psychic, by mental suggestion; if both, as is usually the case, by intelligent combinations of mental and physical treatment. And there is hardly an abnormal condition or a disease that is purely mental or purely physical. So my patients are on the quick and easy road to recovery the first hour that I see them, and multitudes of them do not relapse from the gains of that hour.

Mental suggestion given in sleep is direct and immediate in its action; psychanalysis is indirect and long delayed and disappointing. It is capable of doing much harm and little good. Furthermore, the reference of all meretricious trends of thought, in neurasthenic and psychasthenic states, by the Freudian psychanalyzer to a sexual origin is revolting to a rational practitioner. Moreover, under the most favorable circumstances, weeks may be required to effect cures accomplished in hours by enlightened mental suggestion.

Psychic impulsion, when self-administered, is known as auto-suggestion-suggestion by oneself to oneself. The subjective mind is as amenable to suggestion by its own objective mind as by the objective mind of an outside person; and the state of mental abstraction immediately preceding natural sleep, known as reverie, has been found exceedingly appropriate

for treatment of this kind. Lapse into sleep with self-communicated thoughts paramount is all but equivalent to suggestion from another mind.

For years, it has been the author's habit to give himself suggestions relating to literary creation before falling asleep at night, the same to take effect on waking; and he always has writing materials at hand to corral the thoughts that rise up in response. These come sometimes in the night, but usually as the cosmic consciousness is going off duty and the world consciousness is coming on in the act of awaking. He has learned to prolong this act and so reap a richer harvest. In this way he has written many addresses, poems, and important papers, together with whole sections of his books. Others have been inspired by him to work along this line during sleep, and thereby have reached conspicuous results. One well-known authoress has trained herself to go daily into the auto-suggestible state at eleven o'clock; and what she suggests to herself materializes at the end of an hour of cosmic action in the form of short stories, novels, and plays which have brought her large financial returns.

The advantage of such sleep work is that it does not weary nerve or brain, because it employs neither; there is no conscious energizing, no slow and tedious degrees of toil, no subtrac

tion from vitality, accompanying the plunge of the mind into the subliminal world. One wakes with an ordinary day's work all thought out.

What may be the ultimate source of the material so presented is a matter of speculation. It exists in the subliminal personality, but how does that personality acquire it? Perhaps from some vast cosmic reservoir of records and human memories; treasures of science as yet unrevealed; the best of the superexcellent. Our senses disclose only parts of reality; our spirits have access to it all.

Many a writer might truthfully refer to this subliminal procedure for the plots of his novels or plays. The inspiration comes from under the threshold (sub limen). Sir Walter Scott, when prostrated with illness at Abbotsford, was accustomed to pass into this borderland state and dictate to John Ballantyne his Bride of Lammermoor, much of which appeared new to him when he read it after publication. The amanuensis reported that "when dialogue of peculiar animation was in progress, spirit seemed to triumph altogether over matter; pain was forgotten; he arose from his couch and walked up and down the room, raising and lowering his voice, and as it were acting the parts." It was in this fashion that Scott produced also the whole of the Legend of Montrose and almost all of Ivanhoe.

Similarly, Henry Ward Beecher was accustomed to profess ignorance of what he had preached and could not discuss points in a sermon till the shorthand report of the whole was printed. Dr. Minot Savage told the author that he always spoke while in an inspirational state. Works of genius-novels, poems, dramas in their perfection, great musical compositions, and military plans like the campaigns of Austerlitz and Waterloo-these are not created by mental energizing, but represent "up-rushes from subliminal depths."

The world can do much for itself through this instrumentality of self-suggestion, yet the soul's voice does not always make itself heard by its spiritual fellow. Sometimes there is no response. Suggestion is not invariably successful. When the suggestionist has ineffectively done his utmost, he may find consolation in the thought that Christ Himself had His failures.

A psychological explanation of ill success in many instances is to be found in a change of personality in the subject under treatment, together with an accompanying change of behavior so marked as to intimate that a single organism is the abode of two distinct selfs. In offering suggestions, I have sometimes been interrupted by an alternating phase of the personality addressed, which replied to my impulsions in dar

ing contradiction or even threw the patient into a convulsive tumult. Of this opposition there is no recollection after the treatment.

I may instance the case of Susie G., a bright little girl seven years of age, who was brought to me to be treated for an abuse taught in infancy by a nurse. The child realized that she was doing wrong and was desirous of cure; she trusted me implicitly; she came cheerfully to my office, and she had perfect faith in my ability to save her. She would enter the first stage of hypnosis with her hand confidingly in mine and her arm about my neck; then suddenly the trustful, childish expression would desert her face and she would glare at me with a sullen, defiant, hunted look, like an abandoned woman taken red-hand in the commission of a crime. For the nonce, further attempt to endorm failed. The revulsion was painful to me, and must have been equally so to this interesting child. She described the interposing influence as that of Satan, who, she naïvely said, told her not to go to sleep for me, and who regularly tempted her to do herself wrong. The alternative here is between an outside ill-wishing personality too strong for the simple child-nature and a part of Susie's own personality. I have never seen anything so suggestive of possession in the many cases of multiplex personality that have come under my