Page:Psychology and preaching.djvu/50

 32 PSYCHOLOGY AND PREACHING

cumstances he does not anticipate ; and upon the unforeseen his plans are shipwrecked. Therefore, it is not strictly ac curate to call him &quot; visionary.&quot; He invariably comes, in the execution of his undertakings, upon conditions which he did not see in advance and which are vitally important; and for that reason he is ineffective.

The bearing of what has been said upon the quality of literary style, spoken or written, is obvious. The public speaker especially needs to use many particular, definite, vivid images ; but his thought must, or at least should, be logical, i.e., his mental images should be properly organized. As the images are organized, they assume a more general, schematic character, become concepts ; and as the process of organization goes on to higher and higher stages, these concepts become more and more abstract, and the style loses proportionately its realistic, sensuous, picturesque character. A study of the evolution of language brings out with strik ing force the fact that language grows more abstract and mental imagery less concrete and sensuous with the general advance of culture. In the more primitive languages there is a separate word or form of a word for almost every simple specific act or movement and every object; while now our most specific words usually stand for classes rather than for strictly individual things. 1 It is, in fact, this gen eral tendency which sometimes leads to the belief that poetry declines with the advance of scientific knowledge. But there are compensations. If with the growth and organiza tion of knowledge there is a tendency towards wider and wider generalization and the emptying of words of con crete reference, there is reason to believe that in some direc tions at least there has been a great increase in the fineness of sense discriminations. There has doubtless been a loss in other directions. But we have good evidence that the modern man is, in the appreciation of shades of colour in

1 For an interesting discussion of this characteristic of primitive language see &quot; Les Fonctions Mental dans Les Societes Inf erieure,&quot; by Levy-Bruhl, pp. 131-159.

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