The crucial question in the employment of neuropathic suggestion, centers in its effect on the will of the subject. The real advantage, morally, if any, must be looked for in its power to increase his conscious self-direction in pursuing a worthy end. Any disadvantage in this respect must have its ample compensation, It must be admtted that the immediate effect of frequent hypnosis is to subject the person to an external influence rather than to a subjective volition. One whom it is difficult to hypnotize during the first seance yields more and more readily each succeeding time. Such facts have been given greater significance than they deserve. It is overlooked that the initial impulse in every new act of the will is an external suggestion. This id especially true of children. The will in childhood is relatively unformed and takes shape along the line of externally induced acts. Repeated suggestion passes over into auto-suggestion. Hypnotism merely changes the direction of the will from a wrong to a right course. "Hypnotic suggestion," says Moll, "and sugggestion out of hypnotism have the same aim; to determine the subject's will in a certain direction.

He is to do right, not unconsciously and mechanically, but with conscious will, which has got its direction either from hypnotic suggestion or from ordinary education. Suggestion sets the conscious will in the right direction as education does. The false views result from the fact that the hypnotic suggestion is taken for an unconscious process - a supposition which I have refuted."1 The danger is obviated if the subject is hypnotized sparingly and at progressively longer intervals and is given each time a chance to act upon the suggestion.

It is conceded by those who have had the most experience in producing-hypnosis that the danger arising from selflish and immoral operators has been greatly magnified. Such suggestions encounter the auto-suggestions of the subject and result in dissipating the influence of the operator. - Editor.

If hypnotism were resorted to for the alleviation of every petty defect, there is no doubt but that the will would be destroyed through habitually yielding it to external control.* Its true province is certainly in pathological cases or in those in which the moral disorder holds out against every attempt of the usual influences of education and of the non-hypnotic suggestion. It is coming to be generally recognized that many of the childish evils, such as lying, stubbornness, fits of anger and the like, are merely outcrops which come naturally at a certain period of development and may as naturally disappear during a later stage of growth. It would be a mistake to use any serious measures in hunting down these incidental features of development. Hypnotism undoubtedly has a place in reformatories, especially those for children, since they are in a particular way susceptible to its influence. It is to be hoped that it will soon be recognized as an efficient aid in the work of state reform schools and in municipal and county infirmaries.

1 Moll, op. cit., p. 332.

There is no authentic case on record in which a subject's will power has been Impaired by repeated hypnosis. An intimate acquaintance with those who have been hypnotized repeatedly for years, and a close study of the effect upon their wills has failed to reveal any deleterious effect - Editor.

The distinction between the right and wrong use of hypnotism in moral culture will be clearer if we distinguish between suggestion without hypnotism and suggestion of a distinctly neuropathic nature. The difference is only one of degree. The effect of every suggestion is to lift some point in the field of con-Scicosness to a greater or less degree above the rest. It tends to focalize the attention upon a definite point. This is represented diagramatically in. one accompanying figure, following somewhat. the imagery of James and Tichener in picturing the mental life. If the stream of consciousness be supposed to flow out of the page toward the reader, each diagram will show a cross-section of it under different conditions. In a passive state no part of the surface of the stream is raised much above the rest.

A.

1. Normal consciousness in a state of attention to object A.

B.

2. Normal consciousness under the influence of forcible suggestion of object B.

C.

3. Consciousness under extreme suggestion and attention concentrated on object C.

D.

4. Abnormal consciousness under hypnosis.

When the attention is directed on some object A, a corresponding point is brought into relief. Under normal conditions this is felt to have a distinct relation to the sum total of the mental states which makes up the personality (I in the figure,) and which is an observer of the object A. The object A is felt to have a relation to the rest of consciousness and carries with it related objects a' a" a"', etc. The other cuts show a greater and greater exaggeration of the degree of attention, and a corresponding sacrifice of the other elements of consciousness, until we reach a condition in (4), a state of extreme hypnosis, which every one would acknowledge to be abnormal. In this the suggested idea occupies the entire field of consciousness. It has become sufficiently vivid to swallow up all sense of personal identity, so that I has completely disappeared, or rather is completely identified with the idea D. All the manifold sensations, perceptions, memories and vaso-motor and sympathetic resonances which constituted the ego-feeling under normal conditions are now completely submerged and are at the mercy of the operator.

Another evidence of the abnormality of the condition in (4) is that the object D. stands free from all related objects, - is so stripped of its associations that in waking consciousness the circumstances under which It was suggested are entirely forgotten. The hypnotist cannot convince the subject., except under another hypnosis, that the idea was the result of a suggestion. The dangers, then, are apparent: the ego-feeling is too much narrowed down, is of a shifting character according to the whim of the operator, and is allied with abnormal ideational states, while mental hygiene demands that it be as inclusive and as constant as possible; the sphere of clear consciousness is severed from its usual intimate connection with the sub-conscious processes - in fact is annulled - and instead the entire sub-conscious self is at the mercy of the cramped and naked objects of attention aroused by the operator's suggestions. The chances are it would be safer to leave fairly normal subjects to the slower influence of education than to run the risk of distortions through an unwise use of hypnotism.

If the above distinctions show clearly the dangers of hypno-tism they emphasize as strongly its utility in pathological cases. One sees in what way it can produce almost miraculous transformations of character. If the native instincts and impulses are already so much out of true proportion as to constitute an unavoidable bent toward evil, it is not only justifiable but advisable that the dormant ones which would bring about symmetry of character be stimulated violently by artificial means. An idea, D, of honesty or chastity, or cleanliness, if forcibly enough suggested is, for the time, identical with the ego-feeling, i e., - the person, so far as he has self-consciousness, is honest or chaste or clean, as the case may be. As he proceeds to order his conduct in accordance with the idea which possesses him, he becomes habitually so. In the course of time the breaches and inconsistencies in his make-up may heal, with the suggested virtue as the dominating function.

The opportunity should not pass of pointing out finally the value of merely psychological suggestion as a means of moral education. As has been said the difference between suggestion and hypnotism is one of degree rather than of kind. Hypnotism as a moral therapeutic instrument only pictures in an exaggerated way the possibilities of ordinary suggestion. All the influences which break the even flow of consciousness and cause it to center itself on a specific object are a species of suggestion. The work of the moral teacher is to disturb the uniformity and equanimity of a slumbering mind, subject by reason of its passivity to moods and passions, and to lift up within it and before it ideas and ideals which determine it in the direction of worthy ends. The induced condition, depending on the individual instance, should be that in (1), (2) or (3) above. Consciousness should be focalized more or less intensely toward some point which the age and circumstances of the person warrant The flow of personal enthusiasm, the strength and beauty of some character portrayed in a piece of fiction, the possibility of worth and achievement as set forth in biography or poetry, loyalty to some organization, attachment to a struggling cause, ideals of honor or helpfulness or the beauty of virtue, - to hold up these and a hundred such things before the view of those one wishes to help, this is the most efficient means of character formation.

If the fact be recognized of how per-sistently all ideas hunt for ways of passing over into action, one will appreciate how nearly a moral obsession through a suggested notion is the equivalent of a virtuous character.