230 PSYCHOLOGY AND PREACHING
who have been stirred to deep resentment by the knowledge that illegitimate influences have been exerted by special in terests upon their representatives in the government are apt to accept without examination every charge of bribery and corruption; and the artful demagogues know only too well how to avail themselves of the heightened popular sug gestibility in order to cast a fatal suspicion upon the true friends of the people s interests. The emotion or passion in such cases acts as a powerful inhibition of all contrary ideas, narrows the field of consciousness and gives particu larly free right of way to the appropriate suggestion. The idea which prompts to action in the line of the emotion or passion is like a boat which is rowed with the stream, while the ideas of a contrary tendency must breast the momentum of the current. It is evident that, since almost every man has some pronounced emotional tendency and is the subject of some master passion, most people are easily influenced by suggestion if only the proper line of approach to the citadel of their personality can be discovered. Hence one of the most effective ways of inducing suggestibility is to stir the emotions, inflame the passions of the subject.
4. Repetition is often necessary to render suggestion effective. It appears that the motor effect of the idea ac cumulates with successive repetitions. The motor impulse imparted by the suggestion does not pass away immediately, and if before it dies out completely the strength of the second impulse is added to the remaining strength of the first, the pressure increases, like the weight of an accumu lating mass of water against a dam. Manifestly when repetition is necessary, the suggested idea has met with some degree of resistance. There is often in the mental situation some contrary tendency which does not spring from clearly conscious reasons. It may be some idea or " reason " which is not at the time in consciousness, but whose influence is projected into the conscious field; or it may be the mere blind " pull " of a disposition or a habit ; but when the suggestion meets with this sort of resistance, it is important
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