We contrast with the brusque type, careless of whether he arouses anger, the tactful, which conciliates by avoiding prejudice, and which hates force and anger as unpleasant. Against the quick to anger there is the slow type, whose anger may be enduring. We may contrast egoistic anger with the altruistic and oppose the anger which is effective with the anger that disturbs reason and judgment; intellectual anger against brute anger. Rarely do men show anger to their superiors; extreme provocation and desperation are necessary. Men flare up easily against equals but more easily and with mingled contempt against the inferior.
Anger, though behind the fighting spirit, need not bluster or storm; usually that is a "worked up" condition intended in a naive way to frighten and intimidate, or through disgust, to win a point. Anger is not necessarily courage, which replaces it the higher up one goes in culture.
8. Disgust, also a primary emotion, is one of the basic reactions of life and civilization. Literally "disagreeable taste," its facial expression, with mouth open and lower lip drawn down,[1] is that preliminary to vomiting. We eject or retract when disgusted; we are not afraid nor are we angry. We say "he--or she, or it--makes me sick," and this is the stock phrase of disgust. Inelegant as it is, it exactly expresses the situation.
Disgust easily mingles with fear and anger; it is often dispelled by curiosity and interest, as in the morbid, as in medical science, and it of ten displaces less intense curiosity and interest.
[1] See Darwin's "The Expression of Emotions in Man and Animals,"
--a great book by a great man.
After anything has been accepted as standard in cleanliness, a deviation in a "lower" direction causes disgust. Those who are accustomed to clean tablecloths, clean linen are disgusted by dirty tablecloths, dirty linen. The excreta of the body have been so effectively tabooed, in the interest perhaps of sanitation, that their sight or smell is disgusting, and they are used as symbols of disgust in everyday language. Indeed, the so-called animal functions have to be decorated and ceremonialized to avoid disgust. We turn with ridicule and repugnance from him who eats without "manners" and one of the functions of manners is to avoid arousing disgust.
Disgust kills desire and passion, and from that fact we may trace a large part of moral progress. Satiety brings a slight disgust; thus after a heavy meal there may be contentment but the sight of food is not at all appealing and often enough rather repelling.
In the sex field, a deep repulsion is often felt when lust alone has brought the man and woman together or when the situation is illegal or unhallowed. With satisfaction of desire, the inhibiting forces come to their own, and the violence of repentance and disgust may be extreme. Stanley Hall, Havelock Ellis and other writers lay stress on this; and, indeed, one of the bases of asceticism is this disgust. Further, when we have no desires or passion, the sight of others hugging and kissing, or acting "intimate" in any way, is usually disgusting, an offense against "good taste" based on the "bad taste" it arouses in the observer. In memory we are often disgusted at what we did in the heat of desire, but usually memory itself does not prevent us from repeating the act; desire itself must slacken. Thus the old are often intensely disgusted at the conduct of the young, and it is never wise for a young couple to live with older people. For in the early days of married life the intensity of the intimate feelings needs seclusion in order to avoid disgusting others. It is no accident that Dame Grundy is depicted as an elderly person with a "sour look"; her prudishness has an origin in disgust at that which she has outlived. Sometimes the old are wise--not often enough--and then their humor, love and sympathy keeps them from disgust.
Love counteracts disgust. The young girl who turns in loathing from uncleanliness finds it easy and a pleasure to care for her soiled baby. In fact, tender feeling of any kind overcomes--or tends to overcome--disgust; and pity, the tenderest of all feelings and without passion, impels us to march into the very jaws of disgust. The angry may have no pity,--but they are not less unkind in commission than the disgusted are unkind in omission. Thus a too refined breeding leads people away from effective pity and that sturdiness of conduct which is real philanthropy. Indeed, too much of refinement increases the number of disgusting things in the world; he who must have this or that luxury is not so much pleased with it as disgusted without it.
Raising standards in things material cannot increase the happiness or contentment of the world, for it merely makes men impatient and disgusted at lesser standards. We cannot hope to increase happiness through the material improvements of civilization.
