ore the convention to make a speech. A great and difficult
question agitated the party. He began by saying that he would
state his position on that question frankly and fully. "But
first," said he, "let me say that I am a Democrat." This brought
out a storm of applause. Then he went on to boast of his services
to the party, and then he stopped without having said a word on
the great question. He was easily nominated. The witch
persecutions rested on suggestion. "Everybody knew" that there
were witches. If not, what were the people who were burned?
Philip IV of France wanted to make the people believe that the
templars were heretics. The people were not ready to believe
this. The king caused the corpse of a templar to be dug up and
burned, as the corpses of heretics were burned. This convinced
the people by suggestion.[40] What "they say," what "everybody
does," and what "everybody knows" are controlling suggestions.
Religious revivals are carried on by suggestion. Mediaeval
flagellations and dances were cases of suggestion. In fact, all
popular manias are to be explained by it. Religious bodies
practice suggestion on themselves, especially on their children
or less enthusiastic members, by symbols, pictures, images,
processions, dramatic representations, festivals, relics, legends
of their heroes. In the Middle Ages the crucifix was an
instrument of religious suggestion to produce vivid apprehension
of the death of Jesus. In very many well-known cases the passions
of the crowd were raised to the point of very violent action. The
symbols and images also, by suggestion, stimulate religious
fervor. If numbers act together, as in convents, mass phenomena
are produced, and such results follow as the hysterical epidemics
in convents and the extravagances of communistic sects.[41]
Learned societies and numbers of persons who are interested in
the same subject, by meeting and imparting suggestions, make all
the ideas of each the common stock of all. Hyperboreans have a
mental disease which renders them liable to suggestion. The women
are afflicted by hysteria before puberty. Later they show the
phenomena of "possession,"--dancing and singing,--and still later
catalepsy.[42]

+26. Suggestion in politics.+ The great field for the use of the
devices and apparatus of suggestion at the present time is
politics. Within