ASSEMBLIES 257
rection is usually found in the disgust which it excites in the minds of all normal people. The orator whose motives are pure but whose judgment is not discriminating, may, of course, make an unfortunate use of this emotion, but it can not be used as a means of promoting a cause that is mani festly bad. If the preacher fails to make an extensive (though, of course, discriminating) use of it, he will cer tainly not only fail on many occasions " to carry his au dience with him/ but will also fail to do what he might in the ethical education of the people.
The sentiment of liberty, which has its basis in the in stinct of self-assertion, or the self-asserting disposition, is of increasing importance in modern life as a social force; and when skilfully appealed to is capable of producing strong emotional effects. The fundamental trend in society is toward democracy, which in the last analysis has its genesis in the individualizing tendency of the social process. It can not be finally resisted, and can be retarded only by slowing down the social process, which normally becomes more dynamic all the time ; and hence the sentiment of liberty continually grows more powerful. The conception of liberty is modified from epoch to epoch ; but the modifications are in the direction of increasing depth and breath. Men do not crave less liberty but more ; though, on the whole, their idea of it is less confused with license and more consistent with stable social order, in which alone it can be realized. The emotion, therefore, which may be evoked by a skilful appeal to this sentiment will always be strong, and powerful as a means of fusing an audience ; but will not lend itself so readily to the development of the mob-mind. When the conception of liberty is chiefly negative, the appeal to this sentiment in its crude stage is apt to produce excesses, be cause it awakens the impulse to unregulated self-indulgence and arouses anger at the social forces which limit one s in dividual action unchaining emotions that are primal, basal, crude and undisciplined. This is the true psychology of the French Revolution and of similar, though less in-
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