PSYCHOLOGY AND PREACHING
CHAPTER I
GENERAL CONTROLS OF CONDUCT
We are accustomed to think of ourselves as rational beings, i.e., as persons who are guided in our activities by rational considerations; but if we scrutinize our conduct we shall, perhaps, be surprised to discover what a large proportion of our actions are never reflected upon, but are performed under the impulsion of certain tendencies which at best are but imperfectly subject to the control of reason, even when the conscious effort is made to resist or to guide them, and which usually influence us without being consciously guided at all. After infancy reason can and does exercise a general and, in the developing personality, a stronger regulative supervision over these tendencies organized in us. But it is doubtless true that at best they influence the rational processes quite as much as the rational processes influence them; and it can hardly be questioned that in the majority of human beings they actually do more in determining the conclusions reached by thinking than thinking does in regulating them. What are the general controls of conduct?
I. Reflexes. A reflex act "is one in which a muscular movement occurs in immediate response to a sensory stimulation without the interposition of consciousness."[1]This immediacy of response seems to be due to the fact that in the nervous organization, especially that part of it located
- ↑ Angell, "Psychology," p. 286.
