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Jingoism: Its Meaning and Origin
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suggestion, will vary with the resistance offered by trained reason and firmly rooted individual convictions applicable to the issues concerned in the suggestion.

The rapid and numerous changes in the external structure of modern civilization have been accompanied by grave unsettlement of the inner life; a breaking up of time-honoured dogmas, a collapse of principles in politics, religion, and morality have sensibly reduced the power of resistance to strong passionate suggestions in the individuals of all classes. Hence the common paradox that an age of universal scepticism may also be an age of multifarious superstitions, lightly acquired and briefly held, but dangerous for character and conduct while they hold their sway. Among civilized peoples, those of Western Europe and of the United States are at the present time, perhaps to a greater extent than ever before, destitute of fixed and clearly defined convictions upon root-issues of ethics and politics. Their education has, among the better educated classes, been instrumental largely in producing scepticism and fluctuating dilettantism, while among the masses it has produced a low curiosity and indiscriminate receptivity. This general unsettlement of habits and principles implies in

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