therefore, the presence of simpler and largely innate systems, such as the instincts and emotions. These are also the results of a long process of evolution and organization, the instinct being largely a chain of reflexes. When these primary systems are further organized around objects or ideas we have a sentiment, the most comprehensive phase of the self. The sentiments, it will be observed, differ in important respects from reflexes, instincts, and emotions. They are not innate but are developed through contact with our fellows in society. The sentiments are of fundamental concern, therefore, for all ethical problems. For they condition the character of the individual and form the texture of the social order in so far as it is really moral and human. Without sentiments we should be at the mercy of the impulsive and short-sighted systems of emotions. Life would be chaotic, inconsequent, futile. The sentiments furnish conscious direction for appetite and desire; they provide our measures of value in art, religion, morals, and civic life; they function as the element of control in every moral judgment.

§3. CONSTITUENT ELEMENTS IN CHARACTER

McDougall defines an instinct as "an inherited or innate psycho-physical disposition which determines its possessor to perceive and to pay attention to objects of a certain class, to experience an emotional excitement of a particular quality upon perceiving such an object, and to act in regard to it in a particular manner, or, at least, to experience an impulse to such action". The instincts, which have been called the "cosmic roots" of character, exhibit afferent, central, and efferent phases corresponding to the cognitive, the affective and the motor phases of consciousness. The reaction to the sight of an automobile suddenly rounding the corner and bearing down upon a pedestrian as he crosses the street involves first the perception of the machine, then the inner affective thrill of feeling, and finally the muscular movements connected with escape from the danger. Of these three stages the first and the last admit of indefinite modification while

the second or affective element is fixed and permanent. The affective experience aroused by the sight of the machine does not differ in quality from the affective element in the fear of hell-fire. But the means that have been used during the past centuries to arouse this fear of hell-fire and the provisions men have taken to avoid hell-fire have varied in a thousand ways and differ widely from the simple act of perception and the muscular movements in the case of the automobile.

Intimately associated with the instinctive systems, among which McDougall distinguishes as most important flight, repulsion, pugnacity, self-abasement, self-assurance, the parental instincts, and curiosity, are emotional systems, likewise innately related to each other and possibly to the instincts. The seven primary instincts, just named, have, according to McDougall, the emotional accompaniments of fear, disgust, anger, subjection, elation, the tender emotion, and wonder. Shand, however, insists upon a more plastic interpretation of these elementary systems of instincts and emotions. An instinct, Shand contends, may be excited without the accompanying emotion. The systems of primary emotions, he contends, are not, as McDougall implies, merely the effective aspect of an instinct. The emotions are systems more or less independent of the instincts and embody in their systems those instincts that are congenial and reject those that are not. Hence, Shand contends, instincts can be excited without emotional accompaniment and the same instinct may become related to different emotional systems. In unstable and neurotic temperaments these emotional systems become relatively independent. In melancholia, for example, the emotional systems of fear or sorrow dominate the personality.

The power to build up emotional systems is a spiritual liability as well as an asset to man. Emotional systems centering around sensational stimuli, where the hereditary associations are strong, are seldom abnormal. But emotional systems associated with idées fixes tend to disturb the balance of personality because they are not controlled by the higher systems. The emotional life of the animal is safeguarded by

the fact that its emotions are aroused only through sense stimuli that are innately connected with the emotion. Through ideas and mental images man is able to separate the emotions from their hereditary stimuli. An emotional system may, therefore, become a wandering star in the mental firmament unless brought under the control of the sentiments. There are apparently three stages in the evolution of the emotions. At the lowest level, shared by man with the animals, the emotions are inseparable from certain fixed sensational stimuli. Later the emotions become disengaged from this hereditary setting and threaten the unity of the mental life as is seen in the neurotic. In the highest type of personality the emotional systems are thoroughly integrated in the comprehensive systems of sentiments from which they draw their meaning and purpose.

The sentiment is the most comprehensive phase of character organization. It has been defined as an organized system of emotional dispositions centered about the idea of some object ". A sentiment is, therefore, not so much a distinct entity in the mental life as a way in which the mind functions by virtue of its organization. The sentiment is eminently teleological in that it finds its unity and coherence in the end it seeks. It tends for that reason to subordinate to its end the minor ends of the lower systems of emotions and instincts. Hence we may have the rather paradoxical situation in which the same instinct or emotional system constitutes a part of systems of sentiments that are opposed to each other. The Frenchman's love of country is apparently opposed to his hatred of Germany. But an examination will show that the emotions of fear, anger, sorrow, and joy, or the instincts of fight, repulsion, curiosity, and the like will be constituent elements in both systems of sentiments. Love of country embraces fear when her welfare is menaced, anger when she is insulted, sorrow at her sufferings, the impulse of fight when her rights are endangered. Likewise, the hatred of Germany involves the emotion of fear at her power, anger at her cruelties, sorrow when she triumphs, and the instinct of fight when

she oppresses the weak. It is important to remember that the character of the emotion or of the instinct involved is determined not in terms of its inherent structure or quality but in terms of the end sought by the sentiment of which the instinct or emotion is a part. It is the end sought by the sentiments of patriotism of the German and the Frenchman rather than the emotional or instinctive elements entering into these sentiments that determine their ethical significance. This is a principle of fundamental importance for our understanding of the part played by the sentiments in the moral life.

The unification of the complex systems of instincts and emotions in the sentiment is secured through ideas. For "The idea taken in the usual sense of the word as something that is stored in the mind, may be said to be the essential nucleus of the sentiment, without which it cannot exist, and through the medium of which several emotional dispositions are connected together to form a functional system ". These ideas may be associated with things such as the flag, a relic of a saint, the Declaration of Independence, or the sword of Washington. The loftier sentiments are centered around abstract ideals such as freedom, democracy, love of God or of the truth.

The key to the understanding of the structure of the sentiments, therefore, is to be found in the relation of abstract ideals to the lower, relatively permanent systems of emotions and instincts. The ways in which these lower systems can be combined and recombined in weaving the fabric of the self are limitless. These lower systems may be compared to the sounding-board, and the ideas through which they are combined in the systems of sentiments to the key-board, of a grand piano. When a virtuoso renders a complicated musical masterpiece the structure of the sounding-board is not materially altered. Just as marvellous tonal effects are made possible through the skilful manipulation of the mechanical combinations of the key-board, so character is but the rationalizing and socializing of emotion and instinct through ideas.

§ 4. THE STRUCTURE OF THE MORAL SENTIMENTS

We have now to ask what are the implications of the foregoing analysis for the structure and functioning of the moral sentiments. It is obvious that a moral sentiment is differentiated from the other sentiments, such as the religious or the aesthetic, not so much by the quality of the emotions or the instincts that compose it as by the ends it seeks. The unity and purpose of a moral sentiment is secured through some ethical norm or ideal that serves to organize feeling and instinct. The public indignation aroused by the political grafter or the profiteer is of course a complex mental state composed of instincts, feelings, mental images of persons and situations together with abstract ideas. But this state of mind takes on a moral character only in so far as the complex elements are unified and interpreted in terms of some general norm of conduct which men feel has been violated. In other words, the concrete instance is subjected to a moral judgment, the predicate of which is an habitual organization of the moral sentiments of men. What lends this norm or ideal its compelling power and effectiveness is the fact that it is shared by all the good citizens of the community. It is an integral part of the social conscience. For the efficiency of the social conscience of a community is obviously a matter of the vigor and the uniformity of the organizations of the sentiments of individuals in terms of principles that make for civic right

eousness.

In this connection an interesting problem arises as to the relation between a system of sentiment as a whole and the general principle or norm that serves to give it unity and purpose. Do the unifying ideas create the sentiment in the sense that they first suggest a definite end around which the more or less chaotic elements of the lower systems gradually arrange themselves? Or shall we say that the ideas are the products of the system as a whole in that they are selected to meet the demands of the system or arise out of the effort of the system to give intelligent interpretation