VOLUNTARY ACTION 2O3
action. Moods, those indefinite and more enduring states of feeling, react upon the whole course of mental life, in fluencing the direction of one s attention, ideating processes and valuations, and so enter as indirect but important factors into choices and decisions. The sentiments, " those organ ized systems of emotional tendencies centred about certain objects," J constitute yet more powerful and pervasive in fluences which play continually upon our voluntary life and determine its courses more fundamentally than we realize. Of still greater importance are a man s ideals which have been inadequately defined as ideas plus a strong emotional colouring. 2 Sentiments and ideals have been discussed in previous chapters and we need not dwell longer upon them here; but it is important to observe that as the life rises to higher levels, as action falls more and more under the control of far-reaching purposes and general ends and as the personality becomes more highly organized and unified, the sentiments and ideals become more potential fac tors. Or perhaps the statement should be reversed. The more highly the sentiments and ideals are developed and the more important they become as factors of one s mental life, the more comprehensive become the purposes and the more general the ends which control his action.
Feeling, then, does not play a dwindling part in the vol untary life as it develops to higher stages. A wise and ef fective appeal to feeling is necessary if you would secure from men a voluntary response; and if you are seeking to bring those under your influence to choose to live for high and distant and universal ends, one of your first and most important tasks is the development and organization of their emotional life. Plow this is done is discussed elsewhere in some detail. Here we need only call attention to the ex tensive control over the development of character and des tiny which lies in the hands of parents, teachers, preachers and all who in any way work directly upon human person-
1 MacDougall, " Introduction to Social Psychology," p. 122.
2 Bagley, " Educational Values," p. 58.
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