forth ever, more or less, the influence of the milieu.

In close connection with this fact there stands also the so-called
astringent effect of the milieu upon the individuals who are incapable
of rising out of their environment, of stepping out of it. In society
that bacillus for which one has found the name "suggestion" appears
certainly as a leveling element, and, accordingly, whether the
individual stands higher or lower than his environment, whether he
becomes worse or better under its influence, he always loses or gains
something from the contact with others. This is the basis of the great
importance of suggestion as a factor in imposing a social uniformity
upon individuals.

The power of suggestion and contra-suggestion, however, extends yet
further. It enhances sentiments and aims and enkindles the activity of
the masses to an unusual degree.

Many historical personages who knew how to embody in themselves the
emotions and the desires of the masses--we may think of Jeanne d'Arc,
Mahomet, Peter the Great, Napoleon I--were surrounded with a nimbus by
the more or less blind belief of the people in their genius; this
frequently acted with suggestive power upon the surrounding company
which it carried away with a magic force to its leaders, and supported
and aided the mission historically vested in the latter by means of
their spiritual superiority. A nod from a beloved leader of any army is
sufficient to enkindle anew the courage of the regiment and to lead them
irresistibly into sure death.

Many, it is well known, are still inclined to deny the individual
personality any influence upon the course of historic events. The
individual is to them only an expression of the views of the mass, an
embodiment of the epoch, something, therefore, that cannot actively
strike at the course of history; he is much rather himself heaved up out
of the mass by historic events, which, unaffected by the individual,
proceed in the courses they have themselves chosen.

We forget in such a theory the influences of the suggestive factors
which, independently of endowments and of energy, appear as a mighty
lever in the hands of the fortunately situated nature and of those
created to be the rulers of the masses. That the individual reflects his
environment and his time, that the events of world-history only take
their course upon an appropriately prepared basis and under
appropriately favorable circumstances, no one will deny. There r