When the connection is remembered in a telling phrase, and when its origin has never been consciously noticed, we may find ourselves with a really vivid belief for which we could, if cross-examined, give no account whatever.

When, for instance, we have heard an early-Victorian Bishop called 'Soapy Sam' half a dozen times we get a firm conviction of his character without further evidence.
Under ordinary circumstances not much harm is done by this fact; because a name would not be likely to 'catch on' unless a good many people really thought it appropriate, and unless it 'caught on' we should not be likely to hear it more than once or twice.

But in politics, as in the conjuring trade, it is often worth while for some people to take a great deal of trouble in order to produce such an effect without waiting for the idea to enforce itself by merely accidental repetition.

I have already said that political parties try to give each other bad names by an organised system of mental suggestion.
If the word 'Wastrel,' for instance, appears on the contents bills of the _Daily Mail_ one morning as a name for the Progressives during a County Council election, a passenger riding on an omnibus from Putney to the Bank will see it half-consciously at least a hundred times, and will have formed a fairly stable mental association by the end of the journey.

If he reflected, he would know that only one person has once decided to use the word, but he does not reflect, and the effect on him is the same as if a hundred persons had used it independently of each other.