8 PSYCHOLOGY AND PREACHING
so transmitted ; but it is equally obvious that children often have constitutional dispositions which are peculiar to them selves. If under the head of native dispositions must be classed many general traits of an hereditary character, so also must many personal traits which seem to represent so many individual variations.
It is needless to speak of the importance of these dis positions. They are extremely important factors in every human relation; and until one s native dispositions are known, it is idle even to guess what responses he will make to many stimuli. For a leader of men they are of the ut most significance. But they are so very different in dif ferent people and in the same person are often compounded in such puzzling ways that few generalizations concerning them can be made, and the study of them in individual men alone can greatly profit. It is especially the preacher s duty to study them with care.
IV. Consciousness. Consciousness is so intimate and familiar a fact that we seldom stop to consider the marvel and mystery of it. We can not define it, for any term we can use in the definition involves it. It does not exist as an abstract reality. We can not be conscious except as we are conscious of something. Concretely it occurs as sen sation or image or feeling-tone, or all combined. Some times it is used as practically synonymous with responsive ness to environment; but this use of it is vague, and im plies that it is a property of every form of matter; for mat ter in every form is in some sense responsive to environ ment. Such an idea of consciousness is, therefore, unsat isfactory and leads to confusion of thought. It is better to use the term in the ordinary acceptation, as inward aware ness. It may be described as an inward light which falls upon the stream of experience. Let us think of it as ex perience become luminous.
It is important to consider the conditions under which it appears. Parallel with the decrease of the definiteness and dominance of the instincts in the higher orders of life,
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