SELF-PRESERVATION AND THE MENTAL LIFE 161 



Emmanuel Church movement, will depend upon 

 what we believe hypnotic suggestion to be capable 

 of assuming, of course, that these phenomena do 

 not require supernatural forces for their explana- 

 tion. Professor Janet says that " there is no physio- 

 logical function which is exempt from modification 

 by hypnotic influence, if not complete control by 

 it." Extreme as this statement is, it is not beyond 

 the possibility of being true. We cannot define 

 with exactness the limits of hypnotic influence. It 

 does not greatly help us to say that its action is 

 confined to the modification of function as distin- 

 guished from structure, for the line between the 

 structural and the functional cannot be sharply 

 drawn. It is certain that the vasomotor system of 

 nerves is, in a measure, under the influence of sug- 

 gestion. The proof of this is that in some persons 

 we cause a local reddening of the skin by insistent 

 suggestions bearing on the region in question. This 

 occurrence is of the same order as a blush invoked 

 in one person by the speech of another ; the hypnotic 

 vasomotor influence is, in general, exertable within 

 a wider area than the phenomenon of blushing, and 

 is inducible with more difficulty outside the facial 

 area. But if the blood supply to a part is in a 

 manner regulatable by suggestion, then it follows that 

 the nutrition of that part can be modified in some 

 degree, and modification of nutrition is inseparable 

 from the refined forms of structural change. I know 

 of no proof that the trophic nerves which control 



