ABSTRACT
Ideas, considered simply, are essences, not pictures in animals; they are therefore not loaded with zeal or capable of self-propagation. What we call the contagious force of an idea is the force of the people who have embraced it; and the perhaps irresistible hold of that idea upon them is not a power or magnetism in the idea itself, but a propensity or fixed habit in them to form that idea or to revert to it in intention as when trying to recall a name. On the other hand the awakened act of intuition when the name comes is a vital process by no means passionless; in framing an idea we successfully perform an act of which we are instinctively proud; we repeat it as we might our own verses. A contrary idea will henceforth irritate or offend us; and if the movement of the psyche culminating in that idea was massive and decided, we may not only cling to our idea tenaciously but undertake to impose it universally, obliterating all contrary ideas that there may be in the world.
