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."
