102 PSYCHOLOGY AND PREACHING
nificant ; it shows how contrary to nature it is to feel a senti ment of devotion for an evil institution, and this is more emphatically true as to generic institutions.
We have seen, then, two processes going on in the devel oping personality. First, the primary emotions become or ganized into sentiments or emotional dispositions ; and, sec ond, with broadening experience and ripening intelligence abstract sentiments are built up on the basis of the concrete, and control or modify their action. The personality may, of course, be arrested in its development, and become per manently organized around some concrete sentiment, even one of the lowest moral value ; and it must be admitted that the abstract sentiments in many people never reach a high development, for this would require a correspondingly high development of the intelligence. But I am speaking only of the normal trend of development.
3. We must turn now to the consideration of another most important process which goes on in the development of personality. Some one sentiment tends to become dominant and controlling in the whole system. The developing per sonality tends toward unity and centralization, and some one sentiment becomes the focal point of the unity or the axis of centralization. As it becomes controlling, it tends to exclude or to dwarf all sentiments that are not consistent with it; and by monopolizing one s energy may weaken even those which are not inconsistent with, but only com plementary to it. This is a matter of such great importance that we should dwell upon it at some length. To illustrate : a man has a feeling-disposition with regard to his own property, which within narrow limits is proper and right. If his personality is arrested in its development and comes to be organized permanently around that sentiment as dominant, a large number of sentiments of far higher order are excluded. The development of the corresponding abstract sentiment for property as a social institution may even be prevented. Then the character crystallizes in
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