We must take for granted that the reader of this paper is acquainted with the meaning of the words hypnotism and suggestion; that he knows the efficacy of ideas to be dependent upon the multitude of circumstances which determine the psychic attitude of the giver and of the receiver of the suggestion. We assume also that he knows that suggestion need not, to be effective, be practiced during hypnotic sleep. Hypnosis is a state of heightened suggestibility; outside of it suggestion may also have very powerful results. * Between the lower degree of suggestibility, - the wide awake, all around alertness which characterizes some of our moods, - and somnambulism, there stretches a scale of psycho-physiological states along which we are all incessantly in motion.

Our task in the following paper is to point out, within the much too narrow space at our disposal, how far trance and suggestion may account for some of the phenomena of religious life. Our attention will be given entirely to the two most important manifestations of the Christian religion: Union with God and Conversion.

Union or Communion with God has all possible degrees, the highest of them is called mystical ecstasy. Mysticism has been, and still is, a very powerful factor in Christianity, for Union with God is the highest and best condition of the Christian, according to that large portion of the Church to which the name mystic may be applied if used in its largest and exclusively religious sense, +

What is this exalted state and how is it induced? We will let the great mystics themselves, many of whom were subtle introspectors, answer these questions for us. The Doctor Ecstaticus, John of Ruysbrock, is one of those who have carefully noted the several steps of the scala perfectionis or ladder of love. Id "Ordo Spiritualium Nuptiarum" three stages are described. The third and highest he calls the Contemplative Life: "In this simple and intent contemplation, we are one life and one spirit with God. In this highest state the soul is united to God without means; it sinks into the vast darkness of the Godhead." Notice the words "v .st darkness;" in another place he uses the expression "nudity of mind" to describe the condition of the soul in God.

* See "Suggestive Therapeutics," by Bernhelm and "Suggestion without Hypnotism," by Ch. Barrows, Proc. Sec. of Psy. Research, Part XXX., Vol. XII.

tinges 'n his excellent book, defines religious mysticism as "The attempt to realize the presence of the living God in the soul and in nature." - Christian Mysticism, p. 5.

The treatise of the delicately naive Francois de Sales on "The love of God," is an extensive and minute guide to ecstasy. As the mystics agree on the chief points upon which our inquiry bears, we may draw our information altogether from this book.*

The journey of the soul begins with Meditation; from it, it passes to Contemplation which, becoming deeper and deeper, ascends through Amorous Contemplation, Rest of the Soul in the Beloved, Liquefaction of the Soul in God, Amorous Languor, the Sovereign Degree of Union in Suspension [of the senses and of the will] and finally reaches Ecstasy.+ Let us take up successively the most important of these steps.

"Meditation considers in detail the objects proper to move us, but contemplation views the object of love in a lump, and as a whole. It takes place without effort and with pleasure. . . . and in this it differs from meditation which requires almost always an effort, work and speech." The author insists upon the passivity of the soul when once she has left meditation behind: "It is God who produces contemplation in ourselves according to His good pleasure, by the efficacy of His Holy Grace." A certain "sweet sweetness" diffuses itself imperceptibly in the heart. The soul is so "quietly attentive to the kindness of the beloved (bien aime,) that she seems hardly attentive at all. This peace may go so far that all the powers of the soul stir no more, they are as asleep: the will itself does nothing more than receive the delight afforded by the presence of the beloved."

* Traite* de 1' Amour de Dicu, by St. Francois de Sales. See the heads of the Chapters of Books VI. and VII.

The psychologist will note that the contemplative state, as we find it described here, is, on the intellectual side, essentially one of the stages through which the hypnotist tries to lead his subject. He finds him actively thinking about whatever may be of interest to him at the time; he asks him to be seated, to remain peacefully quiet, to be passive, merely receptive. "Do not make any effort to think of anything in particular; let your mind become a blank, and you will presently pass into a quiet, pleasant sleep" - thus speaks the hypnotist. He may, as is well known, help the production of the necessary mental abeyance by other means, the fixation of a brilliant point, for instance, but, whatever the means, the result aimed at is to get the subject into a state of mental passivity and blankness such as St. Francois describes.

But contemplation is only one of the lower rounds of the ladder of love. The "Sacred Amorous Quietude" goes at times so far that although the soul feels the Savior speaking to her, she cannot speak to Him; "her heaviness is so great that she is like one who is beginning to fall asleep. But finally, she can some-times neither hear nor speak to the beloved, she does not even feel any sign of his presence .. It is then that the soul on awakening may rightly say: "truly have I slept with my God, held within the arms of His divine presence, and I knew it not." The trance has become complete, consciousness has altogether ceased. This sovereign state is, as far as intellect and will are concerned, identical with the non-religious trance. To give to it the large, vague sense of unequaled delight characteristic of the so-called liquefaction of the soul in God, the hypnotist need only awaken in his subject ideas pleasant in a high degree; let him be shown the beloved woman in a halo of dazzling light and he will sink in an abyss of "divine raptures." His trance will then be suffused with the glow of the tender passion and thus become equal to the Nirvana of the Christian mystic.