Page:Psychology and preaching.djvu/48

 30 PSYCHOLOGY AND PREACHING

and the probable explanation of this &quot;feeling &quot; is that there is a nascent reproduction of the image in connection with the words a reproduction which is too inchoate and in definite to get into clear consciousness, but is sufficient to surround the words with a certain shadow of the imagery. If there is no other imagery present except that of the words, then the original experience has a second or third hand representation, so to speak, in that.

The original experience may, then, be represented, first, by particular concrete images ; though, as said above, they never represent the experience without modification. Or, second, it may be represented by generic images, concepts, in which many concrete images have been moulded together into a sort of type. But all the qualities or marks of the concept are rarely, if ever, in consciousness at once. Usually if not always certain of the qualities or marks which belong to it are in consciousness doing service for it and performing its function of representing the original experience. Or, third, the original experience may be rep resented only by the word-images, which are mere signs of concepts and may be used in the economy of mental life as a substitute for the concepts, into which they are always con sciously convertible. Images of some sort, it seems, there must be if conscious mental processes are to go on. This seems to me to be true even when we are thinking abstract relations. Are they not always thought in spatial terms? If I am thinking the relations represented by the preposi tions such as &quot; by,&quot; &quot; to,&quot; &quot; from,&quot; &quot; in,&quot; etc. there are corresponding spatial images of location or direction in my mind. And so it may be accepted that we think in images and only in images, of some sort or other.

By means of these images we not only retain or revive the past, but in terms of them alone can we forecast the future. As they are reconstituted in consciousness they bring with them, usually in proportion to the adequacy with which they perform their representative function, the emotional colour ing of the original experience. It is by their means, there-

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