Only, we must avoid all exaggeration. Some people have even imagined that the hypnotic state could be used to learn a language quickly, because the accompanying hypermnesia would prove of great assistance. And an American doctor named Quackenbos asserts that he has cured certain defects of character by means of hypnotic suggestion: untruthfulness, kleptomania, alcoholic tendencies and murderous impulses, want of respect for superiors and uncontrollable impulse for play, all these can he overcome by suggestion. Low impulses and dirly tendencies can be transformed into noble characteristics. Shakiness in syntax can be changed ifito correct grammatical English, and a tendency to slang into elegant speech. I have only given a small selection from all that Quackenbos has achieved! In 1903, the Dutch Society for the Protection of Children applied to several investigators - Winkler, Schuyten, and Renterghem - for their opinion on the question. Renterghem replied that he had seen good results obtained in cases of various bad habits(onychography, masturbation), but Winkler expressed a fear that if it were suggested to a child, "Thou shalt not steal," only the word steal would be remembered.

Schuyten declined to answer the question on the ground of inexperience, but stated he was very sceptical as to the educational use of hypnosis.

Even if I believe that the educational use of hypnosis only concerns us in the manner mentioned above - i.e., that its province is a very limited one - I nevertheless believe, on the other hand, that the frequent objection (Blum, Seeligmuller) that hypnosis would turn children into machines instead of human beings is erroneous. Hypnotic suggestion and suggestion out of. hypnosis, and also education in general, have all the same aim - to determine the subject's will in a certain direction. Just as we endeavour in ordinary education to lead the subject to do right of his own conscious will, and not on compulsion, so is it with hypnotic suggestion. In the latter we endeavour to let the external suggestion become an autosuggestion. Even if people often oppose the teaching of suggestion, experience and unprejudiced investigation show that numerous suggestive factors co-operate in every system of education, even the best. In a work devoted to the physiology and psychology of attention, Nayrac has discussed, among other things, the cultivation of the attention where it is morbidly impaired. Even if he is very reserved in his remarks on * hypnotic suggestion, he nevertheless ascribes a prominent part to waking suggestion in such cases.

I, also, believe that hardly anything will ever be accomplished without the latter.

The relations of hypnotism to Art have often been discussed, and the hope has been expressed that it would lend its help as an incentive to art. Braid discussed the influence of music on hypnotics in his Neurypnology: music enabled the hypnotic to move most gracefully and dance to perfection. Hypnotics were also enabled to maintain a definite posture without any exertion, and Braid even thought that the Greeks owed the perfection of their artistic skill in sculpture to hypnotism. The achievements of the Bacchantes, also, were due to the hypnotic state in which they must be assumed to have been, because, as Ovid said, non sentit vulnera Maenas. Ordinary people of no education moved in hypnosis with the grace of the most accomplished ballet-dancer. Braid went so far as to construct a connecting-link between the art of dancing in his day and the dance executed by hypnotized persons in the ancient Greek mysteries.

Braid's observations should arouse interest, especially considering the appearance of sleep-dancers in recent years. As far as these sleep-dancers are concerned, Madame Magdeleine G. has caused the most sensation. Endeavours were made to utilize her for the study of certain problems, sometimes of a scientific and sometimes of an artistic nature, and stress was laid on the following details as being particularly noteworthy. In the first place, the gracefulness and expressiveness of her dancing, and particularly of her mimicry, were said to be so perfect that the like had hardly ever been seen before; secondly, it was said that the talent for this only came to her in hypnosis, and that it was, in fact, aroused sometimes by the influence of suitable music, sometimes by the influence of suitable words, which, for example, expressed the emotion to be depicted; thirdly, it was expressly stated that the lady had no knowledge of music when in the waking state; and fourthly, that the very perfection of her movements first appeared quite spontaneously in hypnosis, and had not been taught her in any way.

When calmly considered, the only thing that remains of all these assertions is that most people acknowledged that the lady knew how to express emotions in the most exquisite way by mimetic and other movements. With regard to the investigations of experts, we may also take it as proved that the lady is hypnotizable, and at least sometimes showed her artistic skill when in the hypnotic state. In this respect, at all events, the investigations of experts are more trustworthy than the hpriori decisions of laymen, whether the latter sport a doctor's hood or not. Of course it does not follow from these investigations that Madame Magdeleine G. was always in hypnosis when she appeared in public. But apart from these two facts (hypno-tizability and an exquisite skill in the portrayal of emotions), everything else that has been reported about her achievements is to be considered unproved. It has not been proved that she only possesses this artistic skill when in the hypnotic state, for Schrenck-Notzing's apodictical assertions on this point cannot take the place of proof. One is so easily led astray. I myself remember a subject who, when hypnotized, showed marvellous skill in representation in response to the most diverse suggestions - changes of character, for instance.