Page:Psychology and preaching.djvu/189

 ATTENTION IJI

the environment should not go unheeded. If the nervous system be in a state of excessive irritability many stimuli which have in them no menace or other important sig nificance for the normal constitution and might safely be neglected under ordinary circumstances force themselves nevertheless upon the consciousness of the person so af fected. But the abnormal nervous condition gives them special significance for those persons. Sometimes people have abnormal sensitiveness to certain kinds of stimuli. One may be so fastidious that the slightest lack of tidiness in an other may disconcert him ; or a certain tone of the voice may be extremely painful, even the very timbre of the voice may be irritating ; or a certain gesture or attitude may be so un pleasant as to divert the mind from the ideas of a speaker.

It not unfrequently happens that the attention which a public speaker &quot; commands &quot; is of the compulsory type. It may be that it is not what he says, but his manner that compels attention. The peculiarity may be pleasant or un pleasant. A marvellously musical voice may bewitch the ears of the auditors ; a raucous or grating or squeaking voice, an unusual intonation, or some other striking charac teristic attractive or repellent may irresistibly arrest at tention until through familiarity it loses its compelling power. If it is not positively pleasing, it is a misfortune, and stands in the way of achieving the best results, because it invests the ideas the speaker is presenting with disagree able feelings, and draws the attention of the hearers upon it self and therefore away from what he is saying. Even if not unpleasant, such a striking mode of presentation, when very pronounced, may, though winning applause for the orator, divert attention from the subject matter of his dis course; whereas his subject, his cause, the speaker and especially the preacher, should strive always to keep in the focus of his hearers consciousness. In a word, compulsory attention, even when elicited by some pleasing peculiarity or device of the orator, is really centred upon the orator him self, or his method, and not upon his message. But more

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