Page:An introduction to ethics.djvu/95

 disconnectedly as impulses. In the last chapter we saw that impulses gradually become organised into more or less fixed desires. Similarly, the isolated emotions of the child become organised into more or less permanent attitudes, which we call sentiments. The emotions of the young child come and go quickly, one moment tears, the next smiles. But sentiments do not change in this way. They are gradually produced, and it is only gradually that they can be modified. One of the first sentiments that the child develops is love for his parents. When we say that the child loves his parents, we do not mean merely that he has from moment to moment a certain affectionate emotion towards them, but that he has a more or less fixed disposition or attitude to them, which may include many special emotions, e.g. sorrow when they are angry with him, jealousy of his little brother who is being petted, or joy when their affection seems to be restored to him.

Sentiments arise most naturally in connection with persons, and they have an intimate relation to character. The child enters into relations with his parents, relatives, teachers, and other friends; and out of these relations grow his sentiments. Sentiments are nearly all varieties of love or hatred, of like or dislike. If the child develops sentiments towards things, it is because he really regards them as persons. The little girl treats her doll and her teddy-bear as persons, and her sentiment towards them dies away precisely when it becomes too great an effort of imagination to credit them with personal behaviour. As the child grows up, he extends the sentiment of love which originated in his attitude to