(8) The sentiment of parent love having been called into existence by the aid of the factors we have already enumerated--directly in the case of 1 and 2, more indirectly in the case of 4, 5 and 6 and still more indirectly perhaps in the case of 3 and 7--all conditions are particularly favourable for its continuance and growth. In the first place, it is almost certainly one of the earliest important sentiments to be formed, the only other one which can compare with it in this respect being the self-regarding sentiment. It thus enjoys as compared with most others sentiments all the advantage afforded by priority. What the exact nature of any such advantage may be, it would be hazardous to suggest in detail: we know however that it is a general characteristic of the function and development of mind that dispositions which are formed early in the life of the individual enjoy a greater stability and permanence than those subsequently acquired. Even where, as so often happens, the function of the earlier dispositions is modified or obscured by the results of later experience, the phenomena of "regression" to earlier levels, as manifested in pathology, show clearly enough that the earlier dispositions remain intact throughout life and in many cases seem to be (in themselves and apart from the influence of extraneous factors) paths that offer less resistance to the passage of emotional energy than do those formed at a later period. It may well be then that its priority of formation gives to the sentiment of parent-love a more stable and deep-rooted foundation than that enjoyed by any sentiment subsequently formed. Further, psycho-analytic study appears to indicate very strongly that it is in the nature of the mind for _all_ the earliest channels of conative energy not only to remain capable of functioning in later life, but actually to continue to function, though often in such a degree or in such a way as to have but little if any _direct_ influence on consciousness or action. Thus it would appear that when a sublimation is formed and emotional energy is directed into a fresh channel, not all the energy passing through the original channel is deflected; some, on the contrary, continues to pass along the original channel. At each fresh sublimation this process is repeated, so that, to use a simile of Freud's, we may compare the development of the Libido to the history of a wandering tribe, which at each fresh migration leaves some of its members behind in the home it is just leaving (the larger the proportion of the population that is left behind--_i. e._ the greater the fixations--the greater being of course the tendency to regress along the former line of advance when an obstacle is encountered). In such a system of function and development, it is clear that the oldest channels are necessarily, in a sense, the most stable and permanent, the least easy to modify or to destroy.