But this is not all. A suggestion can take place unconsciously - that is, hypoeonsciously - or the corresponding conception may appear so feebly or for so short a time in the mirror of the superconsciousness that it disappears immediately and for ever from the latter, so that the memory cannot recall it again; and yet this suggestion may act powerfully. As the result of the complete amnesia, one cannot even show that the conception in question was ever recognized in such cases. But it was nevertheless certainly present; closer inspection proves this. The point on which the whole question of the understanding of a great number of self-deceptions and alleged Steamer's actions turn lies here. For example, one hypnotizes a peasant girl, who has not the faintest idea of physics and of prisms, for the first time, and places a prism in front of her eyes, after having suggested to her that she is to look at an imaginary candle, suspended in space. On asking her what she sees, she will reply, "Two candles." This depends on an unconceived suggesiion, as Bernheim has been able to prove. The girl saw the real objects present in the room through the prism double, and, having been unconsciously influenced, doubled the suggested candle. If the experiment is carried out in a completely darkened room on a person who has never before been hypnotized, and who has no theoretical knowledge of these things, the suggested picture will never be doubled by a prism (Bernheim). One can hardly assume that the girl became conscious of the conditions during the hypnosis, and, because she recognized all other objects as double, believed that she saw the candle double also. The "doubling" took place instinctively, automatically, below the level of the superconsciousness. She did not fix the other objects, but only the fictitious candle. Nevertheless, this doubling was recognized by her (probably hypoconsciously) and made use of. However, the mechanism of suggesiion always remains unconceived to the superconsciousness; or, in other words, the manner, in which the heard and understood words of the hypnotist or in which the perception and further association of these create the actual result, remains unconceived.

Liebeault's suggestion theory of hypnosis has presented such striking proofs of its correctness, that it must be accepted as having established itself completely by now. This has been achieved not only by the practical results, chiefly in medical therapy, but also in education and in many other branches. The methods corresponding to other theories have been able to produce a part of the appearances of hypnosis only in hysterical or nervous persons, but very exceptionally also in healthy persons, with more or less difficulty. These theories were forced to resort to most wonderful nebulous explanations, because they were always face to face with puzzles and contradictions. Against this, suggestion succeeds easily with almost every healthy person, and, with the exception of the facts referred to above as being doubtful, it explains everything naturally from a single point of view. Besides, suggestion is in complete concord with a scientific psychophysiology, and throws a powerful light on the functions of our brains.

The number of mentally healthy persons hypnotized in Nancy by Liebeault 1 and Bernbeim has reached many thousands. Only ninety-seven out of three thousand one hundred and forty-eight persons subjected by Dr. Wetterstrand, of Stockholm, to the influence of suggestion during the period 1887-1890 remained uninfluenced. Dr. van Renterghem and Dr. van Eeden, of Amsterdam, had up to 1895 successfully hypnotized one thousand and thirty-one out of one thousand and eighty-nine persons by suggestion. Dr. Velander, in Joenkoeping, had only twenty refractory persons among one thousand hypuo-tized subjects. Dr. von Schrenck only had twenty-nine failures with two hundred and forty successes, and Dr. Tuckey had thirty failures with two hundred and twenty successes, and so on. (The statistical accounts are derived from Dr. von Schrenek-Notzing, Munchen, 1893.) In recent years I myself have been able to influence, more or less, about ninety-six per cent. of all cases. I used to give an out-patient course on suggestive therapy (one and a half hours every week) during each summer session in Zurich. During these courses about fifty to seventy patients were hypnotized therapeutically in the presence of the students each time, and I can truthfully say that within the last few years scarcely as many as from one to three of these cases remained quite uninfluenced at any one sitting. Dr. Ringier, who learned the suggestion method under me in 1887, found that among two hundred and ten patients treated by him by suggestion there were only twelve who were not influenced.1 Oscar Vogt, who exceeded all others in the more minute psychical analysis, succeeded in nearly cent. per cent. of his attempts to influence his patients by suggestion, and was especially successful in producing a large number of somnambulists. Among all these hypnotized persons, there was a large number of complete somnambulists with posthypnotic phenomena, etc.2

1 Ltfbenult {"Therapeutique Suggestive." 1891) gives the number of the various people hypnotized by him as over 7,500. Liebeault died, at the age of eighty-one years, on February 17, 1904.

What a curious figure the handful of hysterics of the Sal-petriere in Paris cut in comparison with the numbers quoted above I They were not more than a dozen all told. For many years always the same persons were used to demonstrate " hypnotism " on the basis of Charcot's theory, and they had obviously drifted into a condition of complete automatism of unrecognized suggestion or of hysterical autosuggestion.