The mere written or printed proposition is assimilated by autosuggestion; its aim is to awaken what is already in the reader's mind, whether of fear or courage, love or hate, admiration or contempt, to make articulate what before was vague and undefined, to associate these qualities in the reader to certain objects or symbols, in this way gradually building up sentiments and ideals. But cosmic suggestion or psychic environment is a vital influence, capable of overcoming resistance and of kindling human passions and emotions. It is often asserted that the Press accurately voices public opinion; this, however, as all pressmen know, is not true. The Press to a certain extent approximates certain sections of public opinion, or more accurately adapts itself to it, but all it can truthfully be said to represent is the newspaper proprietors, and in a lesser degree the host of hired scribblers whom they employ. At the same time it would be foolish to minimize the enormous and ever-increasing power it wields--a power that increases _pari passu_ with the growing power of the masses and corresponding decrease in responsibility and intelligence of their chosen rulers. The Press, no longer confining itself to its legitimate rôle of conveying news, tends more and more to present the appearance of organized concerns for the dissemination of lies and counter-lies, and the propagation of hate, envy and humbug, each organ shouting its particular claptrap and catchwords with the frenzied persistence of bucket-shop touts. Mr. Hilaire Belloc draws a subtle distinction between what he calls the "Capitalist Press," or those organs run for mere profit, and a "Free Press," or organs produced for the sole motive of influencing public opinion, i.e. for propaganda.[80] The former is vicious and untruthful, the latter is virtuous and bears witness to the truth. Having once consigned all the existing press organs to their respective categories as "Capitalist" or "Free" by this simple test of motive, the vice of the one and the virtue of the other are at once apparent: anything meriting the label "Capitalist" is naturally bad and depraved, while sufficient guarantee of the integrity and virtue of the "Free" Press may be found in the fact that Mr. Belloc himself writes for the "Free" Press, and testifies to the fact that it does not pay. While so arbitrary a distinction must necessarily appear captious and fanciful, and absurd when applied as a test of veracity, we may yet perhaps roughly distinguish between those organs which are designed primarily to sell at a maximum profit and those which are sold primarily to propagate a "cause," even at a loss. At the risk of appearing cynical, we might say that the chief difference between the two lies in the fact that the former is designed to pander to the foibles of its readers, and the latter is the expression of the fanaticism of its writers. As a matter of fact, such a hard and fast distinction can