+26. Suggestion in politics.+ The great field for the use of the devices and apparatus of suggestion at the present time is politics. Within fifty years all states have become largely popular. Suggestion is easy when it falls in with popular ideas, the pet notions of groups of people, the popular common-places, and the current habits of thought and feeling. Newspapers, popular literature, and popular oratory show the effort to operate suggestion along these lines. They rarely correct; they usually flatter the accepted notions. The art of adroit suggestion is one of the great arts of politics. Antony's speech over the body of Caesar is a classical example of it. In politics, especially at elections, the old apparatus of suggestion is employed again,--flags, symbols, ceremonies, and celebrations. Patriotism is systematically cultivated by anniversaries, pilgrimages, symbols, songs, recitations, etc. Another very remarkable case of suggestion is furnished by modern advertisements. They are adroitly planned to touch the mind of the reader in a way to get the reaction which the advertiser wants. The advertising pages of our popular magazines furnish evidence of the faiths and ideas which prevail in the masses. +27. Suggestion and criticism.+ Suggestion is a legitimate device, if it is honestly used, for inculcating knowledge or principles of conduct; that is, for education in the broadest sense of the word. Criticism is the operation by which suggestion is limited and corrected. It is by criticism that the person is protected against credulity, emotion, and fallacy. The power of criticism is the one which education should chiefly train. It is difficult to resist the suggestion that one who is accused of crime is guilty. Lynchers generally succumb to this suggestion, especially if the crime was a heinous one which has strongly excited their emotions against the unknown somebody who perpetrated it. It requires criticism to resist this suggestion. Our judicial institutions are devised to hold this suggestion aloof until the evidence is examined. An educated man ought to be beyond the reach of suggestions from advertisements, newspapers, speeches, and stories. If he is wise, just when a crowd is filled with enthusiasm and emotion, he will leave it and will go off by himself to form his judgment. In short, individuality and personality of character are the opposites of suggestibility. Autosuggestion properly includes all the cases in which a man is "struck by an idea," or "takes a notion," but it is more strictly applied to fixed ideas and habits of thought. An irritation suggests parasites, and parasites suggest an irritation. The fear of stammering causes stammering. A sleeping man drives away a fly without waking. If we are in a pose or role, we act as we have