Page:Psychology and preaching.djvu/280

 262 PSYCHOLOGY AND PREACHING

expressions of their mental states and hence receives a more definite and powerful stimulation from them. After an assembly passes a certain magnitude it no longer increases in general suggestibility strictly in proportion to its size; but up to a certain point it does approximately. Again, in a large assembly the people are more likely to be closely seated, and the effect of physical crowding, as before noted, is to facilitate the rapid spread of common feeling in full power in all directions. Furthermore, the speaker who ad dresses a large gathering must use higher tones of voice and will normally make more vigorous gestures, from the natural desire to be adequately seen and heard. But the more elevated tones and the freer gesticulatory movements natu rally excite stronger feelings in the audience and react upon the speaker s own mind to intensify his emotion, which in turn is communicated to his hearers.

The assembly, then, when it becomes very large is almost certain to lose its deliberative character, wholly or in part; and to assume the character of a mass-meeting which is sub ject to the spell of a few orators who have exceptional voices, and to be swept by gusts of intense, pervasive emo tion. As a result it is customary for the real deliberations of such a body to take place in committee rooms; and the decisions reached in these small groups are reported to the assembly and advocated by persuasive orators, who usually secure their ratification. A very potent argument often presented in favour of such a committee report is that the committee has had amply opportunity to think the whole subject through from every point of view a tacit confes sion that the psychological situation renders it impracticable for the assembly as a whole to do so. Since the trend in re cent times is toward large assemblies of the deliberative type, as of others, the tendency, as might be expected, is toward the formulation in committee rooms of the deliverances of such bodies. If, therefore, these assemblies are to be what their name indicates, if the fusion process which increases suggestibility and renders careful thought difficult or im-

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