126 PSYCHOLOGY AND PREACHING
in their concrete individualities. The feeling-tones con nected with them are, therefore, in most minds very slight too pale and thin to be considerable factors in their emotional life, too weak to have important influence upon their actions and attitudes. While, then, there are indi vidual differences due to native peculiarities and to habits acquired in experience, the rule is that the more detailed, vivid, realistic the mental images are, the more intense will be the feelings they will arouse. Compare, for instance, the different intensity of the feelings aroused by the state ment, " a man was run down and killed on the street by an automobile " ; and the more detailed statement, " John Smith was run down and killed on Fourth Avenue this morning by Henry Jones* automobile." In the latter, the scene is more vividly reproduced by the imagination ; the intensity of the emotion aroused is more nearly equal to that which the ac tual sight of the event would excite. Especially will this be true if John Smith and Henry Jones are names of persons of your acquaintance, and not mere symbols which convey vague generic images of two men. Still more intense would be the emotion if further details were given as to the hour, the exact spot on Fourth Avenue where it took place, supposing, of course, the hearer to be familiar with that street. The rule for the speaker is, therefore, be concrete, vivid, realistic ; give specific details ; stimulate the imag ination of the hearer to reproduce the scene.
But some qualifications of this rule should be made. The speaker may give too many details. Even the simplest ob jects are very complex. In the description of a horse, a man, a tree, details may be multiplied until the most capable imagination is completely swamped and no definite image at all is conveyed. Speakers not unfrequently err in this way. Our mental images are more or less sketchy repro ductions of our perceptions. But even in perception one does not take in all the details of an object. If he did he would spend his whole life upon a comparatively few ob jects. In perception he notes only a few characteristic
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