Thus we have seen that the direction of the child's affection to the parent of the opposite sex rather than to the one of his own sex is probably determined largely by the extent of the affection which the child in his turn receives from the two parents respectively; the heterosexual inclinations of the parents causing them on the whole, and in the absence of any powerful factors tending to produce an opposite result, to give their love most freely towards those of their children who are of the opposite sex to their own. We have seen too that the nature and duration of the feelings of envy, jealousy and hate which a child is liable to experience towards one or other of its parents are to a very considerable extent dependent on the behaviour of this parent towards the child. It is evident also from our previous considerations that there is likely to be a quantitative as well as a qualitative correspondence between the love and hate which a child may feel towards its parents and the manifestation of corresponding emotions in the parents themselves. All that is left for us to do in this direction is to look a little more closely into some of the factors which determine the nature and extent of the affective reactions of the parent towards the child. [Sidenote: The instinctive love of parents to children] [Sidenote: The love of parents to children stands in reciprocal relationship to the parents' other interests and affections] It is now pretty generally agreed among psychologists that the love of parents to their children takes place in virtue of the formation of a sentiment[200] or organisation of instinctive dispositions about an idea (in this case the idea of the child), and it is further usually supposed that in this sentiment a leading part is played by a particular instinctive disposition--a disposition which manifests itself in consciousness in an emotion of more or less specific quality, to which McDougall, following Ribot, has given the now familiar term "tender emotion." Now there are clear indications that the energy involved in this disposition (like that of all other instinctive dispositions) can play a part--and normally does play a part--in many other sentiments besides that which is concerned in the love of a parent towards his (or her) child. For this reason the emotional outflow along the lines of this latter sentiment varies to some extent in inverse proportion to the outflow along the lines of other sentiments. Thus the amount of love which a parent can bestow upon a child is limited by the amount of the affection and interest which he bestows upon other persons and other things. The parent who has no other occupation in life than the care of his or her children is usually bound to these children by emotional ties of a much closer, more intimate and more intensive nature than is one whose energies are partially absorbed by outside interests and occupations. The parent of