Page:Psychology and preaching.djvu/99

 FEELING Si

because the final results of vice, foreseen as a certain future situation, outweigh in unpleasantness the pleasure of in dulgence and are more disagreeable than the practice of virtue. While justifiable, therefore, in dealing with persons of low moral development, its immediate results are only negative; and, as negative in results, the appeal to fear is of little permanent value except as it may open the way for a subsequent effective appeal to a different class of feelings. However, often when dissatisfaction with the evil moral status has been produced, a proper representation of virtue may awaken desire for it on its own account; because it may be so represented as to fall in with certain tendencies and processes, which, though they may be inhibited or sup pressed by the opposite tendencies that have been greatly strengthened by bad habits, seem never to be wholly ex tirpated from the normal human being. But it is quite pos sible to paint virtue in such colours as to make it repulsive, or at least unattractive. The ideal which charms the soul of a saint is without any effective appeal to the average man of the world. The contemplation of it will arouse in him no pleasure ; or if it starts a faint echo of pleasant emotion, it is apt to impress him with a sense of impossibility which kills desire. This phase of experience will be considered more at length in another chapter; our purpose here is to em phasize the fact that feeling lies at the basis of desire and that feeling has its basis in the vital organization as given at birth and modified by subsequent experience.

8. Feeling and habit. It is of great practical impor tance to note the effect upon feeling of the repetition of any experience. In general the effect tends to diminish with repetition, and this tendency is marked when the repetition occurs at regular intervals. One &quot; becomes used to it,&quot; in common parlance. The organism ever tends to adapt itself to its environment. Strictly speaking, the organism comes by degrees to be permanently modified by the repeated ex perience, a vital habit grows up corresponding to that ex perience ; its occurrence ceases by degrees to be recorded in

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