Page:Psychology and preaching.djvu/98

 8O PSYCHOLOGY AND PREACHING

in, or at least assumed for the time being. As the possibility becomes more and more remote, the desire becomes weaker and weaker, fading to a wish, which itself can live only as the wished-for object is thought of as possible, for the ob vious reason that if it ceases to be thought of as possible it will cease to hold the serious attention, and the wish will be extinguished as a feebly burning candle when, like a snuffer, the sense of absolute impossibility settles down over it. A boy who has a disagreeable task desires to go to a ball game. His attention alternates between the actual dis agreeable situation and the contemplated agreeable one, and his heart beats faster or slower as now one and now the other stands at the focus of attention ; there is a rapid change in the predominant tone of pleasantness or unpleas antness in his mixed feeling. By and by he is informed by an unrelenting father that he cannot go ; the desire fades out into a wish as from time to time he thinks of going as if it were possible, until at last his mind is permanently diverted from it.

Desire, then, is characterized by a difference of feeling- tones connected with the mental representations of two situations, one actual the other possible. To arouse desire, therefore, it is necessary &quot; to work upon the feelings,&quot; to hold before the mind in which the desire is sought to be awakened a possible situation which promises more satis faction than the present one. But whether the portrayal of a possible situation will promise more satisfaction to a given mind depends upon the actual organization of that mind. It must fall in with, quicken or promote certain vital processes of that organism which are more central or at any rate more dominant in it than the organic tendencies which find stimulation in the actual state of things. For this reason it is apparent that in the effort to lift men to a higher moral state an appeal based upon the emotion of fear is often justifiable. It creates dissatisfaction with the actual moral status, but does not arouse a desire for a higher status per se. It creates a desire to break with evil habits

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