+173. Apparatus of suggestion.+ In modern times the apparatus of suggestion is in language, not in pictures, carvings, morality plays, or other visible products of art. Watchwords, catchwords, phrases, and epithets are the modern instrumentalities. There are words which are used currently as if their meaning was perfectly simple, clear, and unambiguous, which are not defined at all. "Democracy," the "People," "Wall Street," "Slave," "Americanism," are examples. These words have been called "symbols." They might better be called "tokens." They are like token coins. They "pass"; that is their most noteworthy characteristic. They are familiar, unquestioned, popular, and they are always current above their value. They always reveal the invincible tendency of the masses to mythologize. They are personified and a superhuman energy is attributed to them. "Democracy" is not treated as a parallel word to aristocracy, theocracy, autocracy, etc., but as a Power from some outside origin, which brings into human affairs an inspiration and energy of its own. The "People" is not the population, but a creation of mythology, to which inherent faculties and capacities are ascribed beyond what can be verified within experience. "Wall Street" takes the place which used to be assigned to the devil. What is that "Wall Street" which is currently spoken of by editors and public men as thinking, wanting, working for, certain things? There is a collective interest which is so designated which is real, but the popular notion under "Wall Street" is unanalyzed. It is a phantasm or a myth. In all these cases there is a tyranny in the term. Who dare criticise democracy or the people? Who dare put himself on the side of Wall Street? The tyranny is greatest in regard to "American" and "Americanism." Who dare say that he is not "American"? Who dare repudiate what is declared to be "Americanism"? It follows that if anything is base and bogus it is always labeled "American." If a thing is to be recommended which cannot be justified, it is put under "Americanism." Who does not shudder at the fear of being called "unpatriotic"? and to repudiate what any one chooses to call "American" is to be unpatriotic. If there is any document of Americanism, it is the Declaration of Independence. Those who have Americanism especially in charge have repudiated the doctrine that "governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed," because it stood in the way of what they wanted to do. They denounce those who cling to the doctrine as un-American. Then we see what Americanism and patriotism are. They are the duty laid upon us all to applaud, follow, and obey whatever a ruling clique of newspapers and politicians chooses to say or wants to do. "England" has always been, amongst us, a kind of counter token, or token of things to be resisted and repudiated. The "symbols," or "tokens," always have this utility for suggestion. They carry a coercion with them