nt to recognize more
of the factors involved, when we give attention to the banquet we want
to grasp more of the pleasurable features. This aim of attention
involves that, as part of such reactions, the sense organs become
adjusted; we fixate the eyeball, we listen, and in consequence the
object itself becomes clearer, and through the easy passage into the
motor channels the whole impression becomes vivid. At the same time, all
those associations must be reenforced and become vivid too which lead to
the same action. On the other hand, the opening of the one passageway
closes the path to the opposite action and inhibits the impressions
which would interfere with our interest. Every act of attention becomes,
therefore, a complex distribution in the reenforcement and inhibition of
mental states.

Now let us come back to suggestion. It shares, we said, with attention,
the power to reenforce and to inhibit. But if we examine what is
involved in the suggestion of an idea, we find surely more than a mere
turning of the attention towards one idea and turning the attention away
from another idea. That which characterizes and constitutes suggestion
is a belief in the idea, an acceptance of the idea as real and the
dismissal of the opposite idea as unreal. Yes, we may say directly that
it is meaningless to speak of suggesting an idea; we suggest either an
action or, if no action is concerned, we suggest belief in an idea. If I
suggest to the fearful man at twilight that the willow-tree trunk by the
wayside is a man with a gun, I do not turn his attention to an abstract
idea of a robber nor do I simply awaken the visual impression of one,
but I make him believe that such an idea is there realized, that he
really sees the person. If I suggest to him that he hears distant bells
ringing or that he feels a slight headache, he may not be suggestible
enough to accept it, but if he accepts it he is not simply attending to
the idea which I propose but he is convinced of its real existence. The
same holds true with the negative; if I suggest to him that the slight
headache of which he complained has disappeared or that the smell which
he noticed has stopped, I do not simply invite him to think of the
absence of such sensations. It becomes for him a suggestion only if he
becomes convinced that these disturbances have now become unreal. The
same holds true for all those suggestions of ideas which belong to our
practical life, the suggestions