ate dynamic energy--the thoughts all tend to pass into
action. "Thought is another name for fate." Dominate your hearers'
thoughts, allay all contradictory ideas, and you will sway them as you
wish.

Volitions as well as feelings and thoughts tend to follow the line of
least resistance. That is what makes habit. Suggest to a man that it is
impossible to change his mind and in most cases it becomes more
difficult to do so--the exception is the man who naturally jumps to the
contrary. Counter suggestion is the only way to reach him. Suggest
subtly and persistently that the opinions of those in the audience who
are opposed to your views are changing, and it requires an effort of the
will--in fact, a summoning of the forces of feeling, thought and
will--to stem the tide of change that has subconsciously set in.

But, not only are we moved by authority, and tend toward channels of
least resistance: _We are all influenced by our environments_. It is
difficult to rise above the sway of a crowd--its enthusiasms and its
fears are contagious because they are suggestive. What so many feel, we
say to ourselves, must have some basis in truth. Ten times ten makes
more than one hundred. Set ten men to speaking to ten audiences of ten
men each, and compare the aggregate power of those ten speakers with
that of one man addressing one hundred men. The ten speakers may be more
logically convincing than the single orator, but the chances are
strongly in favor of the one man's reaching a greater total effect, for
the hundred men will radiate conviction and resolution as ten small
groups could not. We all know the truism about the enthusiasm of
numbers. (See the chapter on "Influencing the Crowd.")

Environment controls us unless the contrary is strongly suggested. A
gloomy day, in a drab room, sparsely tenanted by listeners, invites
platform disaster. Everyone feels it in the air. But let the speaker
walk squarely up to the issue and suggest by all his feeling, manner and
words that this is going to be a great gathering in every vital sense,
and see how the suggestive power of environment recedes before the
advance of a more potent suggestion--if such the speaker is able to make
it.

Now these three factors--respect for authority, tendency to follow lines
of least resistance, and susceptibility to environment--all help to
bring the auditor into a state of mind favorable to suggestive
influences, but they also react on the speaker, and n