his will a passive instrument
of the hypnotist's intent. Often this is coupled with telepathic
fancies. The hypnotist is believed to have mystic power to bring any
person in a distant region under his mental control and thus to be able
to carry out any sinister plans by the help of his innocent victim. All
hypnotizing therefore ought to be interdicted by the state. The
presuppositions of such a view are, as we know now, entirely absurd. We
know that hypnotism is not based on any special power of the hypnotizer;
there is no magnetic fluid in the sense of the old mesmerism. The
imagination of the hypnotized person is the only hypnotizing agency.
Thus no one can be hypnotized without his knowledge or against his will.
The story of telepathic mysteries which is often brought before the
public is probably always the outcome of a diseased brain. It is indeed
a frequent symptom in paranoia and other insanities that the patient who
feels abnormal organic sensations and abnormal unaccountable impulses
interprets them as influences of a distant enemy. Whole pamphlets have
been written with elaboration of such insane misinterpretations and
requests to legislatures have been made in that spirit, but the
physician recognizes easily throughout the whole argumentation the
well-known phenomena of the mental disease.

To be sure, while no one can be hypnotized against his will, many a
person is liable to accept suggestions from others and thus to carry out
the wishes of others almost without knowing and certainly without
willing that the other mind interfere with the interplay of the own
motives. But if we were to strike out all suggestive influences from
social life, we should give up social life itself. Suggestion is given
wherever men come in contact; in itself it is neither good nor bad. The
good resolution and the bad one can be suggested, the good example and
the bad can be effective; both encouragement of the noble and imitation
of the evil may work with the same mental technique. Certainly there are
some persons who have a stronger influence than others on the
imagination of those with whom they come in contact; their expression
awakens confidence, their voice and their words reach deeper layers of
the mind, their calmness and firmness overwhelm more easily the
antagonistic ideas. But the chief difference lies after all in the
different degrees of suggestibility among those who receive such
impressions. The easily suggestible pe