Law of Success (21st Century Edition)

CONCENTRATION 775

Here Mr. J. A. Fisk gives an interesting account of the influence
of mental suggestion in a revival meeting.

MENTAL SUGGESTION IN THE REVIVAL

Modern psychology has firmly established the fact that the

greater part of the phenomena of the religious "revival" are

psychical rather than spiritual in their nature. The leading

authorities recognize the fact that the mental excitement of

the emotional appeals of the "revivalist" must be classified

with the phenomena of hypnotic suggestion rather than with

that of true religious experience. In fact, by some careful

observers, familiar with the respective phenomena, the reli-

gious "revival" meeting is classed with the public hypnotic

"entertainment" ....

In order to understand the principle of the operation

of mental suggestion in the revival meeting, we must first

understand something of what is known as the psychology oj

the crowd.

Psychologists are aware that the psychology of a crowd

differs from that of the separate individuals composing that

crowd. There is a crowd of separate individuals, and a compo-

site crowd in which the emotional natures of the units seem to

blend and fuse.

The change arises from the influence of earnest attention,

or deep emotional appeals, or common interest. When this

change occurs, the crowd becomes a composite individual

whose intelligence and emotional control is little above that

of its weakest member .... The predominant characteristics

of this "composite-mindedness" of a crowd are the eviden-

ces of extreme suggestibility, response to appeals of emotion,

vivid imagination, and action arising from imitation ....