process of suggestion to a point where
all difficulties are removed, but at least the mysteries can be removed
and the effects can be linked with other well-known processes.

Let us be clear from the start that suggestion is certainly nothing
abnormal and exceptional, nothing which leads us away from our ordinary
life, nothing which brings us nearer to the great riddles of the
universe. There is no human life into which suggestion does not enter in
a hundred forms. Family life and education, law and business, public
life and politics, art and religion are carried by suggestion. A
suggestion is, we might say at first, an idea which has a power in our
mind to suppress the opposite idea. A suggestion is an idea which in
itself is not different from other ideas, but the way in which it takes
possession of the mind reduces the chances of any opposite ideas; it
inhibits them. It is indeed the best result of any successful education,
that the teachings have taken hold of the mind of the young in such a
way that all the opposite tendencies and impulses and wishes do not come
to development. The well-educated person does not need to participate in
a struggle between good and bad motives, for that which has been
impressed upon his mind does not allow the other side to come up at all.
Our life would be crowded with inner conflicts if education had not
secured for us from the start preponderance for the suggestions of our
educators.

The love of family and friends, of our country and our party are in the
same way such suggestions. We may hear arguments for the other side,
arguments which easily convince the man of the other party, but they do
not appeal to us: they are emasculated before they enter our minds; they
have no chance to overcome the resistance because suggestions stand in
their way. No argument will overwhelm the suggestion which religion has
settled in our inner life, and from this strongest suggestion which can
stand against any temptation of life small psychological steps lead down
to the little bits of suggestion with which our daily chance life is
over-flooded. Every advertisement in the newspaper, every display in the
shop-window, every warm intonation in the voice of our neighbor has its
suggestive power, that is, it brings its content in such a way to our
minds that the desire to do the opposite is weakened. We do buy the
object that we do not need, and we do follow the advice which we ought
to have reconsidere