Dimly swings this atom of a World, and far beyond all reaches the infinity of God! Necessity compels us to be earnest. We do not simply feel and express a sentiment, but also interpret, socialize, evaluate, and modify it according to our beliefs and assumptions about it. A sentiment is a general feeling, attitude, or opinion about something. The goal is to awaken us to that which is more than we can comprehend, for all that we will never fully understand it. We must be like immortals insofar as possible and do everything toward living in accordance with the best thing in us. Love is the name given to the desire to seek out that which we sense we lack. A sentiment vocabulary also provides culturally meaningful categories for interpreting one’s own sensations and behavior. Sentiments are explanations in self-perception, as well as for other people. A vocabulary of sentiments facilitates and limits the kinds of meanings we can experience for our sensations, gestures, and social relationships. A correct judgment avoiding all distant and high enquiries, confines itself to common life, and to such subjects as fall under daily practice and experience, leaving the more sublime topics to the embellishment of poets and orators, or to the arts or priests and politicians. #RandolphHarris 1 of 6

Tease me all you want for being sentimental. I think some souls have a way of connecting without our knowledge, and that is why you cannot meet someone for the first time, but inside you just know. You know it is not the first time you have ever felt them. A vocabulary of sentiments is a selection from the entire potential range of emotional experiences by specialized emphasis. The name for a sentiment is a kind of sensitizing concept. In German Schadenfreude, or malicious glee over another’s misfortune, is more easily recognized as a common feeling by virtue of the presence of them. The vocabulary defines our sensations and gestures by naming them, showing us what these mean to other people. Ideological beliefs about a sentiment are linked with its name in the vocabulary. Like an ideology, these beliefs protect the social reality of a sentiment as a meaningful category, explaining and justifying particular instances of interaction in terms of popular knowledge about the sentiment. For instance, how does one recognize envy? Or what are the rights and obligations of friendship? Is shame natural or learned? Does romance inevitably fade into companionate love? Is it possible to conceal real grief? One who has been wandering in a maze of false conceptions, and upon whom, at length, has burst the truth of God’s paternity, opens one’s Bible as a new book. #RandolphHarris 2 of 6

The word of God will spread around one a firmament of sudden glory, and reveals to one’s eyes unexpected riches. Pains from the moral source are the pains derived from the unfavorable sentiments of humankind. These pains are capable of rising to a height with which hardly any other pains incident to our nature can be compared. No sentiments can be beautiful without being proper; that is, suited to the character and situation of those who utter them. It is not contended that people learn precise definitions or complex formal principles about each sentiment, but they do learn informal theories or folk wisdom. Communication about the sentiment in terms of these popular beliefs preserves each sentiment as an available resource for explaining interaction. More elaborate ideologies surround some sentiments than others. Romantic love has an extensive popular ideology, and religious doctrines explain and justify guilt, reverence, and compassion. In contrast, shame and pity seem to be relatively undefined in our society at present. The vocabulary also includes evaluative beliefs about each sentiment that influences how we express, label, and identify sentiments. Is pride a mark of self-worth, or one of the seven Christian sins? Depending on social group, esthetic feeling may be a sign of personal cultivation or aloof snobbery. #RandolphHarris 3 of 6

Our response to a person who reveals or claims a sentiment depends partly on evaluative beliefs about the feeling. People are encouraged to interpret certain mixed feelings as love because our culture insists that certain reactions are acceptable one if one is madly in love. In contrast, envy may be a universally condemned and feared sentiment that few people seriously admit. The vocabulary within which we communicate about sentiments places boundaries on affective experience, confining it largely to socially significant, shared meanings. The vocabulary within which we communicate about sentiments places boundaries on affective experience, confining it largely to socially significant, shared meanings. Reason, utility, fear of punishment and love of praise may all lead us to behave in appropriate ways, but they are not definitive of human nature. We do not attribute to the springs of a watch its coming into being or ability to keep good time. These belong to the watchmaker. Similarly, the wisdom of God, rather than human reason or social learning, is the origin of human nature and the ultimate purpose of human life is nobler than the simple maintenance of social order. #RandolphHarris 4 of 6

The administration of the great system of the Universe is the care of the Universal happiness of all rational and sensible beings, is the business of God and not of humans. To humans is allotted a much humbler department, one much more suitable to the humbleness of one’s powers, and to the narrowness of one’s comprehension. Sentiment is a different combination of a social relationship and cultural beliefs with emotional sensations and gestures. Social factors determine which component is most salient at a given time. We become highly aware of bodily sensations when we are physiologically aroused. A set of spiritual exercises is designed to incite dedication to moral purity among humanity. Sensations may also become problematic by their absence. Gestures become salient when their meaning is challenged, when we are being socialized into expression, and when we must express deliberately what is not spontaneously felt. How do compassion, sorrow, and other sentiments in a cultural vocabulary become capacities and resources of the individual? The deeper our moral life and the keener our spiritual vision, the clearer appears his truth. Wisdom, justice, truth, and power—it kindles in the soul a loftier and serener spirit of devotion, touches spring of penitence, and makes us good because God is good.  #RandolphHarris 5 of 6

We may thank God that we can feel pain and know sadness, for these are the human sentiments that constitute our glory as well as our grief. Another process is the management of expression and feeling according to norms and other social constraints. How do people suppress, magnify, and alter their gestures, feelings, and interpretation of a sentiment? If God is the beginning of all things, he is, in a peculiar sense, the beginning of our religion. Our highest endeavors after virtue will be attempts to imitate him. Our decisions upon specific questions of right and wrong will be governed by our conceptions of the Divine nature. We shall religiously cherish the sentiments of which God is the absolute expression. It is what we say to God alone, of ourselves, upon the revelation of his Fatherhood, and with our thoughts fixed in contemplation of his attributes. The father has swept away all the barriers of distance, it has streamed into our soul through all the glories of the Universe, it has touched us with the intimate nearness, the infinite condescension of God, and gathered into that one name all that is venerable with all that is lovely. Let us habitually avail ourselves, then, the privilege made known to us. #RandolphHarris 6 of 6