STUDIES OF CHILDHOOD. 179 



canonized toy horse already referred to] would like you to do 

 this/ and it was done without a murmur." 



We have another analogue to hypnotic suggestion when a 

 mother prepares her child some time beforehand for a difficult 

 duty, telling him that she expects him to perform it. A mother 

 writes that her boy, when about the age of two years and three 

 months more particularly, was inclined to burst into loud but 

 short fits of crying. " I have found [she says] they are often 

 checked by telling him beforehand what would be expected of 

 him, and exacting a promise that he would do the thing cheer- 

 fully. I have seen his face flush up ready to cry when he remem- 

 bered his promise and controlled himself." This reminds one 

 forcibly of the commands suggested by the hypnotizer to be 

 carried into effect when the subject wakes. 



Much more, perhaps, might be done in this direction by choos- 

 ing the right moment for setting up the persistent ideas in the 

 child's consciousness. I know a lady who got into the way of 

 giving moral exhortation to her somewhat headstrong girl at 

 night before the child fell asleep, and found this very effectual. 

 It is possible that we may be able to apply this idea of prepara- 

 tory and premonitory suggestion in new and surprising ways to 

 difficult and refractory children.* 



One other way in which the wise mother will win the child 

 over to duty is by developing his consciousness of freedom and 

 power. A mother, who was herself a well-known writer for 

 children, has recorded in some notes on her children that when 

 one of her little girls was disinclined to accede to her wish she 

 used to say to her, " Oh, yes, I think when you have remembered 

 how pleasant it is to oblige others you will do it." "I will think 

 about it, mamma," the child would reply, laughing, and then go 

 and hide her head behind a sofa pillow, which she called her 

 thinking corner." In half a minute she would come out and 

 say, " Oh, yes, mamma, I have thought about it and I will do it.*' 

 This strikes me as an admirable combination of regulative sug- 

 gestion with exercise of the young will in moral decision. It 

 gave the child the consciousness of using her own will, and yet 

 maintained the needed measure of guidance and control. 



As the moral consciousness develops and new problems arise, 

 new openings for such suggestive guidance occur. How valuable, 

 for example, is the mother's encouragement of the weakly child 

 shrinking from a difficult self-repressive action when she says 

 with inspiring voice, " You can do it if you try." Thus, pilotlike. 



* The bearings of (hypnotic) suggestion on moral education have been discussed by 

 Guyau, Education and Heredity (English translation), chap. i. Compare also Prayer, op. 

 cif., o. 26*7 f., and Compayre, op. cit., p. 262. 







