ometime God will show us how much
better he has guarded our treasure than we ourselves." The
suggestion had the desired effect. Money streamed from all
sides; hundreds became thousands, tens of thousands. The crowd
gave seventy thousand dollars.

Of analogous importance are the factors of suggestions in wars, where
the armies go to brilliant victories. Discipline and the sense of duty
unite the troops into a single mighty giant's body. To develop its full
strength, however, this body needs some inspiration through a suggested
idea, which finds an active echo in the hearts of the soldiers.
Maintenance of the warlike spirit in decisive moments is one of the most
important problems for the ingenious general.

Even when the last ray of hope for victory seems to have disappeared,
the call of an honored war chief, like a suggestive spark, may fire the
hosts to self-sacrifice and heroism. A trumpet signal, a cry "hurrah,"
the melody of the national hymn, can here at the decisive moment have
incalculable effects. There is no need to recall the role of the
"Marsellaise" in the days of the French Revolution. The agencies of
suggestion in such cases make possible, provided that they are only able
to remove the feeling of hopelessness, results which a moment before are
neither to be anticipated nor expected. Where will and the sense of duty
alone seem powerless, the mechanisms of suggestion may develop
surprising effects.

Excited masses are, it is well known, capable of the most inhuman
behavior, and indeed for the very reason that, instead of sound logic,
automatism and impulsiveness have entered in as direct results of
suggestion. The modern barbarities of the Americans in the shape of
lynch law for criminals or those who are only under a suspicion of a
crime redound to the shame of the land of freedom, but find their full
explanation in that impulsiveness of the crowd which knows no mercy.

The multitude can, therefore, ever be led according to the content of
the ideas suggested to it, as well to sublime and noble deeds as, on the
other hand, to expressions of the lower and barbaric instincts. That is
the art of manipulating the masses.

It is a mistake to regard popular assemblies who have adopted a certain
uniform idea simply as a sum of single elements, as is now and then
attempted. For one is dealing in such cases, not with accidental, but
with actual psychical, processes of fusion, which reciprocal