Long ago, Stoll had supposed that ethnological psychology would be furthered in a twofold respect by hypnotism and the study of suggestion; (1) suggested sense-delusions in the waking state would be explained, (2) wholesale suggestion would be rendered more readily comprehensible. And Regnier had expressed similar views in his Hypnotisme et Croyances ancicnncs. He thought that if hypnotism were studied, our comprehension of ancient magic, in particular, would be essentially facilitated. In hypnosis those phenomena are artificially produced which played so great a part in ancient magic in cases of somnambulism with its accompanying sense-delusions. Here also would belong the marvellous things we hear reported about fakirs and yogis, about which I have already spoken on page 203 et seq. It is, especially, certain states of sleep presented by these people that we may count as phenomena of auto-hypnosis. How far the other marvels we occasionally hear reported of these people - for instance, their being buried alive, power to make plants grow artificially, etc. - depend on truth I will not here decide.

I will only mention that, according to communications I have received quite recently, probably all the miracles of the fakirs and yogis would be as little able to withstand an investigation conducted on modern lines as are the miracles of our spiritist mediums. The mysteriousness of India and its remoteness are obviously extraordinarily favourable conditions for the cultivation of legends.

One such fakir, who enjoyed a certain amount of celebrity, appeared on closer acquaintance to prove a very good man of business. 1 have received the following report about him. The miracle performed by this fakir was said to consist in his lying perpetually on a bed made of nothing but thorns. It appeared on closer inspection that there were no thorns in the bed - or, more correctly, that the thorns were very blunt. Also, the man himself never lay on the bed except when paid for so doing. As a rule, he raised the objection that it was not quite his time for lying down. But even when paid he invariably remained but a few minutes on the bed. The mystery of the thorns that did not penetrate his skin is therefore very easily explained. At all events, my informant has never yet spoken to any one who had seen the man lying on the bed except when he had been specially requested to do so. The same gentleman, who knows India thoroughly, told me he considered it quite out of the question that fakirs would ever really submit to being watched under the strictest scientific conditions; such a thing would be quite contrary to the Indian national character.

The foregoing explanations alone ought to show what a great advantage we may expect to gain in the fight against superstition by studying hypnotism and suggestion. When Virchow was as afraid of the blossoming forth of hypnotism as he was of that of animal magnetism and homoeopathy, it was obviously because he was too much accustomed to pathological anatomy to be always able to find the right standard by which to test psychological questions. In the final chapter still further material will be produced to show that it is exactly the theory of suggestion that has exposed the most important sources of error in investigating occult phenomena. For this reason, Henning in his book Wunder und Wissenschaft, like Lehmann in his Aberglaube und Zauberei, makes a thoroughly appreciative use of hypnotism and suggestion in explaining the most diverse forms of superstition.

The use of hypnotism in education has also been frequently discussed. Cases of masturbation have been treated by hypnotic suggestion. BeVillon employed suggestion to cure the habit of biting the nails (onychography), which is said to be particularly prevalent among degenerates, and, according to J. Voisin, is often associated with masturbation. Here also would belong cases in which exaggerated bashfulness and timidity, particularly the dread of being looked at, about which Hartenberg, Bechterew, and Soukhanoff have written, were treated by hypnotic suggestion. Most of the cases set down as coming within the province of the educational use of hypnotic suggestion might with equal justice be reckoned medical cases. The distinctions here made are rather arbitrary. When a child is attacked with involuntary movements through imitating choreatic movements, it is difficult to say where the evil habit ends and the disease begins. It is indifferent whether we say that hypnotism is used in such cases to cure disease or in the interests of education; the point is to know what is meant.

There is nothing opposed to this in the view held by Forel, Dekhtereff, and probably all other serious investigators, that the use of hypnosis for educational purposes should be reserved for medical men experienced in this domain, and that laymen should not be allowed to hypnotize for this purpose, as was proposed by Decroix. When an anonymous German author thought he made the question ridiculous, or refuted the adherents of the educational use of hypnotic suggestion by banishing hypnotism from the schools, he was simply combating a proposal that had never been made. Berillon, Herment, Netter, Leclerc, Ladame, Brunnberg, A. Voisin, Collineau, Sinani, Natanson, Pamart, and Pigeaud, who devoted his thesis, La Suggestion en Pidagogie, Paris, 1897, to the question, merely mean by the educational use of hypnosis that certain faults in children, which many people consider actually pathological, should be cured by medical hypnotic suggestion. According to Berillon, the chief value of this is that it enables us to combat automatisms by the. influence of suggestion on the inhibitory centre. Whether hypnotic suggestion produces great results in such .cases is another question.

Binet was probably right in severely criticizing the enthusiastic report in which Luckens recounted his impressions of a visit to Berillon. Nevertheless, we shall be able to obtain good results from hypnotic suggestion in some cases, if we only apply it as indicated above, either for pathological phenomena or for such as lie in the borderland between education and therapeusis.