# An Introduction to Ethics, for Training Colleges/Chapter 5

CHAPTER V.
EMOTION AND SENTIMENT.
In the last chapter we saw that impulses and desires are developed from the instinctive level of human behaviour, and enter into man's comprehensive aims, purposes, and ambitions. In the present chapter we shall consider, as a parallel evolution, the growth of man's emotions, which, instinctive in their origin, become developed and systematised into comprehensive sentiments which may govern his whole life. Emotions and sentiments are important elements in character for many reasons, but particularly because they bear with them an immediate sense of worth or value. They impart a glow and tone to existence, and without them character would be dull and cold and hard. It is of the utmost importance that the emotions and sentiments of the child should be developed in the right way and in the right direction. We must therefore ask, What are emotions and sentiments, and how, if at all, may they be educated?
§ 1. The General Characteristics of Emotion. In the text-books we find long lists of particular emotions—fear, anger, hope, suspense, jealousy, disgust, and so on. When these emotions are ​described, it is easy for us to recognise them and admit that they are separate emotions. But our difficulty is that when we actually experience emotions, they often seem hopelessly confused and jumbled. Take, for example, the emotional condition of a small boy who is being caned, or that of a girl who is saying good-bye to her brother "off to the Front." The small boy is probably not aware of his emotions as emotions; and while the girl will recognise her state as an emotional one, she will make no effort to distinguish one emotion from another within that complex state. But, of course, that does not mean that the complex emotional state cannot be analysed. This is obvious if we compare our sensations in looking at a complex colour-scheme. Take, for example, our colour-sensations during the final scene of a gorgeously-dressed pantomime. The variously-coloured dresses and scenery, with all their subtle and delicate shades and tinges, blend into one complex colour-scheme. We enjoy the complex sensation we have as we observe the scene, and we do not usually try to analyse it. But, of course, the colour-scheme can be analysed. It would be quite possible to pick out all the minute shades which blend harmoniously in the whole, and quite possible also to reduce them all to the primary colours out of which they had been compounded.
Precisely the same thing is true of our complex emotional states. It is possible to analyse them. If we examine the emotional state of the boy who is being caned, we may find the emotion of anger (at himself for getting into the scrape, at the master ​who told "the Head" about it, and at "the Head" himself for inflicting the pain); the emotion of suspense, as he watches the descending cane; perhaps the emotion of fear of the pain it will cause; the emotion of jealousy of the boy who was in the same scrape and was not caught; and, it may be, disgust with himself for "blubbing." Again, if we analyse the emotions of the girl who is saying goodbye to her soldier-brother, we may find that her emotional state includes fear lest her brother be killed; anger at the Germans for causing the war; the suspense of wishing now that the train would go, now that it would give a little longer time to say good-bye; hope that he will be kept safe; jealousy of his fiancée, who is occupying too much of his attention, and so on.
These states are very complex. But, as we have seen, they can be analysed into a number of simple or primary emotions. These primary emotions often occur alone. The child who is struck by another immediately feels the emotion of anger, the creak of the door in the small hours immediately excites the emotion of fear, and so on.
Let us now consider some of the general characteristics of emotion. (1) Emotions permeate the whole of life. They impart glow and colour and tone to existence. Very little of our normal waking life is altogether devoid of emotion. But people differ very greatly in their susceptibility to emotion. Many a dull, drab life seems to have lost altogether any capacity it ever had to be emotionally affected. Emotion is a specially "human" characteristic, and we often call a man who has no capacity for emotion, ​or never allows himself to be moved by emotion, "inhuman."
(2) Emotions are for the most part instinctive in their origin. The child does not need to learn to feel angry or afraid. The simpler and coarser emotions, such as anger, fear, and jealousy, are more completely instinctive than the finer and more complex ones.
(3) Emotions are generally excited by some specific stimulus or some definite situation. In the latter respect they resemble impulses, which usually arise in response to some special need or interest. Some stimulus, e.g. a blow or an insult, is necessary to excite the emotion of anger. And some definite situation, e.g. a concert or a parting, is needed to produce complex emotional states. Emotions may also be excited by the recollection of some definite situation. The emotional state of the convert at the revival meeting is often produced more by his recollection of his good mother and his wasted life than by the preacher's actual words.
(4) The emotion may persist long after the stimulus has disappeared. If one has been angered early in the morning, the emotion may continue all day in a dull subconscious sort of way. If one has wakened up at night with the fear that burglars are in the house, it may take a long time for the emotion to disappear entirely. But perhaps the most persistent and constant of human emotions is hope. "Hope springs eternal in the human breast."
Such an emotion which persists after the situation in which it originated has passed may be called an emotional disposition. An emotional disposition is more indefinite than a simple emotion. A simple ​emotion always has a reference to some definite object. We are afraid of some thing or some person, we are angry at some thing or some person. But an emotional disposition is vague and general. It is a tendency to be easily excited to a certain emotion. Thus an emotional disposition of irritability, resulting from a definite fit of anger, will make us, while it lasts, more susceptible to anger than we are normally.
(5) The objects or situations which excite emotions in one person may have no effect on others. Emotions are relative to persons just as desires are. What is an object of desire to me may leave you quite cold. Similarly, what excites my emotions may have no effect whatever on you. The Englishman feels disgust at eating frogs, and the German feels disgust at the thought of eating rabbits. Many a man experiences a violent emotion of fear on seeing a black cat. One man's emotions may be affected by Handel's Largo, another's by Alexander's Ragtime Band. The teacher should bear in mind that it is not to be expected that the same emotion will be evoked in every child by the same situation.
(6) Emotions naturally express themselves in our physical appearance or behaviour. This fact has been vigorously stated by William James. "What kind of an emotion of fear would be left if the feeling neither of quickened heart-beats nor of shallow breathing, neither of trembling lips nor of weakened limbs, neither of gooseflesh nor of visceral stirrings, were present, it is quite impossible for me to think. Can one fancy the state of rage, and picture no ebullition in the chest, no flushing of the face, no ​dilatation of the nostrils, no clenching of the teeth, no impulse to vigorous action, but in their stead limp muscles, calm breathing, and a placid face?" But it is not only intense emotions that give rise to organic sensations and physical expressions. Organic changes, e.g. alteration in the rate of pulse-beat or breathing, accompany a slight touch of irritation just as they do a wild fit of rage.
§2. The Control and Organisation of Emotion. Children and savages naturally allow full scope to their emotions. Their emotions are readily excited, and they do nothing to control their expressions. In the child or the savage the emotion of anger immediately gives rise to the impulse to strike, and the impulse is generally obeyed. One of the first lessons the child has to learn is the necessity of restraining its emotions. It has to be made to realise that there are other persons in the world besides itself, and that its actions have been probably such as would naturally arouse angry feelings in the other person also. But the other person has learned to control that emotion.
Emotions may best be kept under restraint by controlling their expressions. The child soon learns to control the movements of his limbs. When he is angry he must not kick or strike. Again, he must restrain the vocal expression of his emotions, or at least of some of them. He must not scream when he is angry. He takes longer to learn to control the facial expression of emotion. And it is not desirable that we should have our emotions so completely under control that they never display themselves in ​our features. In general, we strive to conceal only those emotions of which we are ashamed. We seek to overcome blushing, because it "gives us away." We strive to prevent our faces paling with fear, because that is an emotion of which we are ashamed. Many of our emotions we have so far under control that we allow them to express themselves on some occasions, but not on others. We would allow the emotion of anger to express itself on our faces and in our words and actions, if we thought the occasion demanded righteous indignation. On the other hand, a similarly violent emotion might be repressed, if we thought its expression wrong or inexpedient. And there are other emotions whose expression on the face few people can wholly prevent.
Three things have specially to be remembered in connection with the control of emotion.
(1) There is no virtue in restraining the expression of our emotions unless we are thus helped to control the emotions themselves. The great practical importance of controlling the expression of emotion lies in the fact that if it is regularly and strictly controlled, the emotion itself is less apt to be evoked on future occasions by the appropriate stimulus. The importance of controlling the expression consists in the added ability it gives us to control the emotion itself. "And it seems probable that in societies such as our own, where control over the expression of emotion is inculcated from an early age, emotions are, as a rule, actually less intense than among peoples who see no cause for shame in giving them comparatively free play."
​It would be a very dull and uninteresting world, if we all controlled the facial expression of our emotions. Conversation and social intercourse would lose half their charm, if the social emotions were not expressed on our faces. The difference between a vivacious and a dull person often depends largely on the expressiveness of their features. And a more distinctively ethical question is involved. The habitual concealment of our emotions is apt to encourage a general tendency to dissimulation.
Further, it is not desirable that all emotions should be suppressed. To subdue all emotions is to rob life of much of its glow and warmth. It is as disastrous to deprive life of its emotions as it is to destroy all its desires. But not every form of emotion is valuable either to the individual or to the society of which he is a member. The emotions of jealousy and fear, for instance, are not in general desirable. But the energy that expresses itself in these emotions may be diverted into socially valuable directions. The energy that would express itself in jealousy may be turned into emulation, and fear may be transmuted into the emotion of respect. The moral educator may become the Alchymist of Character.
(2) Emotions should be allowed to work themselves out in activity of some kind. Nothing is worse than simply to bottle up emotions. Pent-up emotions "work like madness in the brain." If the emotion is simply dammed up it may breed poison in the moral life of the child, or it may later strike out a socially injurious path for itself. If anger be simply pent-up, it may become a brooding spirit of revenge, which may emerge later on in an activity of a far ​more harmful kind. The ill effects of pent-up grief are well known, and a flood of tears may bring wonderful relief.
In many cases the emotional energy may be directed into other and more valuable channels. It may be transmuted into cognitive or conative energy. "To a certain extent, whatever currents are diverted from the regions below must swell the activity of the thought-tracts of the brain." The emotional power that has been excited should not be allowed simply to accumulate as a dead weight. Nor should it be permitted to evaporate without bearing some practical fruit. "There is no more contemptible type of character than that of the nerveless sentimentalist and dreamer, who spends his life in a weltering sea of sensibility and emotion, but who never does a manly concrete deed. Rousseau, inflaming all the mothers of France, by his eloquence, to follow Nature and nurse their babies themselves, while he sends his own children to the foundling hospital, is the classical example of what I mean. The habit of excessive novel-reading and theatre-going will produce true monsters in this line. The weeping of a Russian lady over the fictitious personages in the play, while her coachman is freezing to death on the seat outside, is the sort of thing that everywhere happens on a less glaring scale. ... The remedy would be never to suffer oneself to have an emotion at a concert without expressing it afterwards in some active way. Let the expression be the least thing in the world—speaking genially to one's aunt, or giving up one's seat in a horse-car, ​if nothing more heroic offers—but let it not fail to take place." It is one of the great tasks of moral education to secure that emotions issue in valuable channels. Children should be encouraged to seek for themselves worthy outlets for their emotions. It is a wise moral economy to translate emotion into socially valuable action.
(3) Emotions are most valuable when they appear in an organised life. In every department of mental and moral activity aimlessness is both unpleasant and unprofitable. The child is never emotionally satisfied unless it is occupied in some way. The very young child's life is organised round such primary needs as eating and playing and sleeping. It wants toys to keep it amused, and when the old toys' possibilities become exhausted, the child's life becomes disorganised. It frets and fumes, and the emotions of jealousy and fear are developed. In the school, also, it is essential that the child should be kept fully occupied. Otherwise it becomes listless, and its emotional state, which was previously kept at a more or less high level of pleasurable activity, sinks to the depths of boredom and irritability. The unpleasantness of waiting for a train that is late is due to the absence of aim and occupation. We have time which we cannot organise in any way: the moments must simply be allowed to slip away in dull suspense. In order to escape the unpleasant emotional condition of boredom, we must organise our mental activities. And as we are most often bored during leisure hours, it follows that it is one of the great tasks of education to train children in the right ​enjoyment of leisure. Only so will the emotional disposition be maintained at a high level.
The emotions themselves must be organised. The educationist's aim is not to encourage each and every emotion. Emotions good and valuable in themselves may become positively mischievous if they are allowed to riot at haphazard. There is no more futile life than the existence that is at the mercy of random emotions. And it is important to notice that such an unsystematic condition is not natural. "Mental activity tends, at first unconsciously, afterwards consciously, to produce and to sustain system and organisation." The possibility of organising the emotions depends on the fact that they are always excited by, or cluster round, perceptions or ideas which are to a certain extent in our own power. The emotion of jealousy may be roused equally by the sight of my rival or by the thought of him. A great many of our emotions are excited by imagination or recollection rather than by actual perception or sensation. This is an important point in connection with their organisation. For our trains of thoughts and images are more under our control than our perceptions. We cannot always choose what we shall perceive; but it is always possible for us to determine what thoughts and images should live in our experience. We can organise them in accordance with our dominant purposes and ideals. And in this way we can organise the emotions which are connected with them.
§ 3. Sentiments. Emotions may be organised into sentiments. In the young child emotions occur as ​disconnectedly as impulses. In the last chapter we saw that impulses gradually become organised into more or less fixed desires. Similarly, the isolated emotions of the child become organised into more or less permanent attitudes, which we call sentiments. The emotions of the young child come and go quickly, one moment tears, the next smiles. But sentiments do not change in this way. They are gradually produced, and it is only gradually that they can be modified. One of the first sentiments that the child develops is love for his parents. When we say that the child loves his parents, we do not mean merely that he has from moment to moment a certain affectionate emotion towards them, but that he has a more or less fixed disposition or attitude to them, which may include many special emotions, e.g. sorrow when they are angry with him, jealousy of his little brother who is being petted, or joy when their affection seems to be restored to him.
Sentiments arise most naturally in connection with persons, and they have an intimate relation to character. The child enters into relations with his parents, relatives, teachers, and other friends; and out of these relations grow his sentiments. Sentiments are nearly all varieties of love or hatred, of like or dislike. If the child develops sentiments towards things, it is because he really regards them as persons. The little girl treats her doll and her teddy-bear as persons, and her sentiment towards them dies away precisely when it becomes too great an effort of imagination to credit them with personal behaviour. As the child grows up, he extends the sentiment of love which originated in his attitude to ​his parents to groups of persons and institutions. He develops a love of his school, of his city, of his country, and of his religion. In every case the sentiment is fundamentally love, though it may be called loyalty, patriotism, or enthusiasm.
When sentiments conflict, it may be either with other sentiments or with emotions. The child's love of his parents may conflict with his momentary anger at them. The sentiment of avarice may conflict with patriotism or filial love. When two sentiments conflict, that one will conquer which has been most habitually at one with the character as a whole. In every conflict between sentiment and emotion, the sentiment is likely to overcome the emotion which opposes it. The emotion owes its strength to its suddenness and intensity; but it soon exhausts itself, and the sentiment with which it clashed remains dominant. It is a sign of moral progress when the sentiment completely controls and organises the emotions and desires of life in accordance with its own end. It is a fundamental moral law, according to Mr. Shand, that "in the growth of character, the sentiments tend, with increasing success, to control the emotions and impulses; in the decline of character, the emotions and impulses tend, with increasing power, to achieve their freedom."
There is a certain stability about sentiments. They are not swayed by every gust of feeling. They are gradually formed, and though they may be subsequently modified, this will not be done easily or quickly. There is something morally conservative about sentiments. Our sentiments often persist ​even when both reason and feeling in us brand them as unworthy. There are Germans to-day who know that Germany did wrong to hack its way through Belgium, and feel a righteous indignation with her for doing it; and yet their patriotism and loyalty to their fatherland is as strong as ever. Sentiments, once formed, are profoundly conservative forces.
Sentiments vary very much from one man to another. They differ much more than emotions do. In the same community the most diverse sentiments may be found. In one man the sentiment of the family may be the strongest thing in the world, in another the sentiment of patriotism, or loyalty to some institution, or enthusiasm for the kingdom of God, while others may be dominated by the selfish sentiment, the sentiment of self-love. Now sentiments are almost wholly acquired during the lifetime of the man in whom they appear. The hereditary element in them is very slight. Sentiments are developed under the influence of the social environment.
Hence the importance of the moral education of the sentiments. The sentiments are essentially educable, and their formed nature depends wholly on how the child has been trained. Whether the child will become a patriotic citizen or a neutral cipher, a loyal member of a family or a self-centred misanthrope, an enthusiast for social righteousness or a morbid egoist, will depend very largely on the influence of parents and teachers.
What practical steps can the teacher take in attempting to educate the sentiments? It is not advisable simply to describe such a sentiment as ​patriotism and inculcate it, with much exhortation, as a virtue. That is often the very worst way to instil a sentiment. For a sentiment is a kind of feeling; and a feeling can never be made to seem desirable simply by being described. The only way to encourage the growth of sentiments is to make the great ends with which they are connected seem desirable as the great aims of life. In practice, the teaching of History may be used to foster the sentiments of patriotism and loyalty, just as the teaching of Scripture ought to aim at the stimulation of an enthusiasm for humanity.
The moral importance of the sentiments cannot be gainsaid. Every sentiment encourages the growth of those qualities of character which seem likely to subserve its ends. Patriotism or religious zeal stimulate special sets of virtues; and, in general, we may say with Mr. Shand, that "every sentiment tends to acquire the virtues and vices that are required by its system." Love, for instance, fosters a whole galaxy of good qualities; but it is apt also to acquire the defects of its virtues, such as jealousy and partiality. Love must ever be partial, and hence may often be unjust.
A profound sentiment will pervade the whole of a man's life, constantly spurring him on to fresh efforts. A great love, whether for a person or for a cause or institution, influences the man in whom it burns to strain every nerve to make himself more worthy of the service of the beloved person or cause. He feels it necessary to harmonise his life as a whole in accordance with the purposes of his dominant ​sentiment. All the strength of his will is directed to support the sentiment. The more intensely and steadfastly a man loves a person or institution, the more completely he organises his whole life round this sentiment.
For further reading: A. F. Shand: The Foundations of Character; W. James: Principles of Psychology, ii. ch. xxv.; W. M'Dougall: Social Psychology, ch. v.-vii.; H. H. Horne: Psychological Principles of Education, part iii.
* ↑ Principles of Psychology, ii. p. 452.
* ↑ Loveday and Green: Psychology, p. 138.
* ↑ James: Principles of Psychology, ii. p. 466.
* ↑ James: Op. cit. i. pp . 125-126.
* ↑ Shand: The Foundations of Character, p. 21.
* ↑ Op. cit. p. 62.
* ↑ Op. cit. p. 110.