Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 15.djvu/772

758 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY way. In order to understand this process by which disposition is built up, consider, for instance, the habitualized emotions implied in one's attitude to one's home. Why does the word "home" stir the emotion it does? Because of the many experiences of the comforts of home. These experiences were not all conscious, originally, and many originally conscious are not recalled when one thinks of one's home. Some may be clearly recalled, some faintly, and some not recalled at all, but many not recalled may lie in the subconsciousness and contribute their part to the total emotion stirred by the word "home." By habit as I use the term I mean a response in which the different steps through which it was built up are not consciously recalled, but, nevertheless, may lie in the subconsciousness and contribute some vibrations to the general feeling-tone of the response. Now, suppose a person accumulate a number of these habit-capacities of expansive feeling with reference to certain symbols, as "home," "mother," "college," "club." His temperamental or inherited capacity for expansive feeling, originally slight, perhaps, is accentuated by the stamping-in of these habit-capacities of feeling. That is, his disposition becomes more expansive than was his temperament. Now, in so far as the experiences which enter into a habit-capacity of feeling may be recalled, one's disposition has a cognitive side. A mother's affection for her