MENTAL IMAGES 33
particular, vastly superior to men in lower stages of de velopment ; at any rate, the freer use of colour-terms by mod ern masters of style has done much to compensate for the losses in concreteness and vividness in other directions. However, the terms for shades of colour appeal more strongly to persons of culture especially esthetic cul ture than to persons of lower mental grades, as we should expect from the fact that colour appreciation seems to have grown with the general advance of culture. Such a mastery of mental imagery as will give access to the minds of both the lower and the higher order is not easy.
But the public speaker, and especially the preacher, should strive to achieve excellence both in the concreteness of his imagery and the breadth of his generalizations, so that he may make an effective appeal to all grades of culture in his audience. For immediate effectiveness he should not fail to cultivate the power to recall the whole range of his experi ence in particular, concrete, definite, vivid images ; and this means that he should cultivate the habit of close, concen trated, energetic attention as well as varied observation. For the fact cannot be too much insisted on that if the images are distinct, definite, clear, vivid, it is because there was alert, energetic reaction of the mind in the original ex perience. But for effectiveness of style it is not enough that the images be concrete and vivid and abundant; they must be correlated. A chaotic stream of vivid images is not ef fective, except under abnormal circumstances. The mind of the speaker, and especially is this true of the preacher, should not be a chaos but a cosmos ; for his objective is not a mere aimless play upon the motor impulses of a thought less throng, but the moving of men along definite lines to ward the realization of individual and social ideals which are the embodiment of perfect order.
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