352 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



suggesting the act occurs not to one's self, but is introduced by 

 another. In this line M. Guyau has pointed out a possible appli- 

 cation of suggestion in moral therapeutics " as a corrective of ab- 

 normal instincts or as a stimulant of too weak normal instincts." 

 He looks upon suggestion as an instinct in the nascent state cre- 

 ated by the hypnotizer. Many and important results have been 

 realized from suggestion since his remark was made. Of course, 

 M. Guyau does not advise, but expressly condemns the introduc- 

 tion of hypnotism into normal education. He cites these patho- 

 logical facts in order to deduce from them consequences relative 

 to the normal condition. He considers hypnotic suggestion as 

 simply the unhealthy and grossly artificial exaggeration of sug- 

 gestive phenomena which are produced in a state of perfect 

 health. Normal suggestion, which alone should find a place in 

 education, is psychological, moral, and social ; it consists in the 

 transmission of ideas or impulsive feelings from one person to an- 

 other, and in the possibility of fixing them. While in the normal 

 condition we are not under the power of a determined magnetizer, 

 it does not follow that we are not " accessible to an infinity of lit- 

 tle suggestions ; now acting contrary to one another, now acting 

 cumulatively and producing a very sensible average effect/' 

 Children in particular are open to all the suggestions of the me- 

 dium. The state of an infant on coming into the world is com- 

 pared by M. Guyau to that of a hypnotized person. There is the 

 same absence of thoughts of its own or the same predominance of 

 a single thought. " Everything that the infant will hear or see 

 will therefore be a suggestion. This suggestion may be the foun- 

 dation of a habit which may be developing during the child's 

 whole life, as impressions of terror inculcated in children by 

 nurses often do." If the introduction of new feelings is possible 

 by a wholly physiological means, it should be equally possible by 

 psychological and moral means. 



Suggestion, which creates artificial instincts capable of balanc- 

 ing hereditary instincts, constitutes a new power comparable with 

 heredity. Education, says M. Guyau, being a collection of co-or- 

 dinated and reasoned suggestions, we can understand the impor- 

 tance, the efficiency which it may acquire in both a psychological 

 and a physiological respect. In our own view, suggestion is only 

 a particular instance of the more fundamental law of idea-forces 

 which rules in all pedagogic science. 



Ideas have been sometimes despised and treated as having 

 hardly any influence on the conduct. The philosophers of the 

 eighteenth century, with Descartes and Pascal, on the contrary, 

 regarded the feelings and passions as confused thoughts, as " pre- 

 cipitations " of thoughts. There is truth in this. Under all our 

 feelings there is a collection of imperfectly analyzed ideas, a flood 



