fifty years all states have become largely
popular. Suggestion is easy when it falls in with popular ideas,
the pet notions of groups of people, the popular common-places,
and the current habits of thought and feeling. Newspapers,
popular literature, and popular oratory show the effort to
operate suggestion along these lines. They rarely correct; they
usually flatter the accepted notions. The art of adroit
suggestion is one of the great arts of politics. Antony's speech
over the body of Caesar is a classical example of it. In politics,
especially at elections, the old apparatus of suggestion is
employed again,--flags, symbols, ceremonies, and celebrations.
Patriotism is systematically cultivated by anniversaries,
pilgrimages, symbols, songs, recitations, etc. Another very
remarkable case of suggestion is furnished by modern
advertisements. They are adroitly planned to touch the mind of
the reader in a way to get the reaction which the advertiser
wants. The advertising pages of our popular magazines furnish
evidence of the faiths and ideas which prevail in the masses.

+27. Suggestion and criticism.+ Suggestion is a legitimate
device, if it is honestly used, for inculcating knowledge or
principles of conduct; that is, for education in the broadest
sense of the word. Criticism is the operation by which suggestion
is limited and corrected. It is by criticism that the person is
protected against credulity, emotion, and fallacy. The power of
criticism is the one which education should chiefly train. It is
difficult to resist the suggestion that one who is accused of
crime is guilty. Lynchers generally succumb to this suggestion,
especially if the crime was a heinous one which has strongly
excited their emotions against the unknown somebody who
perpetrated it. It requires criticism to resist this suggestion.
Our judicial institutions are devised to hold this suggestion
aloof until the evidence is examined. An educated man ought to be
beyond the reach of suggestions from advertisements, newspapers,
speeches, and stories. If he is wise, just when a crowd is filled
with enthusiasm and emotion, he will leave it and will go off by
himself to form his judgment. In short, individuality and
personality of character are the opposites of suggestibility.
Autosuggestion properly includes all the cases in which a man is
"str