on
principle.'[59] But since we cannot unlearn our knowledge, Mr. Chesterton
is only telling us to eat caviare on principle. The physician, when he
knows the part which mental suggestion plays in the cure of disease, may
hate and fear his knowledge, but he cannot divest himself of it. He
finds himself watching the unintended effects of his words and tones and
gestures, until he realises that in spite of himself he is calculating
the means by which such effects can be produced. After a time, even his
patients may learn to watch the effect of 'a good bedside manner' on
themselves.

[59] _Heretics_, 1905, p. 136.

So in politics, now that knowledge of the obscurer impulses of mankind
is being spread (if only by the currency of new words), the relation
both of the politician and the voter to those impulses is changing. As
soon as American politicians called a certain kind of specially paid
orator a 'spell-binder,' the word penetrated through the newspapers from
politicians to audiences. The man who knows that he has paid two dollars
to sit in a hall and be 'spell-bound,' feels, it is true, the old
sensations, but feels them with a subtle and irrevocable difference. The
English newspaper reader who has once heard the word 'sensational,' may
try to submit every morning the innermost sanctuary of his consciousness
to the trained psychologists of the halfpenny journals. He may,
according to the suggestion of the day, loathe the sixty million crafty
scoundrels who inhabit the German Empire, shudder at a coming comet,
pity the cowards on the Government Front Bench, or tremble lest a
pantomime lady should throw up her part. But he cannot help the
existence in the background of his consciousness of a self which
watches, and, perhaps, is a little ashamed of his 'sensations.' Even the
rapidly growing psychological complexity of modern novels and plays
helps to complicate the relation of the men of our time to their
emotional impulses. The young tradesman who has been reading either
_Evan Harrington_, or a novel by some writer who has read _Evan
Harrington_, goes to shake hands with a countess at an entertainment
given by the Primrose League, or the Liberal Social Council, conscious
of pleasure, but to some degree critical of his pleasure. His father,
who read _John Halifax, Gentleman_, would have been carried away by a
tenth part of the condescension which is necessary in the case of the
son. A voter who has seen _John Bull's Other