h if you
have only sufficient faith to repeat the formula twenty times night and
morning the results will soon give you in your own person the proof you
desire, and facts and faith will go on mutually augmenting each other.

Faith reposes on reason and must have its grounds. What grounds can we
adduce for faith in Induced Autosuggestion? The examples of cures
already cited are outside your experience and you may be tempted to
pooh-pooh them. The experiment of Chevreul's pendulum, however, will
show in a simple manner the power possessed by a thought to transform
itself into an action.

Take a piece of white paper and draw on it a circle of about five
inches' radius. Draw two diameters _AB_ and _CD_ at right angles to
each other and intersecting at _O_. The more distinctly the lines
stand out the better--they should be thickly drawn in black ink. Now
take a lead pencil or a light ruler and tie to one end a piece of
cotton about eight inches long; to the lower end of the cotton fasten a
heavy metal button, of the sort used on a soldier's tunic. Place the
paper on a table so that the diameter _AB_ seems to be horizontal and
_CD_ to be vertical, thus:

[Illustration: Autosuggestion diagram]

Stand upright before the table with your miniature fishing-rod held
firmly in both hands and the button suspended above the point _O_.
Take care not to press the elbows nervously against the sides.

Look at the line _AB_, think of it, follow it with your eyes from side
to side. Presently the button will begin to swing along the line you
are thinking of. The more your mind dwells easily upon the idea of the
line the greater this swing becomes. Your efforts to _try_ to hold the
pendulum still, by bringing into action the law of reversed effort,
only make its oscillations more pronounced.

Now fix your eyes on the line _CD_. The button will gradually change
the direction of its movement, taking up that of _CD_. When you have
allowed it to swing thus for a few moments transfer your attention to
the circle, follow the circumference round and round with your eyes.
Once more the swinging button will follow you, adopting either a
clock-wise or a counter clock-wise direction according to your thought.
After a little practice you should produce a circular swing with a
diameter of at least eight inches; but your success will be directly
proportional to the exclusiveness of your thought and to your efforts
to hold the pencil stil