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 142 PSYCHOLOGY AND PREACHING

ening experience that uncertainty may finally disappear and thus the mental attitude gradually change from a tentative to an unqualified belief.

5. The mind may keep the presentation standing at the door, awaiting investigation. This type of reaction is of great importance. It is the attitude of suspended judgment. The presentation which is a candidate for incorporation in our system of beliefs is held up for examination. This may be due, first, to its strangeness. The sense of possible con flict with our organized experience may be so pronounced that we cannot admit the new presentation as true until that question is at least tentatively settled. It is a situation similar to that described in the last paragraph ; but with this important difference the sense of uncertainty is much greater, and the quantitative difference in the sense of un certainty is so great as to result in a mental reaction qual itatively different. This may occur even in connection with the action of one of our senses. If the fact to which one sense testifies is an exceedingly strange one, we do not always accept it at once. We suspend judgment until we have assured ourselves that the sense is acting under normal conditions, and we commonly do this by trying the testimony of one sense against that of another. The eye, for instance, may testify to a ghostly apparition, and we test its truth by touch or some other sense. If the senses agree we accept their testimony as true. In principle the same course is often pursued when an hypothesis is proposed for the ex planation of a problem and carries with it a &quot; feeling &quot; of important disagreement with our system of ideas, although the exact nature of the disagreement may not be obvious. We hold the proposition in suspense and investigate to see whether the suspected disagreement is actual and just how far it extends. If we discover that the discord is not mani fest, or is only slight, the suspense of judgment which ar rested the acceptance of the hypothesis gives way to the qualified acceptance discussed above.

The suspended judgment may be due, second, to the fact

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