ver him by suggestion
will increase; _i.e._, his brain will accustom itself to the
suggestions which I give it by letting them dissociate its activity.
This tendency to be influenced by suggestion is very contagious by
example. When A influences B successfully, and C, D, E, F and G are
witnesses of the fact, they will be much more easily influenced by A
in the same direction; and so on. This explains suggestion affecting
the masses.

It is quite indifferent whether the subjective sentiment of sleep
occurs more or less in the state of hypnosis or suggestion. This
sentiment depends chiefly on the presence or absence of a variable
degree of amnesia (want of memory to awaken). But amnesia only depends
on the rupture, often fortuitous and unimportant, of the chain of
remembrances in the series of super-conscious or attentional states of
cerebral activity.

In somnambulists, who are the most suggestible people, we can produce
or suppress amnesia at will by a single word, and make them forget or
remember what has passed. I must dwell on this point, because of the
current dogma which assumes an essential difference between hypnotism
and suggestion in the waking state. Such an assumption is based on
false conception of the psychology of suggestion. The only difference
consists in the suggestion of amnesia, or the subjective sentiment of
sleep; or, if one prefers it, the subjective remembrance of sleep
opposed to the remembrance of having been awakened. But these two
remembrances may be voluntarily connected with the same past state of
the brain.

By _auto-suggestion_ is meant the suggestive action of spontaneous
ideas--that is to say, ideas which are not suggested to the subject by
any other person, but the effect of which is identical to that of
external suggestions. An idea, a sentiment, dominates the mind,
overcomes all its antagonists and produces a strong suggestive effect
on the whole nervous system in the direction which it symbolizes. The
idea of being unable to sleep often produces insomnia; the idea of
sexual impotence may at once inhibit erection and render coitus
impossible. The idea of yawning makes one yawn; that of coitus
provokes erections; the idea of shame causes blushing; that of fear
blanching; that of pity weeping.

But it often happens unconsciously, in yawning for example, that one
man suggests it to another who begins to yawn; or the sight of certain
objects, the hearing of certain sounds, provokes