NORMAL AND HEIGHTENED SUGGESTIBILITY. 643 



all so from without, and vice versa. Yet it is difficult to draw 

 any sharp line of demarcation between the two classes, and in 

 the account which I shall give of suggestion I shall confine myself 

 to the latter. I may have occasion to recur to suggestions from 

 within in a later paper. I shall also limit myself to the discus- 

 sion of the tendency to development and the associative and motor 

 tendencies of mental states, omitting for the present their effects 

 upon the metabolic processes. Thus the chief phenomena which 

 I shall pass in review are, (1) the development of a suggested idea 

 into a " sensory " hallucination, (2) the expansion of a suggested 

 idea into a complete dream by evocation of associated ideas, (3) 

 the production of bodily movements by means of suggested sensa- 

 tions or ideas. 



As I have already said, it is not easy to observe that one is 

 one's self suggestible. One's present consciousness contains at all 

 times such a mass of subnascent, nascent, and vivid states that it 

 is impossible to trace the effects of any one group, yet occasionally 

 one can catch a state on the wing, as it were, and note its effects. 

 Some years ago, I came home about ten o'clock one sunny morning, 

 deeply absorbed in thought ; of the latter part of my walk I had 

 no clear memories, but I came to myself to find myself standing in 

 the sunlight, holding a lighted match aloft in my right hand, 

 apparently looking for a gasjet. I always carried in a certain 

 pocket my keys and a matchbox; the sight of the door had 

 prompted me to thrust my hand into my pocket, but I had no 

 clear thought of the latchkey of which I was in search. Had I 

 had, the mere fact that my hand happened to come in contact 

 with the matchbox would have produced no result. As it was, 

 the feeling of the matchbox found no obstacle to its working out 

 its own results my hand closed on the box, withdrew and opened 

 it, took out a match and struck it, and this organized motor series 

 was wrecked merely by the physical impossibility of lighting a 

 gasburner where there was none to light, and not by the interfer- 

 ence of inconsistent mental elements. Such phenomena are famil- 

 iar to us all, but we rarely take pains to analyze them in detail, 

 otherwise the precisely similar phenomena of hypnotic sugges- 

 tion would not excite so much astonishment. 



A large proportion of our acts are thus suggested by sense- 

 impressions. Another large proportion is under the direct con- 

 trol of thoughts almost as simple, but the guiding thought is 

 often so faint and phantomlike that it escapes attention. I was 

 sitting once in a railway train on my way to Philadelphia ; in the 

 corner in front of me was an umbrella. I lifted my right hand, 

 extended it, then let it fall. When I say that " I " did this I am 

 not speaking with precision. " I " was at the time occupied with 

 an entirely different train of thought, and the lifting and drop- 



