Bain defines it as “a conscious impulse which drives one to inflict suffering and to draw a positive enjoyment from the fact.” This definition does not seem to me strictly applicable to the inferior or animal forms of anger, as we shall see presently.
Considered objectively, or from without, anger presents itself with very clearly defined characters as regards its physiology and its mode of expression.[[141]]
1. Dilatation of the blood-vessels, augmentation of the cutaneous circulation, redness and swelling. This is also found in joy, but, remarks Lange, with less intensity. Besides, anger has a special manifestation of its own—i.e., the distention of the greater veins, especially on the face and forehead. In its extreme form (rage) it may cause nasal or pulmonary hæmorrhage, the rupture of vessels, and death.
2. The innervation of the voluntary muscles is increased, but in an un-coordinated and spasmodic form; the voice is broken and harsh, the body leans forward in the attitude of aggression, the movements are violent and destructive; “one strikes blindly,” the breath comes in gasps with the well-known symptom of the dilated nostrils, the object of which, according to Piderit, is that of taking a full breath while the mouth is shut and the teeth clenched. According to Charles Bell, it is due to the habitual co-action of all the respiratory muscles, as the nostrils of an angry man may be seen to become dilated, although his mouth is open.
3. According to Lange, and in spite of popular opinion, there is no increase in the biliary secretion; but this is not the case with the saliva, as is proved by the phrase, “foaming with wrath.” It is important to note that anger sometimes gives the secretions a toxic character. Van Swieten, Bichat, Trousseau, and others have verified this in the case of the saliva, when the quantity of ptomaine is augmented; and it has long been known that the bite of furious animals is dangerous, while analogous facts have been ascertained in the case of one human being bitten by another in a fit of rage. The lacteal secretion may also become toxic, and produce on the nursling the effect of poison. These facts once more show the close relations between emotion and physiological or even chemical phenomena.
In short, the organism in general, and the active organs in particular, being excited, we may say with Spencer, “that what we call the natural language of anger is due to a partial constriction of the muscles which actual combat would call into full activity, all signs of irritation, beginning with the rapid shadow which passes over the brow when some slight cause of irritation occurs, being different degrees of the same contractions.”
Anger and fear form an antithesis, but the former has, both physiologically and psychologically, a more complex character. In fact, fear, in all its degrees and throughout its whole duration, invariably remains within the category of painful emotions, while anger passes through two stages. The first, or asthenic, corresponds to the cause, the external occurrence, the immediate shock, and consists in a short depression, which is an entirely painful state; the second, or sthenic, corresponds to the offensive reaction, and, by its symptoms, approaches much more closely to pleasure than to pain. We need only remember the sardonic laughter which accompanies not merely the outbreak of anger, but some of its mitigated forms, and expresses the joy of seeing others suffer. Anger is therefore a mixed emotion; it does not belong altogether to the category of painful states of consciousness, though the painful side is predominant.
Considered as an internal and purely psychical phenomenon, it eludes description, like every state which defies further analysis, and, in its acute forms, cannot be seized by internal observation. It scarcely admits of retrospective examination. Its psychology is the history of its evolution, comprising three principal periods:—
1. The animal form, or that of real aggression. It is primitive and general. In animals it is seen in a pure state, because there are no antagonistic, alterative, or restraining tendencies. Those which live by prey, the voracious carnivora, present the complete type. Besides the physiological phenomena already described there is the actual attack, each species using its natural weapons—teeth, claws, poisonous liquids. The feeling has the violence of a hurricane, of an unchained force of nature. This is because it is connected with extremely powerful instincts; that of nutrition, which requires its prey, the struggle for life under its most implacable form, that of attack—the necessity of destroying or being destroyed. At this stage the element of pleasure is nil, or very slight, because the destruction has a blind and unconscious character. Bain thinks that monkeys are almost capable of enjoying the agonies of their victims, and perhaps elephants also. If this is correct, the fact is only met with in the case of the higher animals. It is needless to add that this animal form of anger is seen not merely in savage, but also in civilised man.
2. The emotional form properly so called, or that of simulated aggression. Much less general than the preceding, this is peculiarly human. Through the preponderance of the psychic element, or at least, the relative effacement of the destructive impulses, it appears to me the typical stage of anger as an emotion. It is frequently seen in the higher animals; the dog, meeting his enemy, stops, growls, erects his hair, and offers all the symptoms of aggression in the nascent stage. Man most usually confines himself to threats, with some degree of violence, unaccompanied by destructiveness. The affinity of this form with the first is evident, and evolutionists have drawn from it a psychological argument in favour of descent from animals; those beings nearest to nature—i.e., the lowest in evolution—are continually exercising their anger: children on animals and weak people; savages, coarse-natured people, idiots and imbeciles on any one who does not resist them.