s experiences in
the general principle that it is well for him to do things which bring
smiles, and to avoid doing things which bring frowns. What happens is
that having, in the way shown, inherited this connexion between the
perception of anger in others and the feeling of dread, and having
discovered that certain acts of his bring on this anger, he cannot
subsequently think of committing one of these acts without thinking of
the resulting anger, and feeling more or less of the resulting dread. He
has no thought of the utility or inutility of the act itself: the
deterrent is the mainly vague, but partially definite, fear of evil that
may follow. So understood, the deterring emotion is one which has grown
out of experiences of utility, using that word in its ethical sense; and
if we ask why this dreaded anger is called forth from others, we shall
habitually find that it is because the forbidden act entails pain
somewhere--is negatived by utility. On passing from domestic injunctions
to injunctions current in the tribe, we see no less clearly how these
emotions produced by approbation and reprobation come to be connected in
experience with actions which are beneficial to the tribe, and actions
which are detrimental to the tribe; and how there consequently grow up
incentives to the one class of actions and prejudices against the other
class. From early boyhood the young savage hears recounted the daring
deeds of his chief--hears them in words of praise, and sees all faces
glowing with admiration. From time to time also he listens while some
one's cowardice is described in tones of scorn, and with contemptuous
metaphors, and sees him meet with derision and insult whenever he
appears. That is to say, one of the things that come to be associated in
his mind with smiling faces, which are symbolical of pleasures in
general, is courage; and one of the things that come to be associated in
his mind with frowns and other marks of enmity, which form his symbol of
unhappiness, is cowardice. These feelings are not formed in him because
he has reasoned his way to the truth that courage is useful to the
tribe, and, by implication, to himself, or to the truth that cowardice
is a cause of evil. In adult life he may perhaps see this; but he
certainly does not see it at the time when bravery is thus joined in his
consciousness with all that is good, and cowardice with all that is bad.
Similarly there are produced in him feelings of inclinati