Page:Psychology and preaching.djvu/92

 74 PSYCHOLOGY AND PREACHING

tensity of the movement produced.&quot; x Intense feeling is the accompaniment of restrained, controlled, regulated motor manifestation. Cultivated persons whose physical expres sions are restrained and controlled feel more deeply, i.e., have a deeper conscious realization of the meaning of their experiences, other things being equal, than uncultivated per sons who practise little self-restraint. Undiscriminating people often make serious mistakes as to this. As a rule it is not the person who is leaping or clapping his hands who really feels the joy or grief most keenly, but the quiet, self- controlled person at his side, in whom conflicting and mu tually hindering motor tendencies are aroused, resulting in a temporary state of organic tension and suspended action until rational processes intervene, resolve the conflict and release the impulse through the selected motor channel, or else inhibit it altogether. The public speaker who aims to produce these stormy demonstrations should be apprised of the fact that in effecting such results he is missing the higher and more serious practical end, since the impulse created by his appeal, instead of moving centrally the per sonality of the hearer, simply takes the form of an imme diate reflexive muscular reaction unattended by any deep and keen realization of its meaning. But the worst of it is that the inhibitive capacity of the organism has thus been weakened, and this capacity is the very basis of the possibility of deep feeling. The capacity for deep feeling is cultivated by self-restraint. In a word, demoralization and the dis integration of the personality result from the failure to re strain the impulses.

Of course, the foregoing statements as to the relative depth and intensity of the conscious side of feeling in per sons of low and of high mental development should not be taken without qualification. &quot; Other things being equal,&quot; we have said. But other things are not always equal. Peo ple, for instance, differ from one another widely in their natural sensibility ; and for that matter the sensibility of 1 &quot; The Psychology of the Emotions,&quot; p. 224.

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