Page:Psychology and preaching.djvu/62

 44 PSYCHOLOGY AND PREACHING

To the child a ball is a thing that rolls, a round thing. How does it come to attach that meaning to that object? By the actual exercise of rolling the ball. A knife means some thing to cut with, a meaning which is developed by the use of the knife; and for a time that meaning suffices to identify that object and to indicate one s proper adjustment to it. After a while the child becomes acquainted with other objects which are used for cutting, but in a different way. Then it begins to make more definite its meaning for knife; the particular use of the knife and the corre sponding form of it enter into the meaning. The ob ject and its function come to be more definitely distin guished from other objects and their functions as its mean ing expands.

It is apparent that the use meanings are built up in unre- flective experience. By the phrase, &quot; unreflective .expe rience,&quot; is meant experience in which the attention is directed to the realization of some proximate practical end, and not to the systematic correlation of ideas with more or less conscious reference to some far-off end. The use mean ings thus grow up as a sort of by-product of practical experience, and consist of the revived sensations of move ment or strain which accompany actual adjustments. An examination of definitions formulated by children shows clearly that in the beginning one s system of meanings is built up and used in this way ; and if any adult will examine his own mental equipment he will be surprised to discover how much of it remains of this character to the end. Let one consider the vast number of objects of which he has a sufficiently definite notion to guide him in every-day dealing with them, but of which he would find it quite impossible to give off-hand a clear-cut, systematic or scientifically ac curate definition, and he will realize that by far the greater number of objects which have entered into his expe rience have for him only a functional meaning. Sup pose you were called on to give at once a definition of &quot; chair &quot; which would be logically complete and exact

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