h we seek, we open the channels by our own effort
beforehand and produce our own settings thus through a voluntary
attention. In this way suggestion too may start from without,--by a
spoken word, by a movement, by a hint; or may start within us and may
give us our caprices and our prejudices.

We must not neglect one other feature of the suggestion. Not every
proposition to action or to belief can be called a suggestion. Essential
too remains the other side of it, the overcoming of the resistance. A
mere request, "Please hand me the book on the table," or a mere
communication, "It rains," may produce and will produce the fit motor
response, the movement towards handing over the book or opening of the
umbrella, and yet there may be no suggestive element involved. We have a
right to speak of suggestion only if a resistance is to be broken down,
that is, if the antagonistic impulse, or the motor setting for the
antagonistic action is relatively strong. If I say to the boy, "Hand me
the book," when he was anxious to hide the book from my eyes and thus
had the wish not to hand it to me and the tone of my request overwhelmed
his own intention, then to be sure suggestion is at work. The stronger
the resistance, the greater the degree of suggestive power which is
needed to overcome the motor setting. If I say to the normal man, "It
rains," while he sees the blue sky and the dry street, his impression
will be stronger than my suggestion; but if he is suggestible and I tell
him that it will rain, he may accept it and take an umbrella on his
walk, even if no indication makes a change of weather probable. The
present impression of the dry street was strong enough to resist the
suggestion, the imaginative idea of that which is to be expected in the
next hour was too weak, and was overwhelmed by the suggestion of the
weather prophecy.

It is clear that the whole suggestive effect, being one of a new motor
setting, depends thus entirely on the equilibrium of the personality
which receives the suggestion. Every element which reaches the mind
through sense organs or through associations must have influence in
helping the one or the other side, that is, in opening the channels of
action in the suggested direction or in the antagonistic one. The
results appear surprising only if we forget how endlessly complex this
psychomotor apparatus really is. If we disregard this complexity we may
easily have the feeling that one person has an unexp