Show SENTIMENT what a charming quality of the human mind is sentiments how it illuminates the prosaic fluom that envelopes the lives of most of us how it refines our natures and squeezes out to the last drop the milk of human kind kindness newl how it enlarges our mental vision and developed dev elopes our compassionate traits and how it polishes off the rough surface and brings out all the inner virtues by its magic touch I 1 deeply pity that man or woman who has been born without this gracious possession they are not perfect human beings because it itis is sentiment alone that gives to existence its chief charm you might rob the rose of its exquisite fragrance and then hope to get it admiration for color and form alone the rose is a beautiful flower but its hue is not so striking as its fragrance the dahlia isa is a queenly flower but it has no fragrance and who would compare the dahlia to W ME lak the rose if there theire is any such his nose is devoid of smell and he judges by the eye alone it is so with sentiment the th f 3 woman without sentiment cuts a sorry figure in this world because she lacks all those finer phases of womanly character which give to the sex the principal charm A woman without sentiment is outside the pale of womanhood there are men ment because this lovely quality is more of a feminine than a masculine attribute but the man without sentiment lives in a shell as hard as that of a turtle it may not be so to the eye but the shell encloses him quite as effectually there are degrees of sentiment and it must be confessed that beyond certain lines sentiment becomes a disintegrating trait maudlin sentimentality is sickening the sentimentality which leads women to forget themselves so far as to shower favors upon a murderer and which prompts men to raise a brute to the proportions of a hero is not healthy sentiment but a disease it has its origin inin in the workings of a mind that is not evenly balanced there is no man so obsequiously polite as one who is a little tipsy he will outrival a french dancing master in his bowings and scrapings yet that same man in his sober hours may lie so rough that his conduct becomes boorish maudlin sentimentality has no more claim upon the term healthy sentiment than has this drunken gallantry upon the term true politeness the politeness of the bacchanalian reveller is not noc accepted as the genuine article because those who see the man also understand the secret springs of his bis action it is not lo feo with unhealthy sentiment because there is no outward sign in the case of the maudlin sentimentalist of the diseased condition of the imagination that this maudlin sentimentalism is a disease a mild form of dementia there can tw be little doubt observation and experience prove it there have been murders of peculiar atrocity committed by both sexes some of them realy really repulsive in their hideousness not that every murder is not hideous but there are degrees of enormity in crime and wherever there is a murderer there you will generally find an apparently patently ly refined woman carrying to the criminal in his ceil flowers books bon bons and delicacies delicath s to tempt his palate in fact doing everything for him that kind kindness ness can suggest there is some lurking disease in the minds of these persons in everything else there may be a reasonable and rational working of the mental organism but here is a wf weakness akness unaccountable and inexplicable such sentimentality but call it not by its name call it morbidity or anything any thing else whatever it is it excites not only the surprise but the disgust of those whose moral perception is 18 not so blunted that they ca cannot 11 distinguish the right from the wrong this diseased condition of the intellect takes diverse forms ultra sentimentalism is weakening just as this morbid sentimentalism is absurd and wicked ultra senti destroys the fabric of the character and converts many a man and a woman into hysterical and whining creatures there is a wide difference between healthy and unhealthy sentiment A true sign that the imagination Is diseased is the sentimentalism which is followed by foolish ends the mind may become ill III as well as the body and the evidence of that sickness is at aia marked in one as in the other the mind that is in its normal condition shows no eccentricities tri cities citie its operations are as regular as the ebb and flow of the sea there are no shadows to penetrate while we cannot see the cause we realize that the effect is natural and logical and that the relation between the two is as transparent as crystal when the mind is in this condition we know that it is healthy but let its operations become turgid muddy and opaque which is a rhetorical way of saying that one cannot see far enough into the mind to comprehend its phenomena ariu and then we know that the brain is diseased and not responsible for the eccentric conduct to which it prompts the bratu brain lathe is the centre of life it is the engine room of the body it moves every member it is not ones legs alone that are suddenly eDly seized with a desire to take strides and carry one hither and thither it is the brain the seat of volition which quietly sets them going and points out the place to which their movements all tend healthy sentiment is the product of a healthy mind morbid sentiment is the outcome of a morbid mind so go let us leave ive this morbid sentimentality behind us and deal only witts with the sentiment that is sound and sensible there to is no more delightful trait in the mind than sentiment sentiment and sensibility are almost interchangeable terms for the sentimental man is ever the possessor of fine sensibilities and the owner of fine sensibilities in turn is always the man ot of sentiment it is not an easy matter to got get through the world and enjoy life if one is wholly devoid of sentiment there ti t i enough of the practical in life without seeking for it and raising it above all else sentiment is not the child of the intellect it is s the offspring of the imagination it is ie the rosy hue of the mind that tinges everything no matter how barren otherwise with a pretty and a charming color one ml might ht as well try to live wit without sunshine anyn e as to live without sentiment I 1 write this looking at the subject from a purely intellectual point of view one could not be happy if he were to go through life with a rule and square measuring every object every thought by the same inflexible standard one does not like to look at the flowers arid and analyze them with wita the cold science of the botanist each i into its component parts m merely the pistil and the stamen and the petals djs thereto there is more to the flower than that there is a subtle essence in which lies the great charm one does not want to look into the depths of the firmament of heaven and see the planets and only compute their dist distance anew from the earth and their relation to the planet ou on which we live Is not this thought subservient to that greater and higher hugher thought that there is a mighty hand band and an omnipotent power in the creation of the universe cannot the imagination under the influence of these a speculations carry us onward and u upward until we feel the greatness of the human mind and the ennobling influence of the imagination when one reads an epic he be does not want to confine himself to the analytical art of the critic he should do more than to discover the feet and I 1 investigate aves the rhetorical finish if the idea is great he should give himself up to it and let his soul seek pastures where it may find joy and satisfaction and conceive images independently and for itself the very best part of mans organism is his bis imagination it is that which marks man as a creative being it is that which lifts him up and brings him almost to the gates of heaven it is that from which he draws all the inspiration of life it is the fountain which keeps us all young that elixir which preserves the mind fresh and the body buoyant the mental nature is fed by this quality it is a fact that the man whose mind is refreshed by a healthy sentimentality will last longer than the one from whose life it is scrupulously banished the sentimental man will keep young long after the other has become parched and has withered away I 1 have particularly noticed this fact that the bright eyed and rosy cheeked checked maturity is not very far removed from a sentimental disposition not that the one is the cause and the other the effect but for some reason nature which works incomprehensibly yet intelligently telli gently generally directs that the two characteristics shall go together this is the relation between sentiment and the intellect the connection between sentiment and the emotions emotion sis is more direct and close no man lives the possessor of an emotional nature who has not sentiment as well the two are as nearly allied as the fountain of laughter and the source of tears it is 18 the custom of practical people to laugh at sentimentality as if it were not worthy of praise or possession and as if the X sentimental man were a helpless and a hopeless being but there is really ino BO sense in this ridiculous view of the sub subject f act I 1 have already alluded to the fact act i that healthy sentiment keeps the mind frost fresh it 0 oils tie the springs of our mental machinery and as for its effect upon the physical nature it to is the difference between the and the lark or to draw a plainer comparison between the bat and the mole and the eagle and the ibis no man can soar into the empyrean of the imagination with strong wings unless he is the man of sentiment for sentiment is the beloved child of fancy if he has not sentiment he cannot fly into the realms of thought that ls is fanciful thought at all but he must grope among the more material things of life as the mole burrows through the earth too much sentiment is not good for the body or the soul but a proper amount is a help to the body and a tonic to the spirit but alakl nature with its marked compensations does not give all the best gifts of life to any one person with love it mixes jealousy so that even in incur our joy we sometimes feel a poignant anguish grace is often accompanied by indolence strength with cruelty brilliancy ot of intellect with selfishness and so we find ti nd that the sentimental man and woman have highly wrought and refined natures they suffer more as they enjoy more schiller the greatest of german poets in an excellent arabesque of versification has emphasized the same idea oh I 1 life is a waste of wearisome hours which seldom the rose of enjoyment enjoy t adorns and the heart art that is soonest awake to the ibe flowers Is always the first to be touched by the thorns but who would sacrifice the sweets of sentiment even if they are accompanied compa nied by extreme sensitiveness to the dull prosaic owl like life of the man who has it not for whitt what purpose does the sun shine to the owl for what pur purpose pose are the beautiful things in life to the man without sentiment DR DB ED ISAACSON AMERICAN FORK jan 13 1890 |