Philosophers have entertained different theories so far about the mental sources of human activity. Socrates believed that reason is the sole determinant of the quality of human action. Virtue is the result of knowledge and vice is the result of ignorance. Plato built his theory of the state on this hypothesis and advocated the necessity of a philosopher-king who alone was fit to rule. But, much to his disappointment, mere reason could not turn the learned prince of Syracuse into a practical philosopher. Aristotle was equally enamoured of reason but unable to understand the real source of man’s higher purposes ended by justifying the slavery of some men in order that some others may be able to exercise their reason—a most unreasonable point of view indeed, which we find revived in modern times only in Hitler’s idea of the superiority and exceptional rights of the German race.

 

The view that reason is the controlling faculty of human action dominated philosophy for two thousand years till Bentham declared that the activities of man were determined not by reason or by knowledge and ignorance but by the desire to get pleasure and avoid pain. His theory, although highly plausible, could not form an adequate explanation of human nature. It was pointed out against him that man did not desire things because they were pleasant but they were pleasant because he desired them. Karl Marx, in the nineteenth century, built up a highly ingenious philosophy on the fundamental hypothesis that the instinct of feeding was the sole urge of human life—a philosophy which has captivated millions of people in the present age. But his theory too is unable to account for many facts of human nature, for example, the love of art or knowledge or morality for its own sake. Sigmund Freud maintained that the sexual instinct is at the bottom of all the activities of man. Adler, a pupil of Freud, came to differ from his master because of the exaggerated importance he attached to the sex instinct and evolved the theory that the instinct of self-display or self-assertion is the life dynamic. Jung advocated the view, which may be regarded as a compromise between Freud and Adler, that the urge of life is of a general nature manifesting itself sometimes on the side of feeling and sometimes on the side of conation. McDougall, one of the most well-known of all modern psychologists, holds that all human activity is due to the instincts which man inherits from his animal ancestors. Although there is no general agreement among philosophers about the psychology of human action, yet it appears that learned opinion inclines most of all to the theories of McDougall, Freud, Adler and Marx all of whom maintain that man is a creature of impulses which have their source in the instincts. Since our own view, that there exists in the nature of man an important and powerful urge which cannot be traced to any of the instincts and which is ultimately the sole determinant of human action, runs counter to these theories, it becomes necessary to examine its justification relatively to them. In the present chapter we shall discuss it with particular reference to the theory of McDougall.

 

It is needless to say that if there is in the nature of man an urge apart from the urge of instincts it is highly important for us to know this fact, because it is then only that we can study these two sources of human action separately and understand them correctly in relation to each other. If there could be a general agreement among the psychologists that there are two separate categories of the requirements of human nature, one resulting from our animal instincts and the other having its source in a special urge of the human being which rules the instincts, it will form the basis of a highly valuable constructive work for the future by means of which it will be possible to reduce to order many problems of our social sciences which have baffled the understanding of scholars so far and which, if solved, would make us far more contented and happier than we are at present.

 

“The instincts,” says Professor McDougall, “are the prime movers of all human activity; by the conative or the impulsive force of some instinct every train of thought, however cold and passionless it may seem, is borne along towards its end. . . . All the complex intellectual apparatus of the most highly developed mind is but the instrument by which these impulses seek their satisfaction. . . . Take away these instinctive dispositions with their powerful mechanisms and the organism would become incapable of activity of any kind; it would be inert and motionless like a powerful piece of clock-work whose mainspring has been removed.”

 

But, according to McDougall, man inherits all his instincts from the animals. Therefore, it is evident that their true character, unalloyed with other factors that human nature may have developed, must be the same as we find it to be in the animal world. If we understand the nature of the urge of instincts in the animal, we can understand it also in man, and when we understand it in man we can be in a position to distinguish it from any other urge that may be the special possession of man and that he may have developed over and above the urge of instincts.

 

In the animal world the instincts serve a biological purpose. They preserve the life of the individual and the species; one can expect that they will perform the same function when they reach higher up in man, because biologically the needs of man are not different from the needs of the animal. McDougall concedes this point but he is of the  opinion that because man has developed intelligence, therefore,  in him the urge of instincts becomes modified under its influence, “giving rise to the character and will of individuals and nations”.

 

There is no doubt that man is able to modify his instinctive desires and to satisfy them in a much more complicated manner than an animal does. But reason all by itself is unable to modify an urge. The modification occurs whenever there is a necessity to give expression to the conflicting demands or desires of our nature at the same time. Although reason can guide a desire and point out the way in which it can satisfy itself most suitably and in perfect harmony with other desires of our nature, yet it is not a desire itself. It is only a discriminating faculty helpful to us in the satisfaction of our desires. Reason is rightly known as the handmaid of desire. It cannot modify a desire or create an obligation by itself. An instinctive urge is modified only when its natural strength is increased or decreased above or below its natural level which is the same in man and in animal. We may say that we sometimes satisfy our instinctive appetite much less than we need biologically, by our own choice and intentionally, for the sake of an ideal because we are guided by reason. But how is it that sometimes we have a much greater attraction for our instinctive desires and indulge in them to a much greater extent than our psycho-physical dispositions or our biological necessities would require? It cannot be due to reason because it is unreasonable on the surface of it. It cannot be due to any of the instincts because an animal never does it, although the satisfaction of an instinctive impulse is accompanied by the same pleasure in man as in the animal. Evidently, there is another urge at work which checks the desire of the instinct in the former case and reinforces it in the latter.

 

Even when we are modifying our instinctive desires with the help of reason, there must be some other urge or desire which reason is guiding and which is ultimately responsible for this modification. The modification occurs because the demands of this urge have to be accommodated. The other urge may be clearly an instinct sometimes, e.g. when a hungry child forgoes the idea of opening the door of a cupboard till the arrival of his mother for fear of punishment. But sometimes the interfering urge appears to be entirely different in character from the urge of any of the instincts enumerated by McDougall. This urge, which has the tendency to become more powerful than any of our instinctive desires and, to dominate them all, is known as volition or will. McDougall explains volition as again due to instincts. We believe, however, that no adequate explanation of will is possible, unless we take it to be due to an urge separate from the urge of instincts, an urge which may be called the urge of man himself and not of his animal nature, and that the phenomenon of volition affords the clearest evidence of the existence of such an urge.

 

Will is an effort for moral action the desire for which is weak as compared with the temptation which is definitely an instinctive desire. Professor James writes, “And if a brief definition of ideal or moral action were required none could be given which would better fit the appearances than this. ‘It is action in the line of the greatest resistance.’

 

“The facts may be most briefly symbolised thus, P standing for the propensity, I for the ideal impulse, and E for the effort:

 

I per se  < p

I + E > P ” [1]

 

What is the origin of this effort E which overcomes the resistance and brings about the moral action? Professor James says nothing in answer to this question. Writes McDougall:

 

“Professor James like many others finds here an ultimate and irresolvable problem in face of which we can only say—the will exerts itself on the side of the weaker motive and enables it to triumph over its stronger antagonist—while leaving the word “will” simply as the name for this possibility of an influx of energy of whose source, causes or antecedents we can say nothing. . . Presumably according to Professor James this is where every attempt to trace the volitional process from its effects backwards comes against a dead wall of mystery because the inhibiting stroke (he talks of the inhibition of rival impulses due to instincts which is accomplished by volitional effort) issues from some region inaccessible to our intellects or simply happens without antecedents.”

 

McDougall’s own explanation is that the source of the additional motive power, which in the moral effort of will is thrown upon the side of the weaker, more ideal impulse is the instinct of self-display or self-assertion. “That this is true,” says Dr McDougall, “we may see clearly in such a simple case of volition as that of a boy overcoming by effort of the will, owing to the presence of spectators, an impulse of fear that restrains him from some desired object. He makes his effort and overcomes his fear impulse because, we say, he knows his companions are looking at him; the impulse of self-display is evoked on the side of the weaker motive. And the same is true of those more refined efforts of the will in which the operation of this impulse is so deeply obscured that it has not hitherto been recognized.”

 

And McDougall assures us that there is no awkwardness about this explanation although “it may seem paradoxical and repugnant to our sense of the nobility of moral conduct that it [moral conduct] should be exhibited as dependent on an impulse that we share with the animals and which in them plays a part that is of a secondary importance and utterly a-moral. . . . The humble nature of the remote origins of anything we justly admire or revere in no wise detracts from its intrinsic worth or dignity and the ascertainment of those origins need not and should not diminish by one jot our admiration or reverence.”

 

A really admirable thing may no doubt easily have a very humble origin, but McDougall’s explanation of the source of will is not only repugnant to our sense of the nobility of moral conduct, however unreasonable this repugnance may be according to him, but is also unjustified and unconvincing from a purely rational point of view.

 

If will is due to the instinct of self-assertion, the question arises: Why does the instinct become active in favour of the weaker desire rather than the stronger one? Both the desires, the weaker as well as the stronger one, have their source in the instincts. Why should the weaker desire be an object of special favour with the instinct of self assertion? The instinct could satisfy itself equally, nay, perhaps more easily and more adequately in the case of the stronger desire, for example, when you fight an enemy rather than forgive him, or when you give him a slap for a slap rather than turn your other cheek towards him; then why does it support the weaker desire alone? Moreover, it is in connection with such coarser and stronger desires of the animal nature that this instinct was most active all along in its history. Why should it forget its old habit and lose its original function entirely and begin to side with the weaker desire for moral action as soon as it reaches man?

 

The only distinction of man over the animal which McDougall concedes is his capacity for reason. Then should we think that the instinct’s preference for the weaker desire, in the case of man, is due to the influence of reason? But there are innumerable cases in which the effort of will cannot be justified on the score of reason. People otherwise sane show readiness to suffer all sorts of privations and even death for the sake of avowed principles. Many a martyr in the history of our race was confronted with one of the two alternatives: dignity, power and riches on the one hand, and death and disgrace on the other, but he decided in favour of the latter course and preferred self-annihilation to self- assertion. Reason cannot justify it, nor can one understand by any stretch of imagination how the preference of poverty to power in such cases is due to the instinct of self-assertion.

 

McDougall himself says that a person’s desire for even that form of self-assertion by means of which he seeks the approval of others and consequently puts forth volitional effort is inexplicable on grounds of rationality. He writes:

 

“The strength of the regard men pay to public opinion, the strength of their desire to secure the approval and avoid the disapproval of their fellow men goes beyond all rational grounds; it cannot be wholly explained as due to regard for their own actual welfare or material prosperity or anticipation of the pain or the pleasure that would be felt on hearing men’s blame or praise. For, as we know, some men otherwise rational and sane enough are prepared to sacrifice ease and enjoyments of every kind—in fact all the good things of life—if only they may achieve posthumous fame; that is to say their conduct is dominated by the desire that men shall admire or praise them long after they themselves shall have become incapable of being affected pleasurably or painfully by any expression of the opinions of others. The great strength in so many men of this regard for the opinions of others and the almost universal distribution of it in some degree may, then, fairly be said to present the most important and difficult of the psychological problems that underlie the theory of morals.”

 

Thus for one thing it is not clear why the instinct of self-assertion should become active on behalf of the weaker desire in order to reinforce it, rather than on behalf of the stronger motive, when reason too is not responsible for this discrimination.

 

Secondly, Dr McDougall appears to be arguing in a circle. Why in the particular case mentioned by him does the boy’s moral effort satisfy his instinct of self-assertion when others are looking on? His answer will be, because society generally approves of such an effort and the boy’s companions are sure to admire it. But why does society approve of it?.

 

According to McDougall, the society’s approval is due to the fact that it has absorbed the higher moral tradition on account of the influence of rare personalities, the prophets and saints, who exert this influence in virtue of the admiration they evoke in us. But what is the cause of the admirable moral efforts of these saints and prophets who, according to McDougall, are the founders of the moral tradition? Certainly the cause of these efforts cannot be again the approval and admiration of the society (which is itself the result of the tradition founded by the saints and prophets) stimulating the saints’ and prophets’ instinct of self-display. This will be arguing in a circle. And, moreover, what is the cause of our own admiration of the moral efforts of the saints and prophets because unless we admire them no tradition can be founded ?

 

McDougall seems to have, at this place, lost sight of the fact that it will not be possible for us to admire the moral efforts of the prophets and to absorb from them the higher moral tradition, unless there existed in our own nature something which renders their moral efforts admirable in our eyes. In that something, whatever it is, we ought to look both for the cause of our own moral and volitional effort as well as of our admiration for the moral efforts of the saints and prophets as also for the cause of the moral efforts (resulting in the establishment of moral tradition) of the saints and prophets. If we say that that something is nothing other than the urge of self-consciousness for Beauty peculiar to man and independent of the instincts, we are able to explain all the facts adequately. The urge of self-consciousness has no aim but its own satisfaction. Therefore, it does not obey the common standards of rationality. Like every impulse it has its own rational standard. Reason is its servant and not its master. The weaker desire springs from this urge and is not weak as a matter of fact but is only suppressed by instinctive desires. It comes into its own whenever, on account of our intense love for the ideal, we are able to turn our attention away from the instinctive desires and fix it on the ideal. It conquers the instinctive impulses by virtue of its own intrinsic strength. The “inhibiting stroke” comes from the love of the ideal and its force is directly in proportion to this love. When the love of the ideal is very strong, the instinctive desires are too weak to compete with the so-called “weaker desire”. In such a case the proportion of strength of the two kinds of desires is reversed, the weaker becoming the stronger and the stronger becoming the weaker one, and in such a case moral action involves no exertion or effort because no resistance exists. Such is the case with the heroes, martyrs, saints and prophets who act morally not as a result of effort and struggle like many of us but as a result of a desire which they would not like to resist. We see, therefore, that Professor James’s definition of moral action that it is “action in the line of the greatest resistance” by no means holds good under all circumstances. In very many cases moral action is action in the line of the least resistance.

 

The boy whose example has been cited by McDougall was able to overcome the impulse of fear because his impulse for the ideal (which ideal was, of course, the approval of his friends) was able to gain in strength sufficiently to defeat the impulse of fear, at a time when his friends were looking on.

 

Thus our own explanation of will divides the desires of man into two parts: the desires of the human self and the desires of the animal nature of man, i.e. the instincts. The desire of the self is our own desire and we hold it to be more important than the desire of the instincts. When the self asserts its own desire over the instinctive desires we call it volition or will. That McDougall, in spite of his effort to trace all the activities of man to the sole urge of instincts, is compelled to assume this fact is clear from the following passage:

 

“The essential mark of volition—that which distinguishes it from simple desire or simple conflict of desires—is that the personality as a whole or the central feature or nucleus of personality, the man himself or all that which is regarded by himself and others as the most essential part of himself is thrown upon the side of the weaker motive; whereas a mere desire may be felt to be something that in comparison with this most intimate nucleus of personality is foreign to the self, a force that we do not acknowledge as our own, which we or the intimate self may look upon with horror and detestation.”

 

McDougall gives the various names of “personality as a whole”, “the central feature or nucleus of personality”, “the most intimate nucleus of personality”, “the man himself”, “the most essential part of man”, “the intimate self of man”, to something which he is unable to define consistently with his theory of instincts but which is really no other than what we have denoted as the self or the self-consciousness in man. Although McDougall does not define what exactly this “most essential part of man” is, yet he realises that it has a desire which, though weak in itself, is ultimately capable of dominating a stronger desire, directly due to one of the instincts—a desire which it not only refuses to “acknowledge” as its “own” but also looks upon “with horror and detestation”.

 

It is very surprising indeed that in spite of such a clear admission that the desires of instincts are not only separate from the desire of something else in the nature of man which constitutes its vital factor, (he may call it “the intimate self of man” or “the most essential part of man” or give it any other name that he likes), but also opposed to it to the extent of inducing “horror and detestation”, McDougall does not allow that instincts are not the only motive power of human action and that the vital portion of human nature is really independent of the instincts and forms a source of action apart from them.

 

McDougall believes that the desire of the intimate self, i.e. the weaker desire, is due to a sentiment possessed by it which he calls the sentiment of the self-regard, and a full-grown sentiment according to him is nothing but a constellation or a group of all the instinctive emotions organising themselves gradually around an object. But, if this desire is really an outcome of a combination of all the instincts and is brought into existence by the combined emotional force of all of them as McDougall thinks, one cannot understand why it remains so weak in spite of it.

 

He writes:

“The organization of the sentiments in the developing mind is determined by the course of experience; that is to say the sentiment is a growth in the structure of the mind that is not natively given in the inherited constitution.

 

Each sentiment has a life-history like every other vital organization. It is gradually built up, increasing in complexity and strength and may continue to grow indefinitely or may enter upon a period of decline and may decay slowly or rapidly, partially or completely. When any of the emotions is strongly or repeatedly excited by a particular object there is formed the rudiment of a sentiment. . . . . But it can seldom happen that a sentiment persists in this rudimentary condition for any long period of time. Any such sentiment is liable to die away for lack of stimulus or, if further relations are maintained with its object, to develop into a more complex organization. Thus the simple sentiment of fear. . . . . will tend to develop and will most readily become hate by the incorporation of other emotional dispositions. . . . . they all in virtue of their repeated excitement by this one object become associated with the object more and more intimately until the mere idea of it may suffice to throw them all at once into a condition of such excitement, or to arouse all of them in turn or in conjunction to full activity. So the rudimentary sentiment whose emotional constituent is fear develops into a full-blown hatred.” [2]

 

Here we come across another fundamental point of our disagreement with McDougall in his theory of the will.

 

The excitement of emotions is, as a matter of fact, the result and not the cause of sentiments. The sentiment exists already before an emotion is excited. Emotions are events in the career of a sentiment. When a man loves, for example, the ideal of Communism, his love is able to arouse in him the emotions of pleasure, anger, fear, disgust, wonder, subjection, elation, gratitude, admiration, hope, relief, regret, disappointment, etc. He admires the ideal, hopes that it will rule the world, fears that its enemies may wipe it out, wonders at its captivating philosophy, is displeased when a person condemns it, feels elated when it wins a victory, shows gratitude to a person who helps it, regrets when it suffers a set-back and so on. Evidently the fact is that each of these emotions is aroused in the man at its own particular occasion because he loves Communism. It is not a fact, as McDougall believes, that he loves Communism because the creed was able to excite each of these emotions in him continuously for some time, till each became a fixed attitude with respect to that ideal, so that his sentiment is nothing but a sum total of these acquired attitudes. The excitement of his emotions at different occasions is the result and not the cause of his sentiment.

 

When we love, our sentiment is capable of exciting every emotion of which man is capable provided the situation corresponding to that emotion is created. The view of McDougall, therefore, necessitates the conclusion that a man cannot love an object till the object has had the chance of exciting each of his emotions without any exception sufficiently in duration and intensity to render it into a fixed attitude. It implies that as long as the excitation and the consequent fixation of the total number of emotions of which he is capable as a human being is not exhausted, love cannot make its appearance, because if the sentiment of love is an organisation of emotions, it is an organisation of all of them without exception. This view is contrary to our experience. We love persons, objects or ideas because they are lovable, because we judge them as lovable and beautiful and not because they excite our emotions one after the other again and again till all of them become fixed and rooted and prone to be excited again. We feel that our love, for whatever object it may be, exists before any of our emotions gets the chance to be excited and that the emotion is excited because the love is already there.

 

A person changes his love from one object or idea to another sometimes so suddenly that no excitement of emotions is thinkable, for example, when a Nazi may turn into a Communist overnight by studying a few lines in a book or by listening to a lecture. His conversion is due to his added knowledge of the case for Communism, of the arguments in its favour, resulting in a judgment of its greatness and a conviction of its truth. No excitement of emotions comes into the picture.

 

When the object of sentiment changes, the situations under which the emotions may be excited also change along with it immediately. The Nazi who turns a Communist finds that the occasions when he can feel gratitude, admiration, anger, disgust, disappointment, etc. have altered simultaneously with his conversion. This would have been impossible unless it is a fact that the excitement of a person’s emotions is determined by his love.

 

The emotions of a cultured man are aroused under situations which are vastly different from those which suffice to excite the emotions of a relatively uncivilised, uneducated person. When people come to be inspired by lofty ideals their emotional response towards events undergoes a marked change; for example, they forgive personal insults more readily than other men can do. Even when the change from one object of love to another is gradual (as when we take time to understand, appreciate or judge the beauty of an object) it is never preceded by a repeated excitement of emotions.

 

Let us now consider this view with particular reference to the sentiment of hate. “The typical sentiments,” says McDougall, “are love and hate.” If all sentiments are gradually developed organisations of emotions, then hate as a sentiment must also be a similar organisation and must have its own independent career of growth and decay like the sentiment of love. But it is easy to see that hate is not a separate sentiment, nor has it a separate career of growth and decay. It is subservient to our love, comes into existence with it, appears and disappears, increases and decreases in intensity along with it. There can be no love without hate. Hate is an aspect or facet of love. There is only one fundamental sentiment of which man is capable and that is love. We hate only those objects which interfere with and prove inconsistent with our love or our ideal. The strength of our hate is in proportion to our love. The more we love an object, the more we hate the objects that oppose, violate or interfere with this love. Hate being the direct and immediate result of a love cannot be an organisation of emotions developing gradually around an object. Its object is determined strictly, immediately, by the object of love and not by the accidental excitement of emotions. When our love changes its object our hate also changes its object at once. When we come to be thoroughly inspired by a new ideal suddenly, all our hates irrelevant to that ideal disappear at once and new hates relevant and subservient to that ideal appear immediately. How does it happen if the sentiment of hate is an organization of emotions and develops gradually by their repeated excitement? What is true of the sentiment of hate is true also of the sentiment of love. Just as the sentiment of hate is not a gradually developed organisation of emotions so the sentiment of love too cannot be a gradually developed constellation of emotions.

 

McDougall counts a third sentiment, that of respect, besides hate and love. But if respect is formal it is not a sentiment at all. It is a kind of discipline necessitated by some other object of love. If it is a genuine feeling it can be nothing but an aspect of love. We cannot really respect without loving, or love without respecting at least in the case of a perfect love and a perfect respect. When we love a person and do not respect him we love only a part of him and hate the other part, and when we respect a person and do not love him we respect only a part of him and do not respect the other part. The highest love and the highest respect are ultimately one and the same. They partake of a common quality which we call reverence.

 

If a sentiment does not result from the excitement of emotions, what then is the cause of it? The sentiment of love—and this is the only basic sentiment we can have—is due to our direct judgment of Beauty. It is a function of our consciousness, a function of what McDougall vaguely describes as the “most essential part of man” or the “intimate self of man”. The self must perform this function always sometimes with one object and sometimes with another. The object of the sentiment is the ideal. All the emotions exist already in our nature as parts of this function. The sentiment of the self comes into existence simultaneously with the idea of self. Only our view of the object that is lovable to us continues to change throughout life. A sentiment is, therefore, determined by the course of experience in this sense only that with the growth of experience and knowledge the object of sentiment, that is, the ideal, becomes more and more perfect but the function of loving itself is “natively given in the inherited constitution”. It is an innate quality of the self. No sentiment can decay completely without yielding place to another because the self must perform its function of loving always. It cannot hold this function in check and, therefore, if it cannot love one object (because, according to its judgment, it is lacking in beauty), it must love another object immediately. The self loves an object or an idea which appears to it to be most beautiful at the time. From our earliest childhood till the last day of our life we are always ready to love the most admirable or lovable object or idea that we come to know of, from time to time. Judgments of beauty are made directly. They do not acquire, and do not wait for, an excitement and much less a repeated excitement of emotions.

 

Since a sentiment is a characteristic of consciousness and since consciousness is free only in man, therefore it is man alone who is capable of having a sentiment. It is true that some of the higher animals also appear to have sentiments but in the animal the brain is too incomplete to satisfy the needs of consciousness. It does not afford consciousness the freedom that it requires in order to perform its functions adequately. In the animal consciousness is suppressed and it labours under material limitations which it has not yet been able to overcome. Therefore, the sentiment of the animal (if at all we should use the word “sentiment” for it) is crude and incomplete, half-conscious and automatic. It is incapable of shifting to higher and higher ideas. It is more of the nature of an inflexible, inherited attitude and a developed and intensified instinct than of a love or a hatred that is capable of ruling the instincts consciously or of exciting all the emotions that are latent in a sentiment.

 

McDougall tries to prove his thesis that a sentiment results from the excitement of emotions by giving the example of a boy whose father displays his anger repeatedly before him in such way that the boy develops first of all what he calls a “rudimentary sentiment” of fear which later on grows into a full-blown hatred by incorporating into itself other emotional dispositions which the detestable behaviour of the father is able to create.

 

Evidently this example is too convenient for the purpose of the writer. Even in this case the sentiment of love or the ideal existed before the emotion of fear was excited. But naturally in view of the tender age and the limited knowledge and experience of the boy, his ideal was very low in the scale of Beauty; it was no other than the satisfaction of his “instincts of attraction” itself. Therefore, whoever stood in the way of a smooth satisfaction of these instincts, in other words, whoever was able to arouse the “instincts of repulsion was bound to become the object of the boy’s hatred. It will be a mistake to derive, from this example, a general conclusion that hatred results from the excitement of emotions, because here, too, the fundamental cause of the boy’s hatred is an already existing love of which only the object is rather low in the standard of Beauty. His hatred appeared in the service of a love that was already present. The repeated excitement of his fear resulted in hatred because it enabled the boy to judge his father as a person who had proved himself to be out of harmony and sympathy with what he loved and liked. If there had been no innate capacity in him to love certain things and he had not loved them, he would have never hated his father even if he had repeatedly aroused his fear. If the boy had grown sufficiently in years and had acquired a sufficient amount of self-knowledge he would have had a higher ideal and would have probably found reason to justify, excuse or explain the behaviour of his father in the light of that ideal. In that case his ideal would have controlled his instincts so that the father’s behaviour would have neither excited his fear unduly nor induced his hatred.

 

Because our fears are excited by our ideals we revise them in the light of our ideals in order to ascertain whether they are well-founded or otherwise. We retain the fears that are based on a real threat to our ideal and give up all the others. It is not fear that creates the sentiment of hate but it is rather an already existing sentiment of love that arouses our fears and induces our hates at relevant occasions. A grown-up cultured man may not fear the boy’s father on account of his repeated display of anger and yet may hate him because his behaviour offends the man’s ideal of excellence. We hate whatever offends our ideals. Because we love certain things we have to hate certain other things. The basis of our hatred is our innate desire to love the object that appears to us to be the most admirable and lovable whether it is our instinctive desires as in childhood or a standard of excellence as in the case of a grown-up cultured man.

 

McDougall thinks that a complete sentiment grows out of a rudimentary sentiment. But since a sentiment is not a gradually developing organisation of emotions the distinction between a full-grown and a rudimentary sentiment is uncalled for. The capacity for love is innate, but the object of love continues to grow in perfection and uniqueness. What the writer calls a rudimentary sentiment can be no more than an emotional attitude resulting from a sentiment which is already present. Our principal love determines our smaller loves and hates. Love is not one sentiment but a system of sentiments. We love all those objects which favour our love and hate all those objects which thwart it. No subservient attitude of love or hate can grow in us unless it is permitted or required by our principal love or our ideal. It can grow only when an object favours or interferes with our principal love. To say nothing of a so-called “rudimentary sentiment” which, according to McDougall, is a growth out of an instinct, even an instinct cannot have its own way if its demand is contrary to the requirements of the ideal.

 

In man the emotions serve the ideal; in the animal they serve the physical body. The emotions connected with the instincts serve a biological purpose and become active when the needs of the body are either favoured or opposed. Their object is to start and sustain to its end the activity characteristic of the instinct in order to secure for the animal the preservation of his life and race. But in man these emotions are ultimately held in check, ruled and dominated by the ideal. In other words, the emotions are excited in man ultimately, when the continuation of love and not the continuation of life is favoured, or opposed. When we are living almost on the animal plane of life, as in the case of a child or a savage, our ideal is no higher than the satisfaction of our instinctive desires and consequently when these desires are favoured or thwarted our emotions are aroused. The cause of the excitement of emotions, even in this case, is our innate sentiment of love for an ideal. In the example cited by McDougall as long as the boy’s ideal remains close to his instinctive desires, his loves and hates must remain confined to objects that favour or disfavour these desires and consequently it is these objects that must arouse his emotions. But as his ideal improves in perfection and rises above the instinctive desires he must learn to control his instincts more and more for the sake of his ideal. In a highly cultured man, a man who is deeply in love with a lofty ideal, it is ultimately the danger to the ideal rather than to the body that will arouse the emotion of fear. Similar is the case with other emotions like disgust, wonder, anger, subjection and elation, that are bound up with our animal instincts. They are kept under a strict control by the love of the ideal. It suffices as a proof of the fact that emotions are inseparable from love that even in the animal they serve a sort of love which is, however, not free like that of the human being but is automatic and inflexible and takes the form of instincts. For, we know that every instinct of the animal is either an instinct of attraction or an instinct of repulsion.

 

The error of McDougall that a sentiment results from the excitement of emotions is, naturally, due to the fact that he regards the emotions as belonging primarily to our animal instincts of which, according to him, the human personality is entirely composed. He makes a distinction between the primary and the secondary emotions and says that the emotions connected with the instincts, that is, those which man possesses in common with the higher animals are primary and all others peculiar to man are derived from them as their combinations. But if emotions belong to the instincts, how is it that they fail to combine into so called secondary or derived emotions in the case of animal as they do in the case of man? Why is it that man alone is able to exhibit so rich a variety of emotions and not the animal? Why is it again that emotions organise themselves into the form of sentiments only in the case of man and not in the case of the animal, although they are excited as frequently in the animal as in man? Reason, which is, according to McDougall, the only distinction enjoyed by man over the animal, is certainly not responsible for this supposed chemical composition of instincts and emotions in man, on account of which the nature of man becomes so vastly different from that of the animal. To what else can we attribute these distinctive features of the human psychology ?

 

The fact is that emotions belong fundamentally to consciousness, to what McDougall vaguely understands as “the most essential part” of man or the “intimate self” of man. They belong essentially and primarily to the man in us and not to the animal. The emotions connected with our animal instincts may be most important for the preservation of life, but they are not primary in the sense that all the other emotions, which it is possible for us to experience, represent their mixture or fusion in various shades or degrees. We have seen that it is not the instincts and their connected emotions that combine in various quantities to make consciousness but it is consciousness that has evolved the instincts to be what they are. What is primary and fundamental is consciousness and not the instinct. Instincts derive their existence as well as their character from consciousness. It was consciousness that built up the instincts in order to make a passage for itself and not the instincts that built up consciousness. Instincts are only some of the tendencies latent in consciousness, which become fixed and automatic, in a way, materialised to compel the half-conscious animal to preserve its life and race for the purposes of evolution. In the course of its struggle with matter consciousness left behind some of its own tendencies embedded in matter and passed on to its own freedom. All emotions are, therefore, present in the nature of consciousness and consequently appear in their fullest richness and variety in man in whom consciousness has achieved its freedom.

 

Emotions belong to the sentiment, to the love in us which is a function of our consciousness. They do not create the sentiment but they are parts of the sentiment itself. They serve love. Love protects itself and continues its growth through them. They are the phases of love or the modes in which love expresses itself. They are included in love itself, otherwise love would not cause their excitement. An emotion is the response of love to an event. To give expression to an emotion, whatever the emotion may be, is to love, to exercise the function of loving, in a manner suitable to the situation exciting the emotion.

 

Except when we indulge in a real and not a feigned laughter, we are always loving and, therefore, always expressing some emotion or another in a greater or a lesser degree. Laughter is the self’s state of zero emotion when the self has a momentary respite from constant emotional demands of its love. The ideal of the self makes life a very serious business for it. It exerts upon it a pull of attraction, like the pressure of a spring in the mechanism of a wound-up clock, which keeps it constantly in a state of effort and emotional tension. Effort does not necessarily mean working or thinking hard. Even a state of ordinary rest is attended by emotions of some kind. A comic or non-serious situation excites laughter because it gives a momentary suggestion of the meaninglessness or the absence of the ideal, of love and of effort and emotion. Every situation which can give a suggestion of this kind, whether on account of the peculiar temperament or attitude of the person noticing it or on account of its intrinsic character, tends to excite laughter. The effect of a suggestion of this kind is the immediate removal of the emotional tension of the self, resulting in laughter, as if a spring that was tightly wound is suddenly released. That is why real laughter is peculiar to man who alone of all the species has a free consciousness capable of loving an ideal and expressing all the emotions, from zero onwards, latent in the nature of consciousness. When we are serious about life we are always passing through one emotion or another.

 

Emotions are events in the career of love; they indicate the circumstances through which love is passing. The reaction of love to each of these circumstances with a view to protecting and continuing itself is an emotion. The object of all emotions is to drive the self towards the object of love and away from the  object of hate. Emotions which have their source in hate are also aspects of love, since hate itself depends upon love. We hate for the sake of our love and we cannot love without hating.

 

When the course of love is running smoothly, that is, when the object of love is being approached and the object of hate is being pushed back successfully, the attending emotion is joy, bliss or happiness, and when the reverse is the case we have sorrow, some forms of which are despondency, despair and grief. The emotions range into innumerable varieties from sorrow to joy like the colours of a spectrum. Sorrow is due to the sense of a final failure to approach the beloved which includes the sense of the final loss of the beloved. The love persists in spite of this sense of failure or loss and this is the cause of sorrow. Sorrow is always due to an error of the self. The Beloved of the self, that is, Consciousness, is always alive and always approachable. For this reason sorrow cannot endure for long and ends gradually, in the case of a normal mind, in a reaction of hope which is due to the self’s natural (for the time being, overshadowed or repressed) conviction of a permanent possibility of achieving its desire, coming to its own.

 

The view of McDougall that the human self is an edifice in which the bricks are the instincts does not give an adequate explanation of will. It is not easy to understand how it can be possible for a man willingly to make big sacrifices involving the suppressing and checking of his instinctive desires and even the loss of his life for a sentiment of love which is itself at bottom no more than a group or a combination of instinctive desires and emotions which have for their object the preservation of life. The sentiment of love, say, of God, religion, country or nation which calls upon us sometimes to surrender our life cannot have the instincts as its basis, otherwise it will never seek its satisfaction at the cost of its own foundations. Indeed, the sentiment of love for the ideals which is the source of will rules the instincts and their emotions and it cannot do so if it is itself a creature of instincts.

 

[1] James, Principles of Psychology, Vol. II, p. 549.

[2] McDougall, Social Psychology, pp. 140, 141, 142.