If, then, psychology were concerned simply with the part played in the mental life by the sentiments proper, the subject might be dismissed in a few words; the sentiments would figure in a text-book of psychology very much as the ‘rare earths’ figure in an elementary chemistry. We cannot thus dismiss them, and for two reasons. In the first place, _the experience of a true sentiment_, in any one of the great departments in which sentiments may appear,—we shall mention them presently,—_leaves behind it a remarkably varied train of feeling-attitudes_; and these attitudes are thenceforward a permanent possession; we give illustrations in § 69. Secondly, _the experience of a sentiment, and the possession of the consequent variety of attitudes, enable one empathically to realise the attitudes and responses of those who, in other departments, have reached the same mental level_. Not only is there a ‘freemasonry among artists’; there is a freemasonry among all men and women who have at any time really judged or constructed; so that the radical reformer and the conservative reactionary, the austere moralist and the disciple of art for art’s sake, feel at home with each other, can get to close quarters with each other; their ideas and beliefs may differ as the east differs from the west, but—if they have honestly wrestled with their problem—there is a felt psychological community between them. The great writer who goes by the name of Anatole France has brought out this truth, in his own ironical way, in the quotation which heads the chapter. So that individually and socially the sentiments demand consideration; the attitudes which derive from them enrich and diversify individual experience, and establish a social bond of empathic understanding among those who would else be psychological strangers. § 69. =The Variety of Feeling-Attitude.=—Let us take an elementary example of the variety of attitudes which follows in the wake of a sentiment. The sentiment which we select is one of those most widely attained: the _sentiment of fitness of literary style_. If, now, you read Lafcadio Hearn’s _Japan_,—as who has not?—you cannot fail to notice the differences of paragraphing. There are paragraphs which follow one another in the ordinary way, without break. There are paragraphs separated by a blank space, the width of a line of print. There are paragraphs that begin with a dash. There are paragraphs separated by a line or triangle of asterisks. There are paragraphs which end with a series of periods. And these modes of connective separation, as we may be allowed to call them, are themselves variously combined.