Emotion. Reaction to injurious. Regressive—fear.
Aggressive—anger.
Reaction to beneficial. Receptive.
Appropriative.
Anger Simple anger or wrath.
Intensive—Rage or fury.
Incipient—Displeasure.
Mild—Irritation.
Response to purposive injury—Hate.
Altruistic—Indignation.
Sentiment—Indignation and Hate.
Retrospective—Resentment.
Revenge.
Sub-hate—Detestation.
Despite.
Scorn.

But few remarks need to be added to elucidate the outline. Exasperation is plainly a late form of anger. It belongs to the period when anger has been subjected to will restraint, and when something passes all bounds of forbearance—is “perfectly maddening”—we are exasperated. Anger of a high and peculiar intensity produced by special and repeated provocation is known as exasperation. For intensive hate there seems no special word, at least, in English, though we denote it by adjective as bitter, malignant, virulent. Detest sometimes means strong hatred. Malice is not an emotion; it is a state of mind which is implied in hate, namely, deliberate intent to injure. We do not say we feel malicious; but if we hate, we are malicious. Malice is merely an objective term for a will element in hate, and denotes character of act.

The sight of injury done to others produces indignation. When law or principle injured and violated excites indignation or hate, we have that feeling for the abstract—rarely pure—which is termed sentiment. He who is indignant at injustice and he who hates sin have risen to the highest evolution of the anger group. For an account of resentment and revenge see chapter on Retrospective Emotion. In the earlier stages both anger and hate are rather undiscriminating as to rank or status of opposing object, but in later evolution there must be a sense of equality. When we consider the offending ones as entirely below us, as unworthy of our anger or hate, we detest or despise. Our relations with them may compel us to notice them and to have some feeling toward them, but we would not lower ourselves to fight them. To detest is to feel a strong revulsion, but it also in measure has a direct objective movement. Still, although detestation, despising, scorn, contempt, are by no means so actively aggressive as the other members of the group, they have evidently a direct affiliation with hate and anger. In all these there is direct repulse of all relation with what is below us, a position holding off and looking down upon the offending object as too small and mean for us to seriously oppose.

We cannot at present elaborate more fully an analysis, a genetic investigation, nor a classification, of what must appear to every attentive student of mind as a most important and extraordinary group of psychic phenomena. In all the lower psychic life with every perception comes an emotion reaction, very generally either of a fear or anger character. Everything perceived has a definite life meaning, nothing is indifferent, and, in fact, primitive perception cannot exist except as prompting and being prompted by emotion or feeling. For the low psychism there is no such vast collection of practically indifferent objects, a world of things, as maintains a constant and large place in advanced psychism. Lower mental life is piecemeal, inconsequent and broken, and wholly directed by feeling phases. Every object has its place only in relation to self-interest, as favouring or injuring. This is impressed upon those who have made any study of lower human types, and of wild animals, where your very presence, no matter how accidental and really meaningless, is construed as suggesting detriment, and suspicion is aroused, a preparatory stage to some fear or anger exhibition, one of those being often nascent, though sometimes not very active owing to the lack of full certainty as to your injuriousness. For the savage, who is incapable of disinterestedness, and wholly given up to self-seeking, the missionary and scientist must have some hidden personal motive, some intent to take advantage of them, and profit by them. From the first they are regarded with fear, anger, or hate. The strange and peculiar is hated merely for being unlike the self, and all non-conformity means personal slight and insult. With primitive psychism all objects are coloured by a strong emotion light, and this remains a tendency till the latest stages of evolution.

Anger and hate have by no means spent their force, even for human evolution in some of its more advanced forms. We all recognise the necessity of “spirit” to success. The one who is incapable of anger and of venting it powerfully is a weakling, and will be trodden under foot in the battle of life. The high sense of personal honour and advantage, which will brook no insult with impunity, or allow no injury to go unpunished and unresented, is still the sine qua non of worldly success. Show anger, hate, and defiance to all those who invade your rights; stand up and fight the battle of life against every oncomer, and secure and hold the position against all competitors. In the natural course of events—the struggle for self-conservation and self-aggrandizement—the meek do not inherit the earth, but rather those who are irascibly aggressive.

The most notable revolution in human history against the general course of evolution which we have been considering has come from Christianity. The world says, “If any one smite you on the cheek, hit him between the eyes”; the Nazarene says, “Offer him the other cheek also”; the world says, “If any one takes away your cloak, fall upon him and despoil him of his all”; the Nazarene says, “Give him your coat also”; the world says, “Hate your enemies”; the Nazarene says, “Love your enemies, bless them which curse you, and do good to them that despitefully use you.” The law of natural evolution by fear, anger, hate, strife, is replaced by a new law of a spiritual evolution through forbearance, humility, love, loyalty to truth, to beauty, to goodness, and to holiness in a kingdom not of this “world.” Life consists, not in making friends and fighting enemies, but in a fight with one’s self to realize unselfish ideals, to exemplify the highest principles and laws, and to achieve the largest and best work, without regard to self-conservation or self-aggrandizement. In this radically new evolution the mind is for itself, and is not, as in the lower evolution, merely a utilitarian factor, subservient to the general demands of life. Life, on the contrary, here becomes subservient to the development of mentality purely for its own sake. Thus pure science, art for art’s sake, an independent morality and religion, become possible. The greatest minds of the race are those who have lived most completely this highest life; but this new form scarcely touches the great bulk of humanity, and is very partially developed even in the so-called highest classes.

But it is not our present purpose to survey the higher evolution, or to point out its rationale. For the lower evolution, however, it is tolerably evident that fear, anger and hate, give the dominant tone to psychic life. These strong, direct emotions act as fundamental life factors; without them the individual would be quickly overwhelmed in the struggle for existence. The conditions of early life absolutely require these simple, naïve emotions to stimulate advantageous reactions. Emotional indifferentism is possible only as an artificial and by-product, a sort of disease or abnormal symptom even in the very latest phases of human evolution. The comparative psychology of the future will show more and more clearly and fully the nature and function of both the fear and anger groups as factors in biologic evolution.