ANTIPATHY (Gk. &yr/, anti, against + rdeos, pathos, suffering, affection, emotion, feel ing). By derivation, the opposite of sympathy (q.v.). It may be defined as a permanent aversion to, or settled incompatibility with, some object or some quality of an object. We may distinguish between formal or logical an tipathy and concrete or actual antipathies. The choleric temperament is, formally, antipathetic to the phlegmatic, and the sanguine to the mel ancholy. (See TEMPERAMENT.) The term is, however, more usually restricted to such definite cases of individual aversion as the dislike shown by many persons to certain animals—snakes. mice, toads, cats. Some of these antipathies, doubtless, have their root in a cultivated affecta tion, or in the unconsidered encouragement of a prejudice imbibed in childhood; others date from a particular occasion of fright, or are due to the chance association of the object with an um pleasant incident. lf, e.,g., a house swarms with mice during a period of great mourn ing, it is probable that the mourners will hence forth show a marked antipathy to these animals. But there are cases which require a different principle of explanation. The aversion to snakes, e.g., which often prevails among those who have never come into contact with the reptiles, and wbo have nothing to fear from those that they may happen to meet, is, perhaps, a phylogenetic symptom. The snake is the chief enemy of the monkeys, as readers of Kipling's Jungle Book will remember; and the liability to fear of snakes may be a heritage from our pre-human ancestry.
Some persons, again, cannot enter a room which contains a cat. The explanation may be that the valerianie odor peculiar to the animal is auto matically associated in certain constitutions to organic sensations of nausea or shuddering, just as there are persons who are subject to shivering and gooseflesh when a slate pencil squeaks upon a slate. At any rate, the mammals that excite antipathy (mouse, cat, fox, hare, pig) have one and all a marked and peculiar scent; and we know from animal psychology that a smell-stim ulus may set up a well-marked chemo-reflex. The aversion to mice may be derived in part from the uncanny and snake-like character of their locomotion, and in part from the ubiquity which their small size makes possible. The aversion to toads (apart from superstitious belief in their poisonous properties) may be due to the clammy cold of their skin; we all know the horrible feeling that arises if, being in the pantry in the dark. we lay our hand by chance upon a piece of cold potato. Many historical cases of antipathy cannot now be explained, simply because we have only the record of the bare fact, with no mention of the conditions under which the antipathy took shape.
BrnmocuAyuv. A. Mosso, Fear (New York, 1S96) ; W. James, Principles of Psychology (New York, IS90). On reflex sensations, see W. Wendt, Grundziige der physiologisehen Psyeholo yie Leipzig. 1893). See COMMON SENSATION.