Page:Psychology and preaching.djvu/247

 SUGGESTION 22Q

individual or an audience one is seeking to influence sug gestively. The prepossession which it creates in one s favour renders the subject uncritical, forestalls or weakens the force of any objections which may chance to arise in the mind. Persons who have intense prejudices, and ill-bal anced people who place excessive emphasis upon certain pet notions, doctrines or theories, are peculiarly susceptible to suggestion by this method; and who has not his irrational convictions, adhesion to which seems to him the surest guaranty of rationality, and his favourite doctrine or theory which seems to him to be the very axis of the sphere of truth? The skilful suggester, approaching him on this &quot; blind side,&quot; stands an excellent chance of inserting some idea into his mind and securing its uncritical acceptance; for surely, the subject feels, one who is wise enough to share this prejudice and has insight enough to appreciate the car dinal truth of this doctrine or theory can be trusted to have safe and sound ideas in general.

3. The fact has previously been mentioned that all men are in some measure subject to suggestive influence; but there is one condition under which all men are easy victims. Any person who is under the sway of a strong emotion or a mighty passion is extraordinarily suggestible in the general direction of that emotion or passion. Suppose an incident has occurred which has excited in a man the fear that his house may be burglarized. One need only whisper to him in the night that a burglar is in the house in order to start him out with bated breath and with pistol in hand to sur prise and shoot the intruder. A man who is consumed with the passion of political ambition needs only to be told by a few friends that he is the logical candidate for the legis lature or the governorship to plunge with confident en thusiasm into the campaign. Those few favouring voices are multiplied in his too willing ears to the volume of a loud popular demand. The girl who is really in love with a young man accepts with unquestioning faith the slightest assurance that his character is irreproachable. The people

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