Page:Psychology and preaching.djvu/236

 2l8 PSYCHOLOGY AND PREACHING

through both practice and reflection. Reflection bestows upon it a more systematic unity ; practical experience gives actually stronger coherency. Now if one s mental organiza tion is the result of both practical experience and reflection, he will be less suggestible than if it were chiefly the prod uct of either theory or unreflective experience. His system of ideas will have greater solidity and persistence, more grip; will more completely dominate the conscious life and, therefore, will have more power to inhibit or expel contrary suggestions.

It is obvious in the light of these &quot; laws of suggestibility &quot; that all men are in some measure suggestible. Nobody has a collection of ideas which comprehends all that are rel evant to all the suggestions that may be offered ; nobody has a perfect organization of his mental contents ; nobody, as al ready said, is absolutely resistant or aggressive in relation to other persons. Therefore nobody is beyond the reach of the mental influence called normal suggestion. But varia tions among people in this respect are very great, and there are certain classes which are especially subject to it. Children are by far the most important of these classes. The reasons for their extraordinary suggestibility are ap parent. Physiologically, the child is equipped with the requisite biological automatisms, a series of well established nervous reflexes and a number of more complex nervous co ordinations, which appear to come into action at suitable stages in its development, but which are much less rigidly fixed than in the young of the lower animals. In addition there is a brain mass which is unorganized and is destined to receive organization in the individual s own experience. On the mental side, there is, corresponding to this physical or ganization, a large number of sensori-motor reactions and more or less indefinite instincts, which successively develop as the child grows ; but there is not present, of course, any system of ideas, for this is waiting to be constituted in indi vidual experience. Now, the absence of a system of ideas, of a mental organization built up in personal experience,

�� �