which art imprints on our minds, or
which politics and religion impart. As long as we are under the
suggestion of the novelist, we really believe in the existence of the
heroine; we really believe in the validity of the political party
principle; it is not an argument to which we simply give our attention,
it becomes a suggestion only when the belief in its objective existence
controls our minds. We may say in general that suggestions which are not
suggestions of actions are without exception suggestions of belief.
Actions and beliefs are the only possible material of any suggestion.

Yet what else is a belief than a preparation for action? I may think of
an object without preparing myself for any particular line of behavior.
Here in the room I may think of rain or sunshine on the street as a mere
idea, but to know that it now really rains or shines means something
entirely different. It means a completely new setting in my present
attitude, a setting by which I am prepared to act along the one or the
other line, to take an umbrella or to take a straw hat, when I am to
leave the house. I may think of the door of this room as locked or
unlocked without transcending the mere sphere of imagination, but to
believe that it is the one or the other means a new setting in my motor
adjustments. If it is locked I know that I cannot leave the room without
a key. Every belief means the preparation for a definite line of action
and a new motor adjustment in the whole system of motor paths, an
adjustment by which my actions in future will be switched off at once
into particular paths. And there is theoretically no difference whether
my belief refers to the proposition that the door is locked or that a
God exists in Heaven.

But if every belief is such a new motor setting, then we are evidently
brought back to the mechanism which was essential for every suggestion
of action on the one side and for every process of attention on the
other side, namely, the mechanism of antagonistic movements. To prepare
ourselves for one line of action means to close beforehand the channels
of discharge for the opposite. The suggestible mind sees the man with a
gun on the wayside because he is preparing himself in his expectation
for the appropriate action; he is ready for the fight or ready to run
away, and every line of the tree trunk is apperceived with reference to
this motor setting. The smell, on the other hand, has disappeared under
the influenc