86 PSYCHOLOGY AND PREACHING
bility of the controlling faculty whether a stimulus of a given strength will awaken an uncontrollable emotion or not. The point at which an emotion of a given strength will break the leash of reason is not the same in all persons. For one person, therefore, a stimulation of a given strength may be excessive, and for another not.
In religion especially the emotions should not run wild, but should be kept under control of reason. In that sphere one has to do with very powerful emotions which spring from the fundamental instincts ; the conditions under which those emotions must determine action are extremely com plex, comprehending all the more obscure as well as all the more obvious factors of one s total life-situation; the end towards which it is their function to impel is the highest and most remote of our existence, viz. : the attainment of ultimate individual perfection in harmony with the uni verse. In a word, religion is the supreme, most complicated and far-reaching problem of life. If in the ordinary tasks of every-day life emotions which are less deeply rooted in the foundations of personality and which work in a limited set of conditions, towards the attainment of proximate and secondary ends need to be directed and controlled by intel ligence in order to avoid disaster, how much more should reason be kept firmly regnant in its directive function in religion ?
10. Intelligence and the enrichment of the emotional life. Besides the general effect of intensifying the feeling-tones, as above suggested, growing intelligence has other important effects upon the character of the feelings.
In the first place, the wider the range of ideas the more numerous are the available stimuli which produce feeling, and the richer, therefore, becomes the emotional life. It is not alone one s perceptions or immediate experiences which arouse emotion. In mental images, ideas, there is available a store of representative experiences, each with its appro priate emotional colouring, which is limited only by the ex tent, variety and clearness of one s knowledge and the con-
�� �
