In contrast the lives of the lower animals appear to consist in casual and conflicting instinctive responses to what is sensibly present, without memory, constancy or foresight.
Here, as elsewhere, the advance is conditioned by a paral lel development in cognition. Permanent attachments presup pose the capacity to recognize an individual as such and not merely as a member of one's kind. It presupposes also a uni formity of emotional response. So far as in virtue of past ex perience an object acquires the capacity to evoke a constant emo tional reaction it is said to be an object of an emotive disposition. But objects which evoke one emotional response will generally call forth several according to circumstances, and an organisation of a system of such dispositions constitutes a sentiment as the term is psychologically employed.
But the mere occurrence of a variety of emotional responses towards a single object is not enough. A mere business acquaint ance may on various occasions arouse a series of distinct emo tional attitudes, in consequence of which we may develop noth ing more than a tendency to regard him with mingled feelings. Nor do we develop in the ordinary course of events any distinctive sentiment in relation to the weather.
Organization of conative tendencies is only brought about when some dominant impulse is in control. In such typical sentiments as love and hatred, or devotion to a cause the distinction previ ously drawn between primary and secondary tendencies is seen oil a higher plane. A dominant conation with persistent attach ment to a central object maintains in its service a system of sub sidiary trends. Joy, Sorrow, Anger and Fear are four subsidiary
tendencies which are generally involved. In Joy we recognize, at a later stage of development and suffused with a distinctive affective tone, the primitive reaction to success. Fear and Anger, as previously observed, may be regarded as corresponding de velopments of the responses evoked by difficulty. Of these too Sorrow would seem to be a further special case, being in the ex tremer form a tendency not only to desist from any given line of action but to abandon the pursuit of the end by further varia tion of means. It is seen in its purest form in the ultimate defeats of the primary trend.
Theoretically, any conative tendency of primary and inde pendent order, so far as it is enduring and concerned with a cen tral object to which a permanent "attachment" can be formed, may provide the basis of a sentiment. It is rare, however, in normal development for tendencies to be found in such isolation. In so far as there is approximation to such simplicity the disposi tion is more appropriately described as an obsession, mono mania, or "complex," all of which terms involve a reference to some degree of dissociation which alone can produce such isolation. The typical sentiment is complex and more or less controlled by the character as a whole.
The parental sentiment involves a tendency to seek the pres ence of the child, to foster its development and to anticipate all that a mature and enlightened self regard might lead it to desire.
As the simple tendency occurs only in a more complex system so the sentiment forms part of a larger whole. The parental senti ment is usually bound up with what would otherwise be regarded as ego-centric ambition and both are modified in proportion to the extent to which they blend and interact.
In general the structure of character as a whole may be inter preted as a resultant of such modes of synthesis.