Practical psychology reveals the fact that the mind of man is largely subconscious and that this subconscious state is highly amenable to suggestion.

The subconscious mind is capable both of receiving and giving suggestions. It receives suggestions not only from external sources, but from the conscious mind itself, and it gives suggestions not only from our own past experiences, but the transmitted experiences from our forefathers. Looked at in this light, heredity may be regarded as a mass of potent suggestions transmitted from our ancestors. We do not inherit ready-made qualities, such as virtues and vices; we only get from our parents more or less well-constituted brains, capable of reacting more or less promptly and accurately to the various stimuli which cause its activity. Suppose, for instance, an infant to be born with a predominant tendency to the feeling of fear; that feeling, as reason develops, will become intellectualised, and if no counteracting tendency is present, it will form the ruling idea for his guidance, it will act as a potent suggestion, and his characteristic will be circumspection. And so all our deep-seated feelings and instincts can become intellectual qualities, which we think we make for ourselves, whereas in reality they are hereditary suggestions to determine our conduct.

An infant may be born with a brain magnificently constructed for the display of various intellectual capacities. Exercise will develop these inherited energies, but in the first instance there must be the character to give the inducement for exercise. That inducement may come through external influences, or itmay arise from within through some inherited disposition that gives rise to auto-suggestion, some ideas which determine the conduct.

Parents are often anxious as to whether their defects will be inherited by their children, and forget entirely that they can mould the character largely by their constant example, which acts through the potency of incessant suggestion. Next to the parental influence, the suggestions received during school-life have the greatest influence on the formation of the future character.

Children are almost purely subjective; and no one needs to be told how completely a suggestion, true or false, will take control of their minds. Their good manners are easily destroyed by bad company, and their minds can be corrupted by what they see, hear and read. Often a child is frightened at dusk by someone pretending to be a ghost or the devil. The fright) and the image of the ghost remain in the memory, appear in dreams, and terrify the child afterwards on every occasion; for now the slightest hint or the most insignificant incident gives new life to the memory. The child does not fear to go into a room because it is dark, but because he has a mental representation of danger. In consequence of it all, there may arise hallucinations and imperative ideas and phobias and hysterical attacks.

Looked at in this manner, we are a mass of suggestions—suggestions from within and suggestions from without. One can overcome the other, hut it may be laid down at once, that external suggestions act on us more readily when they are in harmony with our internal ones, when they are in harmony with those auto-suggestions which conform with our natural character. "When the subconscious mind is confronted by two opposing suggestions, the hereditary auto-suggestion and a suggestion from another person, the stronger one necessarily prevails. Thus a man with settled moral principles will successfully resist the suggestions of crime or immorality; for moral principles constitute auto-suggestions, the strength of which is proportionate to that of his moral character.

Suggestion in the widest sense can be direct or indirect, but direct persuasion is not usually regarded as suggestion; only the indirect process is. As Prof. Bechterew has cleverly said: "Suggestion enters into the understanding by the back stairs, while logical persuasion knocks at the front door."

Suggestion, in the more restricted sense, is a process of communication of an idea to the subconscious mind in an unobtrusive manner, carrying conviction, when consciously there is no inclination for its acceptance and logically there are no adequate grounds.

There are people who scarcely ever act from motives originating within themselves, but whose entire lives are lived out in obedience to the suggested ideas and feelings of others. They can be influenced even in the normal waking state to assume the existence of a certain determination.

All persons are more or less amenable to suggestion in the ordinary waking condition. This is illustrated in many familiar ways, such as gaping involuntarily, even against one's strenuous attempts to avoid it, on seeing another yawn; heating time unconsciously on hearing the measured throb of martial music; becoming wildly excited for no other reason than that one's companions are panic-stricken; and, contrariwise, having one's fears allayed by the tranquil appearance of his associates in a terrible emergency. With many people the mere statement that they are blushing is enough to produce a flow of blood to the face; the repeated assurance that they are warm or cold will tend to make them feel warmer or colder; the mention or the sight of certain little insects, which inhabit the bodies of uncleanly persons, seldom fails to make the skin itch uncomfortably.

Suggestions almost invariably appeal to the feelings, and we are always more willingly and readily influenced by our feelings than by our reason. A suggestion causes a feeling to spring up from the subconscious state of the mind, in response to the exciting cause coming from without. Words in themselves are not really suggestive; they possess no magic power. All their force and efforts depend upon the associated feeling. The more feeling we throw into our words action and manner, the better they will suggest.

Suggestions convey ideas, and ideas are symbols of something thought or felt. The majority of ideas held in the mind of the race arise from feeling. People may not understand things, but they have experienced feelings or emotions regarding them, and have consequently formed many ideas therefrom. They do not always know the reason why an idea is held by them; they know only that they feel it that way. And the majority of people are moved, swayed, and act by reasons of induced feelings, rather than by results of reasoning.

When suggestion acts through the association of ideas, it is based upon the acquired impressions of the race, by which certain words, actions, manners, tones and appearances are associated with certain previously experienced feelings.

It is true that suggestions may accompany an appeal to the reason or judgment of the person influenced, and, indeed, are generally so used; but, strictly speaking, they constitute an appeal to a part of the mind entirely removed from reasoning and judgment. They are emotional first, last, and all the time.

Many personal appeals which are apparently made to reason, are really made to the emotional side. One may subtly insinuate into an argument or conversation an appeal to the feelings or emotions of the hearer by an ideal indirectly conveyed. Such idea will be "felt" by the listener, who will accept it into his mind and before long he will regard it as one of his own thoughts—he will make it his own. He will think that he "thought" it, whereas, really, he simply "feels" it, and the feeling is induced.

Suggestion may act through obedience to a person in authority, whether real, assumed, or self-constituted. Reason is quiescent because of our faith in his authority. The authority induces the mental states, for such people by "boldly asserting" and "plausibly maintaining." Some people will obey any authoritative tone and manner. They are most effective on those

Who have never used their own wits and resources in life, but depended upon others for orders and instructions.The degree of suggestibility along these lines decreases as we ascend among people who have had to "do things"for themselves, and who have not dependend on others so much.

A suggestion is mure likely to be successful if the idea is introduced by a person who is trusted, loved, or feared or under circumstances that inspire these sentiments,or in n tone of voice or with a manner that the subject has always associated with ideas that are to be acted on or believed. One or other of these qualities, or more often a combination of them, is an invariable characteristic of the person who is suggestive.

All have noticed that some individuals seem to have a "winning way"them. and are able to induce others to fall into their way of thinking or desires, and to do what they wished done.

Notonly on the stage, but in the pulpit, on the platform, and in the councils of the nation is quality of voice all important. Few men are convinced at once by logical argument, but their feelings are turned in favour of a speaker who with his own varying tone of voice can appeal to the emotions of his audience.

Thus quality of voice counts for more than we suspect in the relations of daily life. The speaker's power to move us depends upon his being able to create in us the feeling by which he is or pretends to be moved, and thus cause similar vibrations in our own nervous system. In this respect we are like so many musical glasses. We ring when we are in unison with the exciting object, but not otherwise.

Only words that come from the heart can reach the heart. For this reason a speaker who speaks out of the fulness of his heart will be more suggestive, will create more nerve vibrations amongst his hearers than another man who has the same amount of feeling, but cannot convey what he feels in the same manner.

Domestic and other quarrels often arise not because of the words spoken, but because of the voice in which they are conveyed. Thus I recollect the defence of a person who, when accused of having struck a man's face who was wanting in politeness to him, replied to the police magistrate: "It is not what he said, but the nasty way he said it." This had aroused his indignation, and the feeling was quickly carried into action.

The more one thinks of it the more plainly it appears that in all regions of thought—religious, scientific, artistic, literary—the pivot on which everything turns is that of personality. What we mean by it, what importance we attach to it, colours our every idea on every subject. The personal is the one thing that interests.

Suggestion may act through imitation. Man is an imitative animal. Many of us imitate without reflection. It is only when our attention is roused to the habit by a third person that we become really conscious of it and reason upon it, with the result that we give way. Few of us can for long be with people who have peculiar habits of movement without feeling a tendency to imitate them. As is well known, stammering is frequently communicated from one child to another. In matters that are not of vital importance to the conduct of life, such as fashions in clothes and in food, we slavishly imitate our neighbors; and even in weightier matters, such as systems of belief or moral standards, we tend to adopt without question those that we find around us.

Suggestion may act through repetition. Repeated shrugs, sneers, and insinuations of gossip have destroyed many a reputation. "Constant dripping will wear away the hardest stone." There is weakened resistance through repetition of the attack, the force of habit.We have heard certain things affirmed over and over again, until we have come to accept them as veritable facts, notwithstanding that we possess not the slightest personal knowledge of, or any logical proof concerning them. Thus public opinion is Reason and judgement must be in abeyance in order that a suggestion should act; hence suggestion may act by the suddenness with which it is made, which gives notime for observation and deduction, and causes a suggestion to be accepted and immediately acted upon.

Tell a lady comfortably seated in an armchair that there is a mouse crawling up her dress, and her mind will be immediately filled with the idea to the exclusion of' everything else, and she will instantly jump up. The idea through its very suddenness overflows intoaction at once before critical ideas are able to arise.In addition, the idea, a repellent one, by its suddenness gives a shock to the mental system, and tends to render dissociation easy. In this case, therefore, the conditions are (1) rapidity of presentation, hich does not give the contrariant ideas time to arise; combined with (2) the shock of presentation, which helps in hinder them from making a protest.

The ability to maintain a passive state has a predisposing effect. There are many persons who are by nature given to passive submission to external influences, and therefore in a highly susceptible condition to every form of influence from without. But it would be a mistake to consider the disposition to suggestion a sign of weakness of will. The cleverest men, because of their capacity to forced concentration of attention, excluding all other external impressions, are often the most susceptible. This ability to give the thoughts a certain prescribed direction is partly natural capacity and partly a matter of training and habit. Of course, there are men who possess a natural credulity, and are not disposed to make conscious logical deductions, and many men will believe what they want to hear, or what they have expected to happen.

We cannot escape the influence of suggestion. Life is full of it. "We are constantly influencing others, or influenced by them.