es and the
distinction of them from the secondaries.

The compounding of the primary emotions is largely, though not wholly,
due to the existence of sentiments, and some of the complex emotional
processes can only be generated from sentiments. Before going on to
discuss the complex emotions, we must therefore try to understand as
clearly as possible the nature of a sentiment.

The word "sentiment" is still used in several different senses. M. Ribot
and other French authors use its French equivalent as covering all the
feelings and emotions, as the most general name for the affective aspect
of mental processes. We owe to Mr. A. F. Shand the recognition of
features of our mental constitution of a most important kind that have
been strangely overlooked by other psychologists, and the application of
the word "sentiments" to denote features of this kind. Mr. Shand points
out that our emotions, or, more strictly speaking, our emotional
dispositions, tend to become organized in systems about the various
objects and classes of objects that excite them. Such an organized
system of emotional tendencies is not a fact or mode of experience, but
is a feature of the complexly organized structure of the mind that
underlies all our mental activity. To such an organized system of
emotional tendencies centered about some object Mr. Shand proposes to
apply the name "sentiment." This application of the word is in fair
accordance with its usage in popular speech, and there can be little
doubt that it will rapidly be adopted by psychologists.

The organization of the sentiments in the developing mind is determined
by the course of experience; that is to say, the sentiment is a growth
in the structure of the mind that is not natively given in the inherited
constitution. This is certainly true in the main, though the maternal
sentiment might almost seem to be innate; but we have to remember that
in the human mother this sentiment may, and generally does, begin to
grow up about the idea of its object, before the child is born.

The growth of the sentiments is of the utmost importance for the
character and conduct of individuals and of societies; it is the
organization of the affective and conative life. In the absence of
sentiments our emotional life would be a mere chaos, without order,
consistency, or continuity of any kind; and all our social relations and
conduct, being based on the emotions and their impulses, would be
correspondingly