Page:Psychology and preaching.djvu/121

 SENTIMENTS AND IDEALS IO3

avarice. But suppose the abstract sentiment for private property as a generic institution is developed and becomes dominant, as there is reason to believe that it has done in the minds of many men of the present generation; such a person is lifted above avarice, but feels supremely the dig nity and inviolability of the individual property right and is more quick to resent any supposed entrenchment upon or limitation of that right than any other. The destruction or confiscation of property and he will see confiscation in all measures that tend to place restrictions upon the use of property according to pleasure by the individual or cor porate owner seems to him the highest crime and excites in him the most intense anger. Other human rights make but a feeble appeal to him at best, if they seem to conflict with this sacred right ; and the danger is that he may lose a normal sense of the value of human life and happiness even when they are consistent with maintaining the sacred- ness of private property. Such a sentiment for private property is believed by many to have become so strong in modern life and to have become so deeply embedded in the organic law of modern states that it has dwarfed the feeling for the.sacredness of human life, liberty and happiness. The sentiment of justice in the narrow sense of exact retribu tion, or collective retaliation for individual offences may become so dominant as to dwarf, if not destroy, the feeling of pity and the sense of brotherhood for the offender. The feeling of devotion to a particular church or denomination may become so strong in a person that it will absorb, so to speak, his emotional energy and seriously weaken his senti ment of human brotherhood for those without its pale. Or the sentiment for the church as the generic institution of religion may come to dominate a man so thoroughly that he will cease to realize that it is only an instrument for the conservation and promotion of fundamental human in terests. Further examples need not be added to show how universal is the tendency for one sentiment to dominate

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