Reason much of the signification that both popular and philosophical language have always attached to Emotion and Volition, that it could be made even to seem to afford an explanation of the facts. Reason might discover the laws that ought to be obeyed, once it had some data to work on, but what the nature of the sentiment was that made men feel that they should obey them, if it was not in any shape the fear of punishment or the hope of reward, remained as great a mystery as ever.
The mystery, it seems to me, need not have seemed so great as it did, if Kant had not left one whole side of our emotional nature out of account. Suppose that I receive an unprovoked and treacherous blow, the resulting sentiment will be twofold: (1) the fear of receiving another, (2) the impulse to return the blow received. Among the sentiments evolved and elaborated from the first, we will certainly find nothing but hypothetical imperatives; with those evolved from the second, however, the case is otherwise. Instead of supposing that it is we ourselves who have received the blow, let us next suppose that it is a bystander who receives it in our presence. The sentiment evoked now is the same, yet different. The same feeling of resentment is aroused, but when it is not aroused on account of a personal injury we think of it not as resentment, but as indignation. The sentiment is materially changed by being made impersonal. We may continue the inquiry further and ask: Supposing that the treacherous injury has been inflicted by myself on some one who trusted me, what sentiment is then aroused? My own detestation or contempt, it may be, is then turned against myself; and in this turning of such detestation against ourselves we have the very type of remorse. When, moreover, the remorse operates in anticipation on the contemplated act and prevents it, then we have the voice of conscience, the Categorical Imperative.
The moral sentiment thus seems to have its roots in two elements of our nature: (1) in the primary unanalyzable instinct of Resentment-Gratitude,[1] (2) in our equally ultimate and unanalyzable capacity for being similarly affected, more or less, by the treatment accorded to others as we are by the treatment accorded to ourselves. Both these ultimate characteristics we share, to some extent, with
- ↑ Lest the attempt to trace the connection between the sense of moral obligation and resentment, should seem to some to be deriving a good thing from an evil root, it may be worth while to point out that even a religious philosopher like Dr. Chalmers recognizes the important function that legitimate anger exercises in our mental organism.
