Let one take a retrospect of his own life, and he will find behind every serious act he has performed there was originally a suggestion out of which it grew or was formulated. This suggestion may have been brought to his consciousness by another, by quietly reading something correlated to it, or by some mystic cause springing from an awakening desire. Back of every effect there is a cause, and if we follow the trail to its starting point we shall find suggestion the creative protoplasm out of which it grew, be the act what it may. When first the suggestion harbored itself in thought, it may have attracted little attention. Once received, however, it seems to possess a vitality of its own, and grows and spreads until recognized by objective consciousness. Sometimes the growth has been so slow that memory finds difficulty in fixing the time of the impression; but when securely lodged, it appears to preserve for use the vital spark to spring into robust life at the call of opportunity or desire.

Observing all this it is pertinent to inquire if suggestion has a potency of its own, and if so on what stimuli it thrives. Can it be converted into force that will aid one in the accomplishment of purpose? Is it of itself an entity? Is it a substance out of which grow creative thoughts that mould material things? Does it of itself bind together images and concepts which give birth to ideas out of which reason weaves thought? Is it the starting base of action - the forerunner of the moulding of purpose - the indestructible germ pressing forward the unfoldment of man?

The hypnotist has proven that one under hypnotic influence is in a sleep which differs from natural sleep only in the fact that one has the free use of all his faculties except objective consciousness. The subjective is reached by the hypnotist through suggestion, and the patient readily accepts the suggestion as true, then from that point of view, argues and acts logically upon the assumed premise. Although hypnotic suggestion is extensively practiced by medical men to-day, the best authority indorses the opinion that hypnotism itself has no curative power. Dr. Tuckey regards it as "merely a psychical preparation or vehicle."

Charles M. Barrows of Boston has had a wide and successful experience in treating and healing by suggestion without hypnotism. He has presented some very valuable papers before various societies of original research, and gives an outline of his work in a little volume entitled "Suggestion Instead of Medicine," from which I quote:

"The more intimate and extensive study which scientific methods now make possible shows man's psychical being to be no such thoroughly explored region of known extent and determined limits as some earlier scholars have supposed. It resembles the grants of land made to the first settlers along our Atlantic coast, - strips of seaboard territory bounded in part, but stretching away into undefined wilds, no one knew how far to the westward. Certain sides and aspects of our mental life, some faculties and functions have indeed become familiar; but only in recent years have students turned their attention to the dim domain yet unsurveyed, or seriously asked how far into the unknown waste the frontier line of research may lawfully be pushed. This closer acquaintance with his psychical resources strengthens the conviction that man is too large a being, too highly endowed, to find complete expression and an adequate outlet for his total self through the channel of a single consciousness; that not all the activities of which he is capable can find room and play, unless they use the whole brain for an organ. Our remote ancestors may have possessed a very limited consciousness, unvexed by any of the problems of a later age or a science which 'makes thought psychical and blots out life with question marks'; and a simpler brain doubtless sufficed for its organ. But it is a far cry from the simian in his savage wildness to the civilized gentleman with his refinements and varied culture. Slowly the man supersedes the beast; and cosmic agencies, 'acting through five-score millenniums', have evolved the complex structure that crowns the nervous system of the human being to-day. Plurality of consciousness is granted now to be the underlying fact which makes true suggestion possible."

To produce results the suggestion is a psychical message which passes from the suggester to the brain of the one receiving, and must by its influence affect some part of the gray matter in the brain. Barrows argues that that gray matter does not think, and does not understand language any more than bones and muscles do; and yet certain kinds of stimuli are carried in these messages and these affect that gray matter according to biological law. Although changes are wrought and these changes are the result of a natural law, still he confesses it "involves a baffling mystery" and must so continue till we learn how to invade "the laboratory of occipital consciousness."

When we seriously consider how little we know of the entire process of converting food into blood and chyle and muscle, how little we know about how words and facts are impressed on or held by memory, in short how little we really know of the powers of our organism physically or mentally, we ought not be surprised that there are controlling forces within which man has not fathomed, and which are set in motion by mental stimuli. There is the one great force in our being which physicians recognize as vis medicatrix naturae that possesses provisions for resisting and arresting disease and acts quite spontaneously; hence it is clear, that in healing by suggestion this energy is evoked.

Passing over the fact that our knowledge of man and his possibilities are even in this age only partially grasped, the study of suggestion without hypnotism has taught and is teaching us how to heal, how to unfold, how to live, how to enjoy. If we have not yet unfolded sufficiently to grasp the delicate philosophy of why and how suggestion works out purpose, we have learned how to use it for the attainment of wise and use ful ends in purposeful living. In my introduction I called attention to the fact that in a glance backward over life's work (whether success or failure followed) each serious move or act could be traced to a suggestion as the motive cause. Following that, I traced through the best authority with which I am acquainted the philosophy of the workings of suggestion as far as seems tangible to our logic with our present development - especially as far as the same may refer to the subject of healing; and now I turn to the making of practical use of auto-suggestion in our up-reaching to the attainment of ideals.