Page:Psychology and preaching.djvu/129

 SENTIMENTS AND IDEALS III

around her person a feeling-disposition, a tendency to feel about her in certain ways under certain conditions. As the child advances into the age of reason, he begins to think about his mother s relation to him. He perceives that her tender kindness and helpfulness toward him are fixed dispo sitions in her; he sees more and more clearly what his mother means and has meant to him, and the emotional dis position of unthinking childhood is extended, deepened, strengthened, rationalized. He observes other mothers in relation to their children, and gradually there grows up in his mind the concept of motherhood in gen eral and in connection therewith a certain feeling-disposi tion, which reacts upon and elevates the disposition he has toward his own mother. The very idea of motherhood warms his heart with a complex of feelings, according to the connection in which he thinks it. He sees a mother with a child in her arms, and the sight fills him with a feeling at once tender and reverential. He hears an un grateful son speak disrespectfully of his mother, and it excites a contemptuous indignation for the unnatural in- grate. With advancing age and enlarging experience, the sentiment becomes stronger and tenderer. The presence or memory of his own mother floods his soul with a feeling sweet beyond expression and almost worshipful in its rev erence. But it is evident that his noble sentiment originated in and has been developed through the innumerable and varied experiences which have kindled in him pleasant emo tions with respect to her. And this sentiment will certainly be deeper and stronger if throughout this course of expe rience he has given practical expression of his growing love for her.

This crude sketch of the development of one of our finest sentiments is intended to help us to grasp clearly the simple and essential elements of the process. The repeated ex-cita tion of the appropriate feelings in connection with an object or an idea, and the appropriate expression of those feelings such is the simple process by which sentiments are devel-

�� �