Resentment is
properly a reflex form of sympathy or self-regard, arising when our
sympathetic feelings are wounded by an injury done to another, or our
self-regarding desires are frustrated by an injury done to ourselves;
when, in fact, any emotional element in our nature is, by the
intentional intervention of another, disappointed of attaining its end.
Each of these groups of feelings admits of being studied apart, though
in the actual conduct of life they are seldom found to operate alone,
and each, under the continued action of reason, assumes a form or forms
in which its various elements are brought into harmonious working with
each other, so as best to promote the ends which the whole group
subserves. These forms, thus rationalised or moralised, if I may be
allowed the use of such expressions, are, in the case of the
self-regarding feelings, self-respect and rational self-love; in the
case of the sympathetic feelings, rational benevolence; in the case of
the semi-social feelings, a reasonable regard for the opinion of others;
and in the case of the resentful feelings, a sense of justice. These
higher forms of the several groups of feelings themselves require to be
harmonised, before man can satisfy the needs of his nature as a whole.
And, when co-ordinated under the control of reason, they become a
rational desire for the combined welfare of the individual and of
society, or, if we choose to use different but equivalent expressions,
of the individual considered as an unit of society, or of society
considered as including the individual.
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