Sometime ago Professor Kuelpe in Wuerzburg made some surprising experiments which proved absolutely that the hypnotized does not see the suggested color but the real one, no matter what he states to the contrary. For instance, show a hypnotized person a blue-green surface with a gray spot on it, after suggesting to him that the surface is yellow. When asked what the color of the spot is he does not see it as he should if the yellow was real in sensation; namely, blue, but, like any ordinary observer, he sees it tinged with the contrast color of the blue-green; namely, red. A still more striking proof is Professor Kulpe's experiment with optical illusions.

Perhaps the reader knows the so-called Zoellner's figure, in which a number of parallel lines look very unparallel on account of a number of small lines which obliquely intersect them. A subject was told as a post-hypnotic suggestion that he would see a number of straight lines and nothing else on a white surface, After being awakened the subject was shown Zoellner's figure. He denied absolutely that he saw anything else than the big lines. Everything else was perfectly white, but when asked about the direction of the lines, he saw them not parallel as they really were, but converging and diverging, that is, with the same illusion which other people had when under the influence of the intersecting lines. Thus he claimed that he did not see the cause of the illusion but yet he had the illusion correctly. It must bo remarked that the subject had no knowledge whatever about optical illusions and Zoellner's figure. A similar proof can be obtained with the often repeated experiment of suggesting the absence or vanishing of an object or person. It is true that the subject, when asked to count the objects or persons, will not include the one in question; he will not take any notice of it, but when ordered to walk in the direction of it, he will never run into it, but carefully go round.

If you ask him what he sees in the place of the vanished object or person, his answers show plainly that he does not see the objects behind it. He gives evasive answers or, as it mostly occurs, he tells a lie; namely, he says, "I see nothing." If the object in question had really vanished he should see things behind it, but just his "nothing" shows that there is some untruth in his statement, for nobody can ever "see nothing." Every part of his vision field must be filled with some impression. The hypnotized, so to say, "sees" the person, or object whose disappearance has been suggested to him, but he does not want to see it. By his own will and in strict obedience to that of the hypnotist he avoids any considerable attention being bestowed on that part of this actual experience. The phenomena of hypnotic suggestion is partly caused by the untruth of the subject. It is not the wilful lie of the imposter, but the careless lie of him who blindly accepts everything from authority, and in this sense the effect of hypnotic suggestion is only gradually different from the so-called ordinary course of mental events.

Here, too, nine-tenths of our thoughts and actions are not the result of actual experience and of spontaneous and consistent reasoning, but of blind submission to authority, either our own (habit), or that of others (imitation).

That the statements of hypnotized persons, although deviating from truth (because contradictory) are not mere wilful lies, is clearly shown by the fact that not only the flow of presentative states but also the emotional can be essentially changed by suggestion. It is possible to dispel pain by suggestion. The pins you stick into a subject's cheek, chin, hand, or ear cause no pain. But it must be noted here that the relation between the intellectual and emotional side of consciousness is much more intimate than we usually like to admit. A good deal of what we regard as bodily pain is simply imaginary, and its characteristic "painful-ness" consists far less in the direct sensation than in the accompanying disagreeable thoughts. The most unendurable toothache consists, if closely examined, of a certain somewhat disagreeable sensation accompanied by ideas about its indefinite duration. The alleged painfulness of being wounded with piercing or sharp instruments consists chiefly in the disagreeable suggestions of dangerous destruction to vital parts. When such infliction actually occurs the afflicted very often notices the first pain only when by some accompanying phenomenon, such as flow of blood or difficulty of his movements, the dangerous state is suggested.

The agony of death would lose most of its gruesome aspect were it not for the conventional dread which we nourish in our imagination with regard to this event. In other words, pain would not be what it is if it were not for the accompanying ideas which are the products of suggestion and auto-suggestion. Thus only can we understand that the hypnotized, being prevented from paying attention to the event which is painful under ordinary circumstances, escapes from suffering; thus only can we conceive the possibility of occurrences like those reported from mediaeval times where martyrs and those unfortunates accused of witch-caft and sorcery underwent horrible tortures apparently without pain. Without surrendering to the doctrine of the Christian Scientists, that all evil is a product of imagination, we have to admit that a great deal of the "painfulness of pain" is due to suggestion and auto-suggestion, and, consequently, we need not wonder that it is possible to dispel this part of pain by the same means to which that part owes its existence.

The foregoing considerations may be summed up in the following propositions:

1. There is no essential difference between the phenomena of hypnotic suggestion and other human utterances and actions brought about by the authoritative influence of principles, individual or aggregated human wills.

2. Verbal suggestion plays a powerful role not only in seances of professional hypnotists, etc., but also in what we are accustomed to regard as the normal procedure in private and public life, in art and science.

3. The chief problem of suggestion is not so much, why does the hypnotized experience what the hypnotist orders, as, why does the hypnotized say (by words or actions) that he does so experience it?

4. The mystery of telepathy is not, in the least, greater than that of the propogation of light, electricity, or gravitation.

5. If pain is partly a product of suggestion we need not wonder that it may be partly dispelled by suggestion.