Yet another meaning once fitted perfectly into the configuration of ideas that make up gratitude, and that was loyalty. People are loyal because they are conscious of what they owe others—not all others, but those to whom they recognize a special allegiance. In both these ways gratitude resembles loyalty: in its awareness (one is grateful because one thinks) and in its partiality. For gratitude is in the main a response felt and granted to previous, equally conscious and deliberate, givers. But despite the overlap, we should be unwilling today to confuse loyalty with thankfulness. Loyalty (as its root in French loi, "law," suggests) is nowadays taken to be a commitment—something prior to benefactions and responses to them, not a bond created out of them. Loyalty, like law, keeps on working even when our feelings and wills have to be constrained to conform to it. Gratitude, on the other hand, is something that must be felt: a person is not grateful unless she feels grateful. The matter of feeling—emotion—will be the subject of the next part of this book. But it is interesting to consider briefly how, in certain social contexts in our own past, people exalted loyalty to the point where it almost crowded out the idea of gratitude. At the same time, gratitude was reduced to its external signs. For "giving back," in and of itself, was what counted as loyalty; one's feelings were almost irrelevant.
When the Roman Empire broke down in Europe and barbarian hordes poured into its lands, the basic needs of self-protection and survival demanded a substitute for the declining authority of the Roman government. People turned to the patronage of men of military might, surrendering their independence in return for security. Each group took formal pledges of loyalty and service,1 swearing to be reliable liegemen, retainers, and fighters for their lord, in order to present a united front against possible military attacks. There was mutual need and mutual advantage; the lord dispensed largesse at the beginning and continued to do so. "Freedom" meant freedom from fear, or at least a hope of armed support. Ancient writers describe the pattern—and we can recognize it today. A chief must show his liberality, and the followers expect it: "They are always making demands on the generosity of their chief," writes Tacitus of the Teutonic bands called comitati. "They ask for a coveted war-horse or a spear stained with the blood of a defeated enemy. Their meals, for which plentiful if homely fare is provided, count in lieu of pay. The wherewithal for this openhandedness comes from war and plunder."2
In the epic poem Beowulf (eighth to tenth centuries AD), the young warrior "by his goodness, by generous gifts of property while he is subject to his father ... prepares for his old age. He will then have people anxious to serve him; when war comes he will have supporters."3 There is no mention of "gratitude" here, but loyalty is certainly founded on gifts, together with an unqualified duty to return favours: an obligatory reciprocity. Geoffrey of Monmouth (twelfth century) tells us that as soon as Arthur became king of Britain, he "observed the normal custom" of handing out generous gifts to many.4 The result was that "such a great crowd of soldiers flocked to him that he came to an end of what he had to distribute." Geoffrey rams home the lesson: "The man to whom open-handedness and bravery both come naturally may indeed find himself momentarily in need—but poverty will never harass him for long." Others will feel obligated to come to the aid of their previous benefactor in his need. The original gifts, in these instances, are what people nowadays might call "an investment": the eventual return was not therefore what we would call "gratitude"—and it is not called "gratitude" in these texts. It was an expression of loyalty, and it had quasi-legal status: if receivers of such "gifts" tried to get out of repaying their debt when the time came, their behaviour was deemed outrageous and punished accordingly. Out of gifts and their consequent obligations feudal lords gave birth to loyalty, binding their vassals to themselves, no matter what.
A model for absolutely reliable loyalty has always been to hand: that of the indissoluble and unconditional bonds that unite parents and children. In the passage from Beowulf, the young warrior prepared for his "old age" when he distributed largesse, presumably because, like a father, he would eventually be able to rely on his vassals to help him in his need as though they were his sons. In early medieval Europe, however, the feudal bond, vassal to lord, was often made out to be even stronger than family ties; it was loyalty to a personal benefactor and therefore tighter than allegiances to distant king and impersonal country. Strengthened over the years by favours and counter-favours, the bond was underwritten by a feeling of horror and revulsion at treason (from French trahison, "betrayal," literally "handing over" to an enemy). A common man, however, who by definition did not belong to the circles of lords and noble vassals, was known as a mere "churl" (ceorl), from Old Norman and German Karl, "man." He was supposed to be obedient to his betters, but was not bound by the rules of vassalage. In aristocratic eyes he was boorish and often surly as well—churlish, in short. He could not be counted on to be "honourable" or to act out of unconditional loyalty.
It should be remembered that alongside this feudal system there existed an entirely different attitude towards human life and relationships. The Christian Gospel gives full recognition to the coercive nexus that reciprocity can become. But it unties the knot, for those who wish to have it untied, by separating material self-interest from spiritual well-being, and giving priority to the latter: the kingdom of God is not "of this world," and "you cannot serve both God and money."5 Moral principles are to prime loyalty-no-matter-what. Eventually, the slow evolution of centralized government, legal safeguards and other conditions of impartial justice, some reduction of the gap in power between the powerful and the lowly, and the growth of a commercial rather than a warlike economy softened and changed the social system. A first stage was the creation of medieval chivalry, which kept the ideas of loyalty and largesse, but added to these the obligations of a knight towards his God, his religion, his lady, the oppressed, and the defenceless. The assumption remained that a prince (now no longer a mere local warlord) bestowed benefits on his subjects, who therefore owed him loyalty in return. The fear and loathing of disloyalty remained, but began to translate into something less fierce, something underwritten more by goodwill and a grateful disposition than by sheer obligation.
What also filled the space left by the decline of quasi-contractual obligations between lord and noble liegeman was the existing notion of "honour." This was a quality that a nobleman knew he possessed, because of who he was and because other people kept honouring him for it. It was up to him to protect and if possible enhance it, not diminish or "stain" it. This he did in part for the benefit of his family, for a family's honour was invested in that of each of its kin; one shameful member could reduce the honour of all, just as a family member with a great reputation gave credit to all the others. And honour works best among equals: an honour code is something held in common among the honourable. Those outside the charmed circle of the honourable are by definition strangers to it, and excluded thereby.
If sufficient conviction were planted in a man, he himself could be counted on to try, of his own free will, to do what was honourable: an honour system can be an admirably effective force, motivating each honourable man from within. "Noblesse oblige" meant that a nobleman "could not but" do deeds of loyalty and valour, because of the honour he was born to. He would never be a traitor to his friends, refuse to return a benefit, or fail to avenge an insult, on pain of losing his honour. The revulsion his fellows felt for behaviour that contravened the honour code was normally sufficient punishment for any lapse, and extremely useful for keeping honourable people in line. For honour, which is believed in such a system to be innate, is maintained by reputation, the opinion of others; it follows that, especially where people are defined by the honour granted them, any humiliation caused by the contempt of others can be unbearable. But Christianity and its teachings were set aside whenever people insisted on their honour as something at once innate, exclusive to a superior inner circle, and dependent on reputation, at the opposite pole from humility, to be upheld "no matter what," an attack on which was a motive of vengeance.
A further breakthrough, religious this time and with broader influence than aristocratic honour codes, was made during the course of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. It began with and was accompanied by a new fascination in European literature with the subject of gratitude in itself, above and beyond the rules of gift-giving. Society was changing. The new interest in and reverence paid to gratitude were signs of a corresponding need for a relationship-encouraging force that could hold society together. The "explosion of gratitude" that is said to have characterized thirteenth-century Europe6 was not merely, or even mainly, intellectual. One powerful example among many is to be seen at Laon in France, where the cathedral was completed in 1205. Sixteen huge stone oxen still stand looking out across the town from the top of the church towers. They were placed there by the congregation in grateful memory of the animals that dragged the stones up the steep hill to build the church.7
The word gratitudo appeared for the first time shortly before 1270. It was formed from Latin gratia, in the context of medieval scholasticism. The new word is more abstract and carefully defined, more theoretical than gratia in the sense of "gratitude." It usefully distinguished, for the purposes of academic discussion, human gratitude from gratia meaning "divine grace." It took a while for gratitude, from the Latin, to become everyday usage. In English, the ordinary term was the Germanic thank. Julian of Norwich (ca. 1342–post 1413), for instance, for whom "gratitude" was of profound importance, uses always the nouns thanke and thankyng, and the verb thankyn, but never gratitude or being grateful.
The churchman Thomas Aquinas, in the Summa Theologica (1266–1273), written in Latin, carefully discusses gratitude within the Christian tradition, using the new word gratitudo often.8 He pays due attention to Aristotle and Seneca, and sees gratitude as very different from obligatory loyalties such as those of feudal vassalage. Gratitude is a virtue distinct in itself, though of lesser significance than religion (the worship of God), or filial piety, or respect for our superiors; it is about thankfulness to our benefactors. Gratitude is important—indeed, it may be limitless—but that is because it flows from love; love must be there first. Moreover, gratitude, like love, must be given of one's own free will (sponte).
Dante, although of the generation after Aquinas, sounds far more "feudal." In the bottommost circle of hell, Dante saw the giant Satan standing buried to his chest in ice. Flapping from the necks of his three joined heads (a grotesque perversion of the Trinity) are six huge bat wings, replacing the six glorious pinions with which he once flew as an angel; they create a downward blast of freezing wind. In each of his three mouths Satan grinds a sinner between his teeth, most horribly Judas Iscariot (whose head is forever inside the monster's maw), who handed over to the torturers his friend, benefactor, and Master—his God. Second in heinousness is Brutus, filially impious as well as a traitor and killer of his benefactor: he sided with Pompey, who was responsible for the death of his father, and he murdered Caesar, who had pardoned him after defeating him. And third is Cassius, who also received pardon from Caesar and then killed him. Brutus and Cassius dangle upside down from two of the mouths of Satan. The three sinners are especially wicked because of the trust their lords had placed in them, and the benefits their lords had given them. Dante never gives abstract names for their crimes, but demands that we remember what they did as he places them in the jaws of the greatest traitor of all, Satan, who rebelled against God in the beginning.9
One of the changes that had come about since feudal times was a restored emphasis on filial piety, most especially, of course, the duty of sons and daughters towards fathers and mothers. This requirement "went without saying"—it was nothing less than natural. (We note that Thomas Aquinas himself rates it higher than gratitude, and higher even than reverence for superiors.) In late-thirteenth-century England, a person who showed benevolence and due reverence to another was said to be "kynde." This word came to translate gratus, "grateful" in Latin. It was an enormous tribute to the idea of gratitude, for kynde was a word that derived from kin. Gratitude as kyndenesse was behaviour believed to be in accordance with nature; it mirrored, at least in part, the unique and unconditional reverence that was filial piety.
The English poet William Langland, in The Vision of Piers Plowman (1362), has his protagonist Will ask the equally allegorical figure of Wit the question that interested the poet most: "'What kynnes thyng is Kynde?' quod I, 'kan-stow me telle?'" ("'What kind of thing is Kynde,' quoth I, 'can you tell me?'") And he learns that kynde means "compassionate," "natural or innate," "that which pertains to one's kin," "that which pertains to God [whom Langland calls "Kynde"]," and "grateful."10 "Kyndeness," sometimes called "naturesse," is said in the poem to help form community, and to cement existing relationships both social and economic.11 Gratitude enhanced social cohesion and harmony, while ingratitude menaced both; gratitude was natural and ingratitude monstrous. The theme was durable, and lost nothing in intensity for more than two hundred years. William Bullein devoted a whole chapter to ingratitude in his Bulwarke of Defence against all Sicknesse (1579), and there he speaks of an evil "to bee numbred among the synnes Mortall, whych is an euyll moste intollerable and moste odious of all unto a good Nature, whych is called Ingratitude, churlishnes, or unkyndeness."12
William Shakespeare often unwrapped the sunny, unquestionably virtuous, ordinary significance of kindness to reveal the word's original anchoring in the sacred, primeval ground of kinship—and its extensions to include duties to benefactors, lords, and kings. Antony wrings the hearts of his hearers when he describes how the "honourable" Brutus joined the other tyrannicides in stabbing Caesar, his friend as well as his benefactor:
This was the most unkindest cut of all;
For when the noble Caesar saw him stab,
Ingratitude, more strong than traitors' arms,
Quite vanquished him: then burst his mighty heart...
O, what a fall was there, my countrymen!
Then I, and you, and all of us fell down,
Whilst bloody Treason flourished over us.13
Antony has succeeded in making ingratitude and treason one. The citizens weep and shudder as Dante did when he saw Brutus hanging by the feet from Satan's jaws.
In King Lear (1605), Shakespeare stares with horror into ingratitude's cold and baleful eye. Gratitude—above all "kindness" to a father, a king, a benefactor—founds the very dispositions of the just, of those respectful of divine and natural order. But in this play we watch the virtuous being mocked, tortured, killed by people who "like rats" have bitten through the "holy cords" of filial and married love to free themselves in order to further their personal worldly interests and their lusts.14 Lear learns to repent of his own "unkindness," which at the beginning of the play disinherited his daughter Cordelia, who had spoken truly to him and who remained faithful even when she had no cause to be grateful. He is forced to suffer "sharp-toothed unkindness, like a vulture" eating his heart, and in his agony he curses Goneril, hoping she will one day feel
How sharper than a serpent's tooth it is
To have a thankless child.15
Ingratitude has fangs that tear at human hearts and rip apart the fabric of family and society. The "dues" of gratitude, meanwhile, Lear hopes for from Goneril and Regan and does not get: not even respect for the very ties of kinship, let alone the so-called obligation to return a benefit.16 Lear thought he could rely on family bonds to make Goneril and Regan, now in possession of his riches, continue to show the love and reverence due to him as their father. But his daughters live in a world where children will show "filial piety" only when their father has benefits to bestow: "Fathers that wear rags," sings the Fool,
Do make their children blind,
But fathers that bear bags
Shall see their children kind.17
Gratitude can be smothered and thrown overboard; it can cease to be considered "natural."
When the villain Edmund first appears on stage in this play, he announces that "Nature" is his goddess, and therefore he refuses to "stand in the plague of custom."18 His "Nature" is a world of self-interest and force, blind to the transcendent; gratitude has no place in it. Edmund is "churlish" because he is a bastard (a "natural" child). Despite his noble appearance and his attractiveness to women, he feels excluded, by the pure chance of birth, not only from the advantages of his society but also from its ideals; he sees nothing to be grateful for. He is determined therefore to subvert the system and win. "All with me's meet that I can fashion fit," he says,19 meaning, "I consider anything just that serves my own interests." In modern terms, he believes neither in religion nor in human laws, ideals, or relationships. He succumbs to no pity, feels no remorse, and cannot see what makes a human being greater than the undeniable fact that he is at bottom what Lear describes as "such a poor, bare, forked animal."20 Edmund believes, therefore, that he is free to decide, using his quick intelligence, whom and how to swindle, manipulate, deceive, and betray. He is an individualist, ungrateful and alone.
Thomas Hobbes was seventeen years old when King Lear was first performed. His philosophical treatise Leviathan presents us with a worldview that could scarcely be more different from Shakespeare's—although Shakespeare obviously knew men who thought like Hobbes. And it is Hobbes, not Shakespeare, whom many people today consider "modern."21 For Hobbes, human beings by nature thirst for power and are disposed to violence. We all have three main desires, he writes: for Gain, for Safety, and for Reputation. These three keep us perpetually prone to fight one another in "a warre of every man against every man." Unless we can be restrained from doing so by "a common Power to keep [us] all in awe," we shall inevitably find ourselves living lives "solitary, poore, nasty, brutish, and short."22 Transcendence, for Hobbes, amounts to a social agreement to hand over the monopoly of force, and with it our own power, to a sovereign. This person may continue in power even if all his subjects want to depose him. It is impossible for him to be accused of injustice by his subjects, since they have themselves agreed to grant his actions absolute authority.
We are brought to capitulate so totally because, in the interest of self-preservation, we must do whatever it takes to seek peace, contract for peace, and perform justly the contracts we have made. Hobbes calls these necessities the first three Laws of Nature. Human beings have one thing in common: their desire for self-preservation. A Law of Nature, therefore, is what conduces to survival. Since they have been arrived at by reason, however, such laws are contrary to our natural passions, and they need artificial power to enforce them. Reason tells us, further, "that every man, ought to endeavour Peace, as farre as he has hope of obtaining it; and when he cannot obtain it, that he may seek, and use, all helps, and advantages of Warre."
Peace can be achieved if we can be made to enter into contracts and keep them. But living in society also involves giving to others: Hobbes realizes that contracts cannot cover everything. "First gifts" are made by choice, so Hobbes calls the action of giving first "Grace." He says that we give in order to gain friendships and obtain other people's services (including their protection). Other motives are to gain "the reputation of Charity, or Magnanimity," to deliver our minds from "the pain of compassion," or to give "in hope of reward in heaven."23 In other words, we give in order to get—and especially for Gain, Security/Comfort, and Reputation. If we did not get anything out of it, we would stop giving: "For no man giveth, but with intention of Good to himselfe."
Hobbes draws up, in all, eighteen Laws of Nature. The Fourth of these is gratitude—very high on the list. The Law is formulated thus: "That a man which receiveth Benefit from another of meer Grace, Endeavour that he which giveth it, have no reasonable cause to repent him of his good will."24 A gift, for Hobbes, is a reward given in advance, "to encourage, or enable men to do [the bestower] service."25 And in the same manner that injustice destroys the keeping of contracts, ingratitude ends gift-giving. Nothing is said of feelings: the Laws of Nature, being founded on Reason, are the opposite of emotion. Gratitude is doing what the giver "of meer Grace"—who had no obligation to give—wants you to do.
Where people had traditionally accepted that law depended on morality, Hobbes proposes that morality rests on law. Morality is not something one believes in; it is merely useful for our comfortable survival, and so should be enforced. The gift ends up neither free nor the expression of relationship among equals. Gratitude is action performed out of simple calculation. The awareness that is essential to it has become merely an astute consciousness of where our own material self-interest lies. Hobbes—who for Shakespeare was anticipated by Edmund in King Lear—ushered in the world of the Utilitarians and the modern Social Darwinians. It is a vision that in our own day has become all too familiar.