sensations on the one
hand and certain other sensations, as of sight, touch, hearing, etc.,
on the other hand. The latter serve as suggestions to the performance
of these movements, and these alone. The infant learns to balance his
head and trunk, to direct his hands, to grasp with thumb opposite the
four fingers--all largely by such control suggestions, aided, of
course, by his native reflexes.

_Contrary Suggestion._--By this is meant a tendency of a very striking
kind observable in many children, no less than in many adults, to do
the contrary when any course is suggested. The very word "contrary" is
used in popular talk to describe an individual who shows this type of
conduct. Such a child or man is rebellious whenever rebellion is
possible; he seems to kick constitutionally against the pricks.

The fact of "contrariness" in older children--especially boys--is so
familiar to all who have observed school children with any care that I
need not cite further details. And men and women often become so
enslaved to suggestions of the contrary that they seem only to wait
for indications of the wishes of others in order to oppose and thwart
them.

Contrary suggestions are to be explained as exaggerated instances of
control. It is easy to see that the checks and counter-checks already
spoken of as constituting the method of control of muscular movement
may themselves become so habitual and intense as to dominate the
reactions which they should only regulate. The associations between
the muscular series and the visual series, let us say, which controls
it, comes to work backward, so that the drift of the organic processes
is toward certain contrary reverse movements.

In the higher reaches of conduct and life we find interesting cases of
very refined contrary suggestion. In the man of ascetic temperament,
the duty of self-denial takes the form of a regular contrary
suggestion in opposition to every invitation to self-indulgence,
however innocent. The over-scrupulous mind, like the over-precise, is
a prey to the eternal remonstrances from the contrary which intrude
their advice into all his decisions. In matters of thought and belief
also cases are common of stubborn opposition to evidence, and
persistence in opinion, which are in no way due to the cogency of the
contrary arguments or to real force of conviction.

_Hypnotic Suggestion._--The facts upon which the current theories of
hypnotism are based may be summed up und