Page:Psychology and preaching.djvu/68

 50 PSYCHOLOGY AND PREACHING

is born with certain peculiar predispositions fixed in his nervous system, and these exert a very great influence upon the formation of his mental system. One s inborn tend encies may render him reactionary, radical or conservative in disposition ; they may give him a penchant for some form of art, or for some special role in politics, or for some par ticular science, or for a specific line of business, or for some other form of specialized activity. In this way they may have a determining influence in the selection of his occupa tion, though, for various reasons, the form of activity for which he has this special turn of mind may not be the one in which he actually engages. Men often drift into occupations for which they are not naturally adapted. In any case, these individual organic tendencies control largely the direction of a man s attention and give greater weight in his mind to certain facts and considerations than to others, and thus influence profoundly the constitution of his mental system. So it happens that different men build up within the same general field of occupational experience systems of ideas dissimilar in important respects.

Nor should it be forgotten that, quite apart from the influence of occupations and of native differences, the intel lectual environment in which one grows up or lives for a long time is an important factor in moulding his mind. It needs but a glance over any extensive social group to see that it tends to break up into an increasing number of such intellectual environments, each resulting from the peculiar synthesis of sociological conditions prevailing in some par ticular part of the country, or in some stratum or section of the society. From some special environment each man in evitably receives influences which have much to do in deter mining his processes of thought and his mental organization. If his innate tendencies are not strongly divergent and the mode of thought developed by his occupation does not pre vent, he simply conforms, assumes the mental attitude which is general in his locality, or in his class, or in his group of friends, or in the literature which he reads. If his innate

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