One of the most important conclusions which Dr. Moll draws in his masterly discussion of hypnotism is that "the phenomena of hypnosis have many more points of contact with ordinary life than would be concluded from the discussions and articles written to satisfy a mere longing for sensation." It is a well known fact that pathological processes are generally but heightened or diminished normalities. In disease the body behaves much as it does in health, but the degree of its behavior is different. Let the same processes of waste and repair which ordinarily produce the heat requisite for the maintenance of life, become too violent for any reason, and fever is the result. Too much of anything is not good. What we call the normal is a certain harmony of all functions. An abnormal condition arises when one or more of them is increased or diminished out of proportion to the other functions which co-operate with it, and this is as true of mental as of physical functions. A state of disease arises whenever this working harmony of mental factors is broken.

On the whole, the analysis of hypnotism which the English surgeon, James Braid, made in 1842, seems to contain as satisfactory description of it as any which has since been offered. That authority treated it as a disturbance of the nervous system * "produced by the concentration of the visual powers, the absolute repose of the body and the fixing of the attention." Inasmuch as a degree of physical concentration is necessary to the fixing of the mind, hypnotism when reduced to its lowest terms, seems to be a species of mental attention. And in spite of the fact that it is by no means easy to bring all the phenomena of hypnotism under this head, and that many other forms of answer have been offered, the psychological explanation seems to hold the key to the mystery and to have decided advantages over any other which has been proposed. At any rate, the authorities are practically agreed that the degrees of hypnotism are various, ranging all the way from the unnoted, easy persuasions of ordinary life to the surprising examples of complete control of the exhibition rooms.

And it is to these more common but frequently unrecognized lesser forms of hypnotism, that we would attend here.

• We are not of the opinion that hypnosis within itself disturbs the nervous system, unless it is conceded that the nervous system is disturbed by natural sleep. Gazing at a bright object for a length of time, with the eyeballs in a strained position, may disturb the nervous equilibrium, and as this was the method of hypnotism employed by Braid, he naturally inferred that hypnosis should be treated as a disturbance of the nervous system. Dr. Bernheim and others who hypnotize by suggestion have never noticed the slightest nervous disturbance, but on the contrary they have found hypnotic sleep to be a quiet, restful condition which presents no physiological differences from natural sleep. - Editor.

The one great lesson of the psychologist, which he finds most difficult to drive home to men, is that ideas are forces. What is in the mind gets out through the muscles, and nothing but what is in the mind, in some form, gets expression in action. Ideas once in the mind cannot be kept from expressing themselves in this way. At present most people are willing to believe that hypnotism in its more patent forms is a force - that under certain conditions the subject must do what the control tells him to do. Let him but yield himself to the influence and there is no retreat for him. All this is admitted in the case of the mysteries of the laboratory and the exhibition room, but it is no less true in a thousand relations of every day life.

A little reflection will show that one is by no means fully awake all the time that he seems to be. A latent or unnoted somnambulism is perhaps more common than complete wakefulness* And few facts are of such great importance as this in the interpretation of social life and human history. The strange fact which everywhere confronts the student of civilization is the amazing credulity of men. So eager have they been to swallow all forms of belief, that the human imagination does not seem to have been able to invent anything which in some place or other has not passed for truth. And it is not a sufficient explanation to say that men accepted such beliefs because they knew no better. This negative statement must be reinforced by a positive one. Men believed, not because they were ignorant alone, but because they were and are so made that they are dominated by ideas, - by foolish ones, if wise ones do not hold them; by absurd ones, if reasonable ones do not reach them; but ideas of some sort or kind always seize them and possess them.

People can be talked into all sorts of beliefs. Absolutely nothing but contradictory experience prevents them from believing anything, and in most cases the mere having of contradictory experiences at some time in their lives is not sufficient to prevent them from falling into preposterous errors. The corrective experiences must not only be had, they must also be treasured up. The present happening is in the habit of coming with such warmth and immediacy and overmastering power that it blots out a hundred faded out experiences which, if they were not so faded out, would give it the lie. Now, the habit of treasuring up past experiences and consciously using them is what we mean by criticism. And right here it is important to note that the genuinely educated man is not one who has merely passed through a great many different experiences and who has made the acquaintance of a wide range of men and things, but rather one who has formed the habit of consciously using the experiences which he has already had, be they few or many, in testing the new experiences which come to him.

But everywhere throughout the whole realm of psychic life, that which is the mind controls the man. It is unfavorable to the hypnotist's attempt for the subject to reflect and criticize. And while it is true that strength rather than weakness of will, or ability to fix the attention, is necessary in a good subject, it is nevertheless true that if one would remain an individual and out of the power of the other, he must reflect and criticize, and in so far as possible, allow his entire experience to determine his actions. The point at which the very process of attention that fosters independent mental life, becomes overattention, which may destroy mental independence is exceedingly difficult to determine. But that there is such a point, where the subject becomes a sort of lifeless copy of the control, is very well known. And what is here writ large is just as true in smaller type, in matters of politics, religion and all the various relations of our social life. The Being which expresses itself in us, loves variations or individuals, but genuine individuals are preserved only by constant criticism and reflection.