I present these, merely as little examples of the practical side this thing - hypnotism - teaches us. I will now pass onto other phases showing this force - so-called - in another direction and under a new light.

If, as in the case of the girl who was shown her talent, these things can be done - and they can - it looks to the observer as though hypnotism were hurrying the process of evolution, or the development of life force and knowledge. Hypnotism does not hurry evolution. Instead it acts in harmony with it. Evolution may try, through the forces of nature, to accomplish something important in the advancement of man. We may see that this process has been going on many centuries in nature and we turn and look at history. We see that there were centuries in the past when man did not develop as rapidly as he does in ten years now. But we are not hurrying evolution by our methods. We are profiting by the system of evolution. Take a cake of ice and put it in a pan on a stove. The ice slowly melts. In that process there have been a great many units of heat used. Yet the water that is brought to our view is cold. We put that water on the stove and, behold! In a few minutes it is boiling. We do not stop to think that we had to use more heat in the process of melting that ice than we did in the boiling of the water. There was more show made by the boiling water than there was by the melting ice. Hence we say that we have discovered a means of crowding nature! There would be as much sense to this as to say that, by awakening the dormant talents of an individual, we have discovered a means of actually hurrying evolution. In the one case we witness latent heat: in the other latent mind force. And the difference is not marked!

Evolution is a natural process. It develops the crude, it brings forth the latent and it perfects. Hypnotism is a natural force because it aids evolution.

Now for another lesson that we learn from hypnotism: I have a subject in the somnambulistic state. I tell him that he is going to study the back of a common playing-card for a few seconds. I tell him that he will know that card when he sees it again. I take the deck from him and shuffle it. Then I go through it, laying the cards face down, and tell him to let me know when I come to that card. I know what its face is but he does not. He has seen its back for about ten seconds. As I pass through the deck, he suddenly stops me and tells me that the next one, which he has just caught sight of, is the card. I look at the other side and, sure enough, he was right! To the inexperienced, the element of Psychometry might be suggested. There would be something seemingly out of the ordinary. The truth of the matter is that he did it through the power of concentration. In those few seconds he saw something about that card that distinguished it from all other cards. It may have been a slight scratch, or a spot or something that did not inhere in the print. You or I might study that card ten minutes and fail to do the feat.

Hypnotism, then, teaches us the value of concentration. If this power to hold the mind on one subject could be given to us all in our waking states, what a powerful lot we would be. The man who concentrates is he who succeeds. First he must be able to hold his mind on a given thing and secondly he must have the sense to know that he has chosen a worthy object.

We cannot learn or accomplish anything without the aid of concentration. In our schools we have to apply it, in our every-day lives we have to apply it, and in all our greater achievements we have to apply it. If we are industrious in our deductions of the lessons taught us by hypnotism we can evolve a system whereby we can perfect ourselves through the conscious application of these principles.

And, when we are brought face to face with concentration and its ability to aid the human cause, we are forced to recognize the subconscious. On account of its perfect memory, it carries everything it does to that point we term "mechanical." We have never learned a trade or profession until it has become subconscious. And it cannot become subconscious without the application of concentration. I will point out as an example a young lady learning to play on a piano. She may have the natural ability and yet she finds that she has to watch the keys, and there is no harmony in her music. She plays simple pieces and finds them difficult. But we will wait a few years and our wonder is indeed great as we hear that same girl playing some of the most difficult classic music. There is a smoothness to her execution, she does not have to look to see where the keys are, she does not have to reason what she will do next, but she simply reads the notes and her fingers glide over the keys -those same keys that produced the discordant sounds of a few years ago - and we are held in the power of her music. She has perfected her mind along this line until she can control all the mechanical actions necessary without thinking about them. Admitting that there is the phrenological faculty of music, and admitting that she must cultivate that, she is not a musician until she has combined her talent with her mechanical ability to execute!

So it is with all trades, all professions. Some men learn to combine this mechanical execution with judgment and the result is they are original, they climb toward the top. they succeed! Education strives to make man an original being; that is, so he can think and plan and execute without patterning after someone else. In one light, I will admit that there is no originality. We have to learn all we know from one source or another, we gather it little at a time and then, if we are original, we use the processes of reasoning in combining these various branches and our result is what we call a "new idea!"

We must use our power to concentrate or we will not succeed. Concentration is one of those psychological features that we find vitally important. It is astounding to hear some men talk. They will declare that there is nothing to psychology, they will scoff the idea of mind having power, and yet all they know and enjoy, all they experience, must be realized through the agency of their minds. Mind is the central force, undoubtedly, of all that exists. The great trouble lies in trying to carry this thing to the extreme. We will gladly admit that, perhaps, under certain conditions, mind can govern matter. We do not possess those conditions. Thus not long ago, I said to a lady: "You had better boil the drinking water, these recent rains have poured out thousands of tons of the vilest refuse into the lake and have kept the water stirred up".