In the hands of wise persons of proper temperament and fitly prepared, suggestion may further be made a most valuable accessory to objective ethical training in our reformatories; and if the authorities in charge of correctional institutions where the friendless young are cared for would encourage, as a part of the moral curriculum, the practice of mental suggestion on a high plane, there is no question that, in a few generations, through the transmission of automatic impulses to right-doing, crime would be perceptibly lessened. Especially are philanthropic women who serve upon the boards of managers of homes and asylums for the protection of wayward girls and the reclamation of outcasts urged to consider this instrumentality in connection with the noble work for humanity which they are doing. The writer speaks from experience.

The Christian religion, so catholic and liberal and deep-hearted, unmistakably proclaims it right to exploit a legitimate psychological means for effecting the regeneration of objectively depraved and criminal children, for placing the automatic mind in control of any passion that is burning up body and soul, for suggesting pure thoughts and wholesome aspirations to the subliminal personality of a fallen girl in hope to cleanse her soiled and bedraggled life. And if it be right, the duty of application cannot be

evaded. The opportunity and the obligation become inseparable.

The writer is not to be understood as intending to substitute suggestion in any form for the grace of God or for enlightened faith in God. Yet in the providence of the Almighty suggestion is made practicable by the confluence of a double consciousness in each human unit; and it is psychologically possible that this is one of the means through which God communicates directly with the spiritual man. Cultivation of suggestibility to the influence of God equivalents cultivation of individuality. And the ideal evolution of character, as demonstrated by St. Paul in Galatians v, must consist in bringing the frail objective being wholly under the happy influence of the subliminal personality interpenetrated with the Spirit of God and inclosing Heaven within itself.

METAPSYCHICS IN THE FUTURE

I said, Ye are gods, and all of you sons of the Most High.

Thou shalt see greater things than these.

Psalms lxxxii.

John i: 50.

The nightmare of materialism, which has turned the life of the universe into a useless game, is not yet past; it holds the awakening soul still in its grip. Only a feeble light glimmers like a tiny star in a vast gulf of darkness.

12

M. T. H. SADLER.

ΧΙ

METAPSYCHICS IN THE FUTURE

N response to a frequent request that he would

to a

picture the future of practical psychophysics, as he sees it, the author presents his views in the following chapter.

Certain parlor philosophers, who know absolutely nothing of this dynamic psychology, misjudging it by their inane interpretations or wilfully confusing it with the mesmeric comedy, have styled it auto-narcosis or perversion of consciousness, and sneered at it as doing more harm than good. One writer has designated the grateful slumber incident to suggestion as "the chloroform of the soul." This is playing to the galleries. If such metaphor be appropriate mental interfusion may better be described as the essentia vita of the soul, the enlightener and stimulator par excellence. The truth is that the applications of mental therapeutics are becoming more extended every year, and the claims made for it by those who know have so far exceeded expectation.