of people conceivable, to discredit the sweeping conclusions of impulsive thought—as, for instance, that all who commit violence or theft are hateful ill-doers, and nothing more—and to make us feel the fundamental likeness of human nature wherever found. Resentment against ill-doing should by no means disappear; but while continuing to suppress wrong by whatever means proves most efficacious, we shall perhaps see more and more clearly that the people who are guilty of it are very much like ourselves, and are acting from motives to which we also are subject.

It is often asserted or assumed that hostile feeling is in its very nature obnoxious and painful to the human mind, and persists in spite of us, as it were, because it is forced upon us by the competitive conditions of existence. This view seems to me hardly sound. I should rather say that the mental and social harmfulness of anger, in common experience, is due not so much to its peculiar character as hostile feeling, as to the fact that, like lust, it is so surcharged with instinctive energy as to be difficult to control and limit to its proper function; while, if not properly disciplined, it of course introduces disorder and pain into the mental life.