iences were afforded by my responses in crude songs to the
infant's waking movements and breathing sounds. I have often waked
myself by myself singing one of two nursery rhymes, which by endless
repetition night after night had become so habitual as to follow in an
automatic way upon the stimulus from the child. It is certainly
astonishing that among the things which one may get to do
automatically, we should find singing; but writers on the subject have
claimed that the function of musical or semi-musical expression may be
reflex.

The principle of subconscious suggestion, of which these simple facts
are less important illustrations, has very interesting applications in
the higher reaches of social, moral, and educational theory.

_Inhibitory Suggestion._--An interesting class of phenomena which
figure perhaps at all the levels of nervous action now described, may
be known as Inhibitory Suggestions. The phrase, in its broadest use,
refers to all cases in which the suggesting stimulus tends to
suppress, check, or inhibit movement. We find this in certain cases
just as strongly marked as the positive movement--bringing kind of
suggestion. The facts may be put under certain heads which follow.

_Pain Suggestion._--Of course, the fact that pain inhibits movement
occurs at once to the reader. So far as this is general, and is a
native inherited thing, it is organic, and so falls under the head of
Physiological Suggestion of a negative sort. The child shows
contracting movements, crying movements, starting and jumping
movements, shortly after birth, and so plainly that we need not
hesitate to say that these pain responses belong purely to his nervous
system; and that, in general, they are inhibitory and contrary to
those other native reactions which indicate pleasure.

The influence of pain extends everywhere through mental development,
however. Its general effect is to dampen down or suppress the function
which brings the pain; and in this its action is just the contrary to
that of pleasure, which furthers the pleasurable function.

_Control Suggestion._--This covers all cases which show any kind of
restraint set upon the movements of the body short of that which comes
from voluntary intention. The infant brings the movements of his legs,
arms, head, etc., gradually into some sort of order and system. It is
accomplished by a system of organic checks and counter-checks, by
which associations are formed between muscular