some children for their parents we observe how quickly duties of obedience, respect, and gratitude are denied. Thus too when one nation hates another it feels itself justified in destroying even that noble part of the hostile nation which is ready to sacrifice life in its defence. And when workmen hate their employer they feel themselves justified in the wanton destruction of his property; and when the socialist hates, instead of merely opposing, governments that have a capitalist basis, revolution, calumny of those in authority, the appropriation of property without compensation, and the destruction of human life are no longer felt to be crimes. Let us then enunciate tentatively this law of hate: (11) Hate, so far from developing, like love, a relative ethics of its own, tends to destroy all virtues, ideals, and duties that restrain it from its ends.

4. Of the Distinction between the Relative Ethics of Sentiments and the Conscience

The relative ethics of a certain class of sentiments which we have been studying in this chapter must be distinguished from the general ethics of the Conscience. For while the former is inevitably partial to its particular object, the latter, unique among all sentiments in not possessing any private object, is not urged to partiality on that account. However narrow and unenlightened, however hardened by a man's vices, or rendered sensitive through his goodness and virtues, when it acts it acts, within its purview, without prejudice. And as it has no private object, so has it no private end; its end being to superintend and regulate other systems, to encourage some, to forbid others, to temper all, to approve or to disapprove of their actions.

Of the relation of this system of the conscience to the relative ethics of particular sentiments,-of the laws of their interaction, and how much conscience itself may be enriched and enlightened by the obligations which love obliges us to recognise,—we can here give no account. But were conscience destroyed in any one of us, as it is partially destroyed when we deliberately persist in a mode of living in contempt of its

laws, something analogous to it would tend to spring up spontaneously in every genuine sentiment of love when it had reached the stage at which its further progress was dependent on effort and deliberation. Hence we are now able to understand the profound reflection of Shakespeare: "Love is too young to know what conscience is; yet who knows not, conscience is born of love." 1

The conscience, though so detached from the private interests of all other sentiments, has still its limitations. How much it depends on the ethics of a man's own age, country, and sex, with all their defects, is now recognised. Its "prickings" are largely confined to a man's dealings with members of his own tribe or nation; its rules are not extended to protect all men; and few of them are taken to include the lower animals. The relative ethics of the sentiments are at least valid for their objects, though they may have to give way before wider considerations; and the virtues of the Affections, their devotion, truth, faithfulness, courage, and self-sacrifice have won the common approval of mankind.

1 'Sonnets,' cli.

CHAPTER XII

THE SENTIMENTS AS THE SOURCE OF TYPES OF

CHARACTER

IN the last three chapters we have been considering the qualities of a sentiment, first as arising from its various conduct, secondly as constituting its virtues and vices, thirdly as connected with a Relative Ethics of its own.

These qualities of sentiments are also called qualities of character. We shall commence this chapter with the enunciation of a law which furnishes an additional reason for so regarding them. (12) The qualities that a sentiment acquires for its own needs in becoming fixed, tend to qualify the character as a whole.

This law appears to be a consequence of the law of Habit. For as the sentiment forms its characteristic thought and conduct, these, with their qualities, become fixed and habitual, and interfere with the acquisition of opposite qualities in other sentiments. Thus if a man has learnt to be open and candid through his early affections for others and trust in them, or as a secondary feature of his manliness and contempt of deceit, he tends to carry this quality into his dealing with men in general, and has an aversion to all duplicity. If a man has become a liar through vanity and desire for applause, the influence of the habit extends to other systems, and induces him to lie, not only to escape detection and punishment, but when no advantage is to be gained by it. Or when a man has developed meanness through self-love, and over-anxiety about the future, when being poor, he dreads falling into worse poverty, and saves to provide against it, this meanness, becoming fixed and habitual, begins to counteract the gener

osity of his affections and restricts their development. And thus a quality appears to have a certain independence of the sentiment in which it first is developed, obtains generality, and becomes a quality of the man's character as a whole, modifying other sentiments.

We have then to enunciate a second law: (13) The qualities of a man's character, whether innate or acquired, hinder the development of all sentiments that need opposite qualities, but aid those that need the same.

Yet there are some men whose characters are so strangely balanced that they seem to be made up of what are called 'contradictions': extravagance and meanness, courage and timidity, sincerity and dissimulation, frankness and reserve. For in them no one sentiment is supreme, but the qualities which are formed in one are held in check, and kept within the limits of their own system, by the opposite qualities formed by other sentiments. Still in all such cases the qualities acquired by one sentiment tend, through the habit of their exercise, to become fixed in the character and to spread beyond their original limits.

The qualities which in this way become fixed in the character are, as we have noticed, far more numerous than the sentiments in which they have originated. For we have to consider the complexity of a sentiment,-the number of emotions that enter into it, the variety of situations that affect it, and the corresponding variety of its thought and conduct, and consequently the multiplicity of its qualities.

We can now see in a general way what are the dynamical relations in which a sentiment stands to the character as a whole. For, first, it consists in an organisation of a part of the character, which it exercises and strengthens. But, secondly, the rest of the character, which is outside of its system, does not remain unchanged. For in proportion as the sentiment becomes predominant, the emotional dispositions which it does not need, atrophy; and those which are hostile to it are suppressed; while the great multitude of its qualities, as we have just seen, tend to counteract the opposite qualities of other systems; and even its virtues and vices

have a similar influence. Thus although a sentiment is only an organisation of a part of the character, it is in a dynamical relation to the rest, and gives a peculiar orientation to the whole; so that it becomes clear that there is a general law of the dynamical relation of every sentiment to the character in which it is developed. This law is: (14) Every sentiment tends to form a type of character of its own.

This law is clearly exemplified whenever a particular sentiment becomes so predominant that all the effects which it always tends to produce are actually manifested. It has been one of the great objects of literature to represent such clear-cut types of character. In the "l'Avare" of Molière, in Balzac's novel, "Eugénie Grandet," we have studies of the type of character formed by Avarice. While in the former work there appears to be no love in the miser for anything but his wealth, in the latter, Balzac provides old Grandet with a genuine affection for his only child, Eugénie. The other members of his household are his wife, for whom he has no love, and a hardworking and frugal servant, who believes in him and loves him, and has become an efficient instrument of his avarice. Starting from his dominant sentiment with its qualities of industry, parsimony, and meanness, we can watch how his other qualities are connected with it. His tyranny over all the members of his household is absolute, because for the attainment of his end, all of them have to be brought into the same system, and made instruments of its purpose. They too must save from morning till night, like him; like him they must be ceaselessly industrious. Like him they must reject pleasures and entertainments. In reflecting on his influence over their characters and lives, do we not discern that a part of the system of every great sentiment must be a social effect outside of the individual in which it has developed? Although we shall be principally concerned with the organisation of such a system in the mind, body, and behaviour of the agent, yet this would be rendered ineffectual but for that contributory part which is organised in other human beings and in social institutions. For there is little that a man can do apart from others, and all his great ends require their co-operation. The ambition of a Napoleon obliges