ould have a
standardising effect, modifying its users to a uniform pattern, is
unfounded. A rigid system of particular suggestions might tend towards
such a result, but the general formula leaves every mind free to unfold
and develop in the manner most natural to itself. The eternal
diversity of men's minds can only be increased by the free impulse thus
administered.

We have previously seen that the Unconscious tide rises to its highest
point compatible with conscious thought just before sleep and just
after awaking, and that the suggestions formulated then are almost
assured acceptation. It is these moments that we select for the
repetition of the formula.

But before we pass on to the precise method, a word of warning is
necessary. Even the most superficial attempt to analyse intellectually
a living act is bound to make it appear complex and difficult. So our
consideration of the processes of outcropping and acceptation has
inevitably invested them with a false appearance of difficulty.
Autosuggestion is above all things easy. Its greatest enemy is effort.
The more simple and unforced the manner of its performance the more
potently and profoundly it works. This is shown by the fact that its
most remarkable results have been secured by children and by simple
French peasants.

It is here that Coue's directions for the practice differ considerably
from those of Baudouin. Coue insists upon its easiness, Baudouin
complicates it. The four chapters devoted by the latter to
"relaxation," "collection," "contention," and "concentration," produce
in the reader an adverse suggestion of no mean power. They leave the
impression that autosuggestion is a perplexing business which only the
greatest foresight and supervision can render successful. Nothing
could be more calculated to throw the beginner off the track.

We have seen that Autosuggestion is a function of the mind which we
spontaneously perform every day of our lives. The more our induced
autosuggestions approximate to this spontaneous prototype the more
potent they are likely to be. Baudouin warns us against the danger of
setting the intellect to do the work of intuition, yet this is
precisely what he himself does. A patient trying by his rules to
attain outcropping and implant therein an autosuggestion is so
vigilantly attentive to what he is doing that outcropping is rendered
almost impossible. These artificial aids are, in Coue's opinion, not
only u