3. When we are unready, to act in a certain way, but are summarily called upon to mobilize our energy for this purpose, the situation is again often described as “bad.” Unexpected, excess taxes always produce an emotional situation specifically related to this value predicate.
4. Any inadequate response, in other words, one that is faulty, erroneous, and the like, may be called “bad.” Sometimes, also, the person making such a response is described by the same term.
From this it appears that the general meaning of “bad” is within the scope of our discovery. Not only is this deducible from our previous identification of this concept with the useless, the independable, and with that which disappoints, but it is also plainly foreshadowed by the four behavior situations we have just described. “Bad” seems to imply that action, interest, purpose, and the like, have been thwarted; that the organism has become a center of inhibitions, and is in discomfort either because the energy which it has mobilized cannot be released into action, or because demands for such release cannot be met. Such a physiological condition is best described as incoordinate. And this term covers all three of our classes of “bad.” Moreover, by partial contrast with good, “bad” implies a withdrawing reaction, with either a slump in muscular tone (in which case we have privative “bad”), or else a sudden onset of unrelieved tensions—(positive “bad”). Accompanying such a condition, we may safely postulate synaptic impermeability and inhibition, together with varying degrees of unpleasant strain sensations. But mark, that we do not say that the “bad” is always equivalent to the painful.
Were physiological science sufficiently advanced, it would be possible for us to complete our definition of badness in terms of the mal-functioning of such internal systems as the alimentary canal, the cardiac, respiratory, and excretory mechanisms, and the endocrine glands. Our common experience indubitably indicates that all forms of thwarting and inhibition which prompt our exclamations, react violently upon the internal machinery. Indeed, it is not too much to claim that both the centrifugal and centripetal types of behavior which are implied by the terms “good” and “bad” respectively just as often as not have their source in the postures and manœuvres of our organic interior. That is, brief to say, why the healthy man and the dyspeptic, the optimist and the pessimist, will give precisely opposite accounts of the same external world. We remarked before that speech not only points out and distinguishes objects for us, but also implies and predicts human activities. Our analysis of good and bad fortifies this thesis beyond contradiction, and shows that any value predicate that has a specific reference to the environment has specific implications for the organism as well.
The Physiology of “Evil”
In some minds the term “evil” has primarily what is called a moral signification, and implies first and foremost anything “contrary to an accepted standard of righteousness,” or anything “inconsistent with or violating the moral law”; and consequently, it is equivalent to the terms “sinful” and “wicked.” Let us not meet such minds too intimately. Speaking in this fashion is not only vague, but misleading as well. For when duly examined, almost every so-called “standard of righteousness” becomes a totally unspecific category of behavior, while the term “moral law” is not law in any dependable sense of the term at all. Certainly it is not a law of nature,—of human nature,—for it does not adequately describe any typical behavior situations. Neither is it law to a jurist, since there is no organized force that can be brought to bear upon human beings to compel them to obey it in their actions, much less in their thinking. Moreover, the terms “sinful” and “wicked” are so narrow and provincial and so exclusively employed by religionists “to pelt their adversaries with,” that their equivalence to “evil” as a term of value in the broadest ethical sense is, to say the least of it, problematical. Whether unfortunately or not, none of the purely moral categories are fundamental for an understanding of the actual behavior of human beings. Indeed, as a usual thing, they hint uncritical and disorderly thinking in him who uses them, rather than specify any intelligent and sympathetic appreciation of human interests, or any analytical insight into the environment which now thwarts and now furthers such interests.
And now to our analysis. The term “evil” is much more assertive than is the word “bad,” and more forceful than all but a few significations of the word “good.” It originally had the adverbial force of up or over, two words whose empathic significance is worthy of remark. Today the term “evil” signifies either (a) “that which exceeds due measure,” or (b) “that which oversteps proper limits.” Here, then, we notice at the outset that “evil,” unlike either good or bad, always carries with it the presumption of standards or rules.
To a large extent the place in the language formerly occupied by the term “evil” is now held by the term “bad.” With the reasons for this change we are not especially concerned here, although it may be appropriate to point out that the popularity of any term that has been used almost exclusively by religionists for purposes of anathema is doomed. Besides, the word “evil” calls up literary associations which condemn it to modern minds. Such expressions as “The Evil One” (that is, the Devil of the Middle Ages), the “evil eye” (another outworn superstition), the “King’s Evil,” and a dozen other equally obsolete terms have fallen into such low repute that they have weakened, so to speak, the gestural significance of the remnants of this concept. Nevertheless, it must be admitted that there is far more dramatic vocal quality attaching to the term “evil” than to either of the words “good” or “bad.” Few words in the language provide such an opportunity as does this one for the simultaneous display of eye-, lip-, and jaw-gestures, whose combined effects are none the less striking, no matter how empathically unpleasant they have become. We invite you to stand before the mirror, and say the word “evil” with clenched teeth and canines showing, and verify this remark.
While the term “evil” is employed as an adjective, a noun, and an adverb, we do not need to stop here to catalogue its uses under these three headings. All we need to consider is that “evil” is an intensification of “bad” in the positive sense of that term.[10] It is also a forceful negative of Class B of good, in the sense that it implies that which actively operates to produce incoordination, mal-adjustment, discomfort, and the like. It will be recalled that Class B of “good” included whatever conduced to life, health, pleasure, and stability. On the contrary, “evil” is a gestural sign that indicates any and all processes of disintegration, disruption, and confusion. It at once implies something which is energetically antagonistic to our purposes.
The definition of evil in mechanistic terms is now within our reach. We have said before that “evil” is an intensification of the term “bad,” which latter term was used to describe an incoordinate condition of the organism brought about because its wishes, interests, and purposes,—in a word, its action-patterns,—had been thwarted. Just what more than this does “evil” imply? It implies that our wishes have been thwarted to such an extent as to call forth from us the most energetic, antagonistic reactions of which we are capable. “Good” signifies an outgoing reaction, “bad” signifies a withdrawing reaction, while “evil” means that within the organism some of the available energies are being hastily mobilized to compensate for an outgoing reaction that has been thwarted. Of course, there are many persons who never attempt any compensation of such a constructive character as to prevent the recurrence of the same evil situation, either because they are physically unfit, or are poor in spirit, but in such cases the word “evil” is used without very much meaning.