Religion and medicine : the moral control of nervous disorders / by Elwood Worcester, Samuel McComb, Isador H. Coriat.

  • Worcester, Elwood, 1862-1940.
Date:
1908
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Religion and medicine : the moral control of nervous disorders / by Elwood Worcester, Samuel McComb, Isador H. Coriat. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    writing is forced and the result disappointing. But what we call reflection is seldom the conscious thinking out of a subject with all its details. It is rather the saturating of the mind with the matter in hand and then turning away from it and allowing it to work itself out as it will. If I may allude to so uninteresting a subject as the prepara- tion of a sermon — my habit is to select a text and a sub- ject as early in the week as possible. I try to keep this before my mind until I find my mind beginning to work, the thought fructifying, the parts forming. Then I dis- miss the whole matter until I begin to write, when if I am lucky it is almost as if another person were dictating to me. All I have to do is to write with great rapidity and to criticise. The thought and even the language are sup- plied. Dr. Algernon S. Crapsey, who appears to think on his feet as well as any man I ever knew, once told me that in preaching he usually had the feeling of standing a foot or two from the speaker and of listening to another voice sometimes with surprise and even with disapproval. If this spell is broken and he is recalled to self-conscious- ness the sermon is spoiled. In discussing this subject with a philosophical writer the other day this gentleman informed me that he has had many similar experiences. He was recently engaged on a series of philosophical monographs for a new encyclo- pedia, but he had great difficulty in composing them. The ideas apparently would not come or were incoherent and incongruous. As the articles had to be finished by a certain date this caused him much annoyance and he decided that he would dismiss the subject from his mind and wait until it suggested itself. Nor did he have to wait