556. These last words may naturally lead us on to our next topic: the influence of suggestion on character, - on that function of combined attention and will, which is, of course, also ultimately a function of the possibilities latent in the individual germ.

And while character is thus a complex notion, the effect on character of suggestion and self-suggestion seems at first sight a notion at once too complex and too diffused for definite treatment. All men endeavour to influence character, not indeed hypnotically, but yet by such intensest suggestion and self-suggestion as they can bring to bear. Many men, moreover, trust for. the improvement of character to another influence, not easy of discussion here, namely, to prayer, - to the aid of saints or of a Divine Mediator, or to the direct Grace of God. And yet again, these religious or philosophic creeds, which might have been thought to lie outside my present topic, are brought within it by the confidence of many believers in the efficacy of their faith to relieve physical as well as moral ill. These creeds thus become schemes of self-suggestion, - of which it is not only legitimate but necessary for me to give some account.

In approaching this mingled matter it will be most convenient (recurring to the subjects already discussed from a somewhat different point of view in sections 527-531) to begin with those moral suggestions which are obviously hypnotic, and which develop themselves directly from some therapeutic purpose, as when the suggestion to avoid morphia leads to the moral reform of the morphinomaniac. From the morphinomaniac or the drunkard the transition is easy to the criminel-né, - the apparently hopeless case of congenital moral deficiency. And we may then inquire how far the crude moral stimuli which affect this extreme type of physical and moral disaster can be best elevated into a more intellectual air - can be best modified for the advantage of sufferers who can be reached by religious and philosophical thought, - by what I have called those "schemes of self-suggestion" which the great traditions and the great conceptions of our race can alone supply.

First of all, then, and going back to the evidence already given as to the cure of the victims of morphia (see 350), we may say with truth that there we have seen as tremendous a moral lift - as sudden an elevation from utter baseness to at least normal living - as can be anywhere presented to us. The morphia habit, as is well known, leaves absolutely no department of character unpoisoned. Cowardice, treachery, callous self-absorption, - such are the characteristics of the morphinomaniac, even though physical exhaustion may preclude the drunkard's more active sins of violence or lust. In this slimy dissolution of self-respect there seems to be nothing on which sage or evangelist can take hold. Yet we have seen hypnotic suggestion effect the magical change, and restore the degraded outcast to a safe and honourable position among his fellow-men.

Here, then, the question arises as to the possible range of such sudden reformations. Did we succeed with the morphinomaniac only because his was a functional, and not an organic, degradation? We know, indeed, that we can cure a morbid condition of tissue where we could not rectify a congenital distortion or defect. May not the morphinomaniac's state be a kind of chemical sinfulness? - a poisoning of cells which once functioned normally, and which are capable of functioning normally again, if only the poison be removed?

And may it not be a much harder task to create honesty, purity, unselfishness in a brain whose very conformation must keep the spirit that thinks through it nearly on the level of the brute ? The question is of the highest psychological interest; the answer, though as yet rudimentary, is unexpectedly encouraging. The examples given in 556 A show that if the subject is hypnotisable, and if hypnotic suggestion be applied with sufficient persistency and skill, no depth of previous baseness and foulness need prevent the man or woman whom we charge with "moral insanity," or stamp as a "criminal-born," from rising into a state where he or she can work steadily, and render services useful to the community.

I purposely limit my assertion to these words. We must still work within the bounds of natural capacity. Just as we cannot improvise a genius, we cannot improvise a saint. But what experience seems to show is that we can select from the lowest and poorest range of feelings and faculties enough of sound feeling, enough of helpful faculty, to keep the man in a position of moral stability, and capable of falling in with the common labours of his kind.

We can produce in time somewhat the same sort of effect which Rarey and others have produced (perhaps by somewhat similar means) upon horses rendered useless through those defects of stability which in a horse we call vice. Rarey effected a life-long inhibition of those equine impulses which were inconvenient to man. Enough of horse-power was left in the horse to render him a harmless and tractable, even if an insipid, companion and servant in stable or hunting-field. Looking to parallel effects produced in human beings, it will be seen that I was justified in saying that hypnotic suggestion had effected changes of character in cases which the ordinary educator, or the ordinary missionary, would have deemed most unfavourable, and in which the common opinion of science would have strongly endorsed their despairing prognosis. The advantage gained is great, and should not be forgotten by criminologists. But it is another question whether we shall be justified in concluding that because these apparently extreme cases have yielded to our treatment, therefore all cases of moral obliquity are likely so to yield.