Page:Psychology and preaching.djvu/154

 136 PSYCHOLOGY AND PREACHING

entiated psychical state which really precedes conciousness in any clearly denned sense of the word. Knowledge, in any accurate meaning of the term, is inapplicable here and so is belief. The child would neither accept nor reject the pres entation it would be neither real nor unreal. To speak of the child s accepting it as real or rejecting it as unreal is to attribute to the child our own mental processes. To say that because the child does not reject the candle-impres sion as unreal it accepts it as real, is to assume that the logical category of contradiction applies to that primordial mental experience, that the child is conscious of the relation of images to one another, whereas by hypothesis this is the single and sole image which has entered into its experience. For the mental act or attitude of belief to occur it is neces sary that there should have been more than one experience, more than one image, more than a simple and undiffer- entiated mental content ; and that a beginning at least should have been made in the organization or correlation of those contents a process which goes on very rapidly in the life of the child.

Whenever, then, the mind s reaction to a stimulus is suf ficiently definite to be called belief or unbelief it is con ditioned by the present mental content and organization. &quot; Possession is nine points of the law &quot; is a saw which has as much validity in the psychological as in the economic realm. The mind reacts as a whole upon a new presenta tion. In more abstract phrase we may say that the appro priation of new mental material is a function of the mind as previously organized. After the new material has been in corporated into the mental system it then plays its part also in determining the mental attitude toward subsequent pres entations.

I. There are as many as six distinguishable ways in which the mind may react to new presentations.

i. First, it may feel itself compelled to accept the new presentation as real or true. It is helpless before the pres entation; cannot resist it. There may be no perceived

�� �