Page:Psychology and preaching.djvu/238

 22O PSYCHOLOGY AND PREACHING

it is assured that in fairyland men grow as tall as trees, its own experience may have become extensive enough to make the statement appear wonderful, perhaps, but not impos sible ; and maybe its ideas of trees and men are so indefinite and uncorrelated that the statement does not cause wonder, much less scepticism. At this stage almost every impres sion which the child receives comes to it with the force of reality. It is by suggestion alone that its stock of ideas is increased. Instruction of the little one proceeds by sug gestion, and it is only at a later period and gradually that suggestions, pure and simple, can be replaced by rational processes as the method of teaching. Suggestion in the in fantile period is the proper method, and there is not about it then the malodorous atmosphere of indirection and eva sion which is apt to accompany it when used as a means of influencing adults, and this for the simple reason that there is little in the child s mind which it is necessary to evade in order to induce it to accept at once an imparted idea. The indirection and evasion which are associated with sugges tion, in the technical sense of the word, are usually occa sioned by the necessity of avoiding hindrances and obstruc tions which have their roots in the mental system organized in personal life. Very few such impediments are found in the child s life.

Women constitute another unusually suggestible class. This statement must, of course, be accepted with much qual ification, but as a general proposition it is true. It is prob ably not due at all to any essential inferiority of the .female mind. Into the relative mental ability of the sexes this is not the place to go ; but it may be said that the differences which exist are in all probability mainly functional, i.e., have their origin in the different functions that men and women have fulfilled throughout the history of the race, and seem under the conditions of modern life to be undergoing con siderable modification, though they can never wholly dis appear. The sex functions have their basis in, or, it might with equal plausibility be urged, form the basis of certain

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