Page:Psychology and preaching.djvu/237

 SUGGESTION

leaves the child without any controls of conduct except those given in its inherited nervous constitution and the sugges tions that come to it from others. Hence the extensive role which suggestion plays in the life of the child. There is doubtless a primal stage in its mental history in which the distinction between the real and unreal is not apprehended by it, in which it cannot accurately be said to exercise belief, but in which each external impression is simply made upon its mind without being in a conscious way related to others. Gradually sense impressions received in this way form the basis of a mental system ; but long after the process of build ing up a mental system has begun, the child is almost help less before suggestion and accepts as real any idea imparted, and acts upon it unless it happens to collide with some in herited constitutional tendency.

The growth of a mind is like the development of a new country. At first it is open to invasion from every direction, with nothing to determine the character of the incoming peo ples and nothing to control the distribution of the rapidly increasing population, except the configuration of its surface and the location of its natural resources. Sparse settle ments are quickly planted here and there, between which, as they grow in size, paths of intercommunication are opened up. Steadily these population centres increase in number and dimension and connecting lines of travel and traffic multiply, until a vast, complex, interrelated society is or ganized. As the social organization proceeds, the intro duction of new people and new social influences from with out is regulated with reference to the possibility of assim ilating them to the existing system of social life. The in fantile period of the individual life corresponds to the earlier stages of this development. Into the new country come pouring people from everywhere with little regulation, re ceived with the open hospitality of the wide, vacant, fertile spaces. Just so the child-mind takes whatever comes to it. It simply cannot critically examine what is told it ; it has no criteria established in its experience by which to judge. If

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