seldom be made between the two, since both motives are usually operative in the same enterprise, though in varying proportions. But surely it is absurd to claim for either an inherent predisposition to speak the truth. The failure of the "Free Press"--the carping rags that imagine themselves independent--would appear to lie in the very fact of their eagerness to convert. The natural resentment of the man who discerns an attempt to convert him was well expressed in a witty speech in the House of Commons during a debate on the relations between Press and Government. What had always attracted him most about Lord Northcliffe, said the Hon. Member for Stockport, was that he had never pretended to be a philanthropist. He was not one of those pestilent people who pretended to run newspapers in order that they might leave the world a little better than they found it.[81] Tradition and the building up of sentiments and ideals, together with the symbols by which they are known and familiarized, are very largely, if not exclusively, the work of the written word. But Literature and the Press are themselves governed by their past history, and by traditions and conventions that have been gradually built up from a few fundamental ideas, however diversified they may eventually have become; and these ideas, in their turn, owe their origin to the passions and sentiments of the race as a whole. Even the work of genius has its roots in the ideas of the past. "Are we sure," asks a French author, "that the ideas which flow from great men of genius are exclusively their own work? No doubt they always spring from the wealth of individual souls, but the myriads of grains of dust which form the alluvion where those ideas have generated are surely formed by the soul of the nation?"[82] We have seen that it is a fundamental principle that the strongest suggestion must prevail; mass tells against single individuals, overwhelming quantity against quality, when the strength of either is measured against the resistance to be overcome. Cosmic suggestion is conditioned by various circumstances which affect its influence. It is a commonplace to say that like attracts like; this fact is but another attribute of gregarious attraction and tends towards establishing the homogeneity of aggregations, and slightly modifies the attraction of mere numbers. It results in a diversity of centres of attraction; but these centres of attraction are apt to converge and coalesce if for any reason they are simultaneously affected by related or identical sentiments. Frequency and persistency, as is well known, also modify the force of mere numbers. The loudest and most frequently repeated affirmations carry the most weight. In this way small bands of fanatics, by dint of reiteration, have had their catchwords and shibboleths accepted unquestioningly.