104 WHAT IS LIFE ? 



life, to the business or profession, from youth to man- 

 hood, go on those physical alterations which are seen in 

 effects. We call these effects the result of education 

 and experience. 



organization upon the natural organization of the body : so that acts,, 

 which at first require a conscious effort, eventually become unconscious 

 and mechanical. If the act which primarily requires a distinct con- 

 sciousness and volition of its details, always needed the same effort,, 

 education would be an impossibility." (' Lay Sermons, Addresses, 

 and Reviews," Thos. H. Huxley, LUD., F.R.S., 1893, p. 21)3.) 



" A child is ' impulsive,' reacts upon the suggestions of the 

 moment in a word, is a more automaton-like than a reflective self- 

 controlled adult. Religious ecstasy, lover's imagination, ordinary 

 dream chains, somnambulism, the deceptions produced by the dis- 

 tracting manoeuvres of a juggler, offer more or less familiar instances 

 of that concentration or predominance of a train of ideas to the 

 effacement of other accessory or modifying ideas and sensations 

 which in extreme degree is characteristic of the hypnotic state. 

 Education is not only instruction, it is suggestion working upon 

 brains more or less predisposed to reception, more or less pre-occupied 

 by the effects of previous suggestions ; and the influence of some 

 persons upon the beliefs and conduct of others is an every- day in- 

 stance of physiological hypnotism, the actual result depending upon 

 two factors upon the impressiveness of the operators, upon the 

 susceptibility of the subjects. A hypnotised person is in a state of 

 ' suggestibility ' or unsceptical credulity, which is a retrogression 

 towards a primitive state, and an exaggeration of that working 

 credulity of every-day life which enables us to acquiesce in and act 

 upon simple statements without constantly exacting argument, or 

 evidence, or proof. We naturally in the absence of stronger reason 

 to the contrary believe what we are told, and imitate the actions of 

 other people. Suggestions to ideas and to actions have more or less 

 pronounced effects on persons of different temperament ; they have 

 an exaggerated or forced effect upon hypnotised subjects during 

 the passive state, or even, it may be, in their ordinary awakened 

 condition. All men are more or less automata ; hypnotised subjects 

 are excessively or completely automata." ("An Introduction to 

 Human Physiology," A. D. Waller, M.D., F.R.S., 1896, p. 574.) 



