The sentiment of nationality

Abstract

The sentiment, as a definite psychological conception, in its present form, dates from the publication in Mind Vol. V., N.S. 1896 of Mr A. F. Shand' s article "Character and the emotions" ; although Malebranche Spinoza and Hume 1 appear in various degrees to have anticipated it.'.. The article was a contribution to the study cf 'character' from the point cf view, first, cf different types cf character in individuals and, secondly, of the "Emotions and sentiments which in their difference among different men, account for "character" as a general psychological fact; and it is in the course of a search for that "central point of view" in the psychology of the feelings upon the absence of which James had commented that Shand advances a "great and important distinction" between the emotions and the sentiments" not hitherto recognised. The difference, he says, "lies in the different growth of their organisation. Emotions, while they "may subsist at a stage of relative isolation and simplicity" tend in the course of life, "always to build themselves into more stable and complex feelings, and these are the sentiments which in their turn become the centres of attachment of the organised emotions." Such emotions as hope, despondency, elation, envy, "always imply," he points out "some preformed sentiment to which they are attached "; in the life history of which they "occur as modes or phases." They are in a sense, the adjectives of which the sentiments are the "substantives" blending "as temporary qualifications of those more complex and persistent feelings which they both serve to develop and into which they are absorbed "., and which "in each particular case suffuse with something of their own flavour the emotion that happens to be excited in them.