Page:Psychology and preaching.djvu/346

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328 PSYCHOLOGY AND PREACHING

calculation has steadily grown and exact book-keeping has become a highly developed art, a business habit and an in dispensable condition of success, 1 and it is one of the in fluences which accentuate the mode of thought we are describing.

(2) This mental type is marked by certain ethical pecu liarities.

(a) It deals with ethical very much as it does with intel lectual questions. Such a man gives little attention to the theoretical aspects of ethical questions; his test is, What is the "practical" result? He does not trouble himself very much as to abstract principles of right and wrong. To arouse his enthusiasm in a moral cause you should show him two things : First, that the evil you are attacking is a practical injury to men, i.e., produces injurious effects which can be seen and measured. Those moral or immoral acts which are striking, vivid, dramatic, measurable, impress him most. If you can make him see that the injury is economic also, you are the more likely to win him ; not because he makes the interests of business the standard of right and wrong, but because business prosperity is a value of the obvious, measurable, " practical " kind which appeals to him most strongly. He can perceive and feel the evil of any thing much more keenly when he sees its injurious economic effects. Again we emphasize the principle the form of reality which is most real to a man is that with which he deals most. Second, you must make him see that your plan of opposition promises " practical " results under conditions as they are. He has little patience with what seem to him to be the visionary programs of theoretical men. In his daily contact with the world he has to adjust himself to existing conditions and be satisfied to accept the half loaf when he cannot get the whole one; and that seems to him to be the sensible thing in all struggles for moral improve ment. Yet the game does not seem to him to be worth the candle if the struggle does not give a definite promise of an

1 Sombart s " Der Bourgeois/ p. 18.

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