"
The second case exemplifies how small an additional stimulus will
overthrow the mind into a new state of equilibrium when the
process of preparation and incubation has proceeded far enough.
It is like the proverbial last straw added to the camel's burden,
or that touch of a needle which makes the salt in a
supersaturated fluid suddenly begin to crystallize out.
Tolstoy writes: "S., a frank and intelligent man, told me as
follows how he ceased to believe:--
"He was twenty-six years old when one day on a hunting
expedition, the time for sleep having come, he set himself to
pray according to the custom he had held from childhood.
"His brother, who was hunting with him, lay upon the hay and
looked at him. When S. had finished his prayer and was turning
to sleep, the brother said, 'Do you still keep up that thing?'
Nothing more was said. But since that day, now more than thirty
years ago, S. has never prayed again; he never takes communion,
and does not go to church. All this, not because he became
acquainted with convictions of his brother which he then and
there adopted; not because he made any new resolution in his
soul, but merely because the words spoken by his brother were
like the light push of a finger against a leaning wall already
about to tumble by its own weight.
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