756 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



precisely what happens in hypnotism. These stimuli generally 

 consist in words spoken by the hypnotizer to the sleeping subject, 

 who hears and understands everything that is said to him as 

 though it was said in a dream. In many instances the hypnotized 

 person realizes the existence of every object or person called up 

 to his mind by the words of the hypnotizer. He sees the dog, or 

 the man, or the house, exactly as its presence is affirmed by the 

 speaker. He can be made to taste imaginary fluids or hear im- 

 aginary voices at the will of the physician, and, as I have just said, 

 all these impressions are as real to him as actual perceptions. His 

 will is so weakened that he can generally be made to execute the 

 most varied motions at the command of the person who has put 

 him to sleep. He may try to resist commands, but the resistance 

 is feeble, and he eventually obeys automatically. His dreams are 

 formed and guided by an external agency, and his muscles are 

 brought into activity and controlled by the same influence. 



The ideas, acts, and sensations which can thus be insinuated, 

 so to speak, into the brain of a person in the hypnotic state, 

 through the agency of speech, or any other external influence, are 

 technically called suggestions.'^ Individuals vary greatly in the 

 readiness with which they react to suggestions when hypnotized, 

 and their suggestibility is said to be high or low as the case may 

 be. In general, persons possessed of a lively imagination in the 

 normal waking state, are highly susceptible to suggestion in the 

 hypnotic condition. Thus the two essential elements of hypnotism 

 are sleep and suggestion. The degree of sleep varies in different 

 cases, from the lightest somnolence imaginable, to a condition of 

 profound lethargy, from which the subject can only be awakened 

 with difficulty. 



Suggestibility is by no means peculiar to hypnotized persons. 

 Almost every one is sensitive to suggestion to a certain extent 

 when awake, for in every human being, no matter how skeptical 

 he may consider himself, there exists a certain degree of credulity, 

 and this credulity may be played upon and taken advantage of in 

 a measure. Children can be made to believe the most preposterous 

 statements if they are made with sufficient gravity. The majority 

 of healthy children are, moreover, auto-suggestionists ; that is, they 

 create air-castles, in which they soon come to believe firmly as 

 objective realities. Too often such auto-suggestions are regarded 

 by parents and friends as deliberate lies. They are in reality 

 simply the creations of phantasy, which have become established 

 as truths in consequence of being unopposed and uncorrected by 

 reason and experience. In the course of time the reasoning f acul- 



* The French use the word suggestion to express this idea, and although the English 

 suggestion, as commonly employed, does not perfectly correspond with its use as employed 

 by French authors, it answers the purpose better than any other word. 



