least we should remember that they are ideas of a special sort, and are of special importance in estimating his character. His habits, temperament, mode of mental action, permanent conceptions, and his ideals-these together are a man's character.

"Happy the man who has a large store of useful habits of thought and action, who is of a cheerful, matter-of-fact temperament, whose mind works steadily and fast and with a broad field of consciousness, who is furnished with a large stock of sensible opinions and cherishes sane and noble ideals."'

"A very good speech, Henshaw; but I don't see just how one can acquire some of these elements of a first-rate character. We've seen what habits are due to, how a man's ideas and ideals come, but I'm not sure about his temperament and about such general characteristics as quick and slow thinking, intense and shallow, broad and narrow fields of consciousness.'

"I don't myself know just what those are due to, or how they can be acquired, or how far their acquisition is under our control. Does any one?"

New

"We'll have to leave those questions open. At any rate, we've done a good thing in clearing up a vague fact-character-and showing the different familiar elements which really compose it. We can see now what we mean by character changing. habits, new ideas and ideals, modifications of tem'perament and mode of mental action would all change character. We can see what we mean when we say, 'His righteous character kept him from giving way to a natural impulse to revenge.' We mean, of course,

that fixed habits of tolerance, ideas of the folly of retaliation, and a well-balanced temperament inhibited the temporary impulse. We can interpret such words as fickle, pig-headed, pliable, etc., when applied to character."

"Yes. I think we'd better be satisfied with the evening's work, and adjourn.'

CHAPTER XIII

SUGGESTION

"I suppose that our first business to-night will naturally be to talk over the exhibition of hypnotism which most of us attended and which Mr. Henshaw took part in as a subject. What observations about the state of hypnosis did you make while you yourself were in that state, Mr. Henshaw?"

"I don't know. I forgot all that happened during the time I was hypnotized as soon as the operator woke me. I shouldn't know a thing that I'd said or done unless people had told me about it. My only observation, therefore, must be that when some people are hypnotized, they lose, on leaving the state of y hypnosis, all memories of what occurred therein."

"That isn't true of all people, for Fred Davenport told me that he did remember what he had done.'

"Quite so. I probably went into a much deeper hypnotic trance than Fred, for I've had experience with hypnosis before. When I was a reporter in New York years ago I had occasion to be hypnotized a number of times. If one goes into only a very light hypnotic sleep, he may remember."

"What do you suppose makes that forgetfulness?'' asked Miss Atwell.

"It seems to me that it's something like our forgetfulness of our dreams. There aren't any connections between our ordinary waking life and either our

dream experiences or our experiences while hypnotized. The two systems of thought are widely separated, dissociated, and so one doesn't call up the other. Experiences of one trance may be called up in another trance. I'm rather interested in these exhibitions, and I went three nights. My office boy had been hypnotized Monday night, and on Tuesday morning couldn't tell me a fourth of the things he'd done. I asked the operator to hypnotize him Wednesday, and tell him to remember what he'd done Monday night. He did so, and the boy when hypnotized remembered nearly everything. The important thing shown by this forgetfulness is that the thoughts and acts of deeply entranced subjects are cut off from their ordinary mental life, form a separate system."

That may all be," said Mr. Elkin; "but how in the world can a sane man like Judge Rodney be induced to hug a broomstick, and go around on all fours barking, no matter what system he's in?"

レ

"I don't suppose," said Arthur, "that any one can say just how he is induced with surety, but it strikes me that this dissociation from one's ordinary thoughts would give us a clue. In dreams we are dogs, or soldiers, or millionaires, and act as such because somehow the idea that we are starts up, and the ordinary course of ideas which would naturally come up and show us the folly of such a notion is not in running order. We saw in thinking about the will that every idea tended to be believed in and to work itself out in action if it wasn't prevented. Ordinarily a false idea-e. g., that I am Napoleon-is at once denied belief or motor effects by other ideas which

are called up, such as, 'But your name is Ralston,' 'But you live in 1900,' 'But you are five feet eleven,' 'But you aren't Napoleon,' etc. But suppose a man's brain to be so affected in the hypnotic trance that ordinary associates don't come up, that only those associated ideas come up at any time which are in harmony with the operator's suggestions. Why shouldn't he bark when the idea of being a dog is put into his head? Why shouldn't he strut and be pompous when told that he is the emperor of Germany?"

"But why," said Miss Fairbanks, "does he receive such ideas? Why does hypnosis make a man so sug gestible, so ready to take any idea from the operator?"

"I don't know," said Arthur. "Do you, Henshaw?" "I don't know that any one does,' was the reply. "We can simply see that in this half-awake, halfasleep condition that we call the hypnotic trance any one is an easy victim to suggestion. We can see that he does realize the ideas presented by the operator, and we can suppose that he does not realize, at least not emphatically, the contradictory ideas which in a normal condition he would. I should say that the essential of the hypnotic condition was suggestibility, uncritical acceptance of ideas, but why that is so is beyond us. The case is the same with sleep. Why should a man, just because he is in the sleeping state, believe in all sorts of absurd things, lack his customary, criticising ideas? The latter state is so common that we don't marvel at it, but if it happened only once or twice in a lifetime, we'd doubtless puzzle over it, much as we do over hypnotism,"