l.

Lastly think of the point _O_. Gradually the radius of the swing will
diminish until the button comes to rest.

Is it necessary to point out how these movements are caused? Your
thought of the line, passing into the Unconscious, is there realised,
so that _without knowing it_ you execute with your hands the
imperceptible movements which set the button in motion. The
Unconscious automatically realises your thought through the nerves and
muscles of your arms and hands. What is this but Induced
Autosuggestion?

The first time you perform this little experiment it is best to be
alone. This enables you to approach it quite objectively.

CHAPTER VIII

PARTICULAR SUGGESTIONS

The use of particular suggestions outlined in this chapter is of minor
importance compared with that of the general formula--"Day by day, in
every way, I'm getting better and better." The more deeply Coue
pursues his investigations, the more fully he becomes convinced that
all else is secondary to this. It is not difficult to make a guess as
to why this should be. In the general formula the attention is fully
absorbed by the idea of betterment. The mind is directed away from all
that hinders and impedes and fixed on a positive goal. In formulating
particular suggestions, however, we are always skating on the thin ice
round our faults and ailments, always touching on subjects which have
the most painful associations. So that our ideas have not the same
creative positiveness. However that may be, it is a matter of
experience that the general formula is the basis of the whole method,
and that all else is merely an adjuvant, an auxiliary--useful, but
inessential to the main object.

We have seen that a partial outcropping of the Unconscious takes place
whenever we relax our mental and physical control, and let the mind
wander; in popular language, when we fall into a "brown study" or a
"day-dream." This outcropping should be sought before the special
suggestions are formulated.

But again we must beware of making simple things seem hard. Baudouin
would have us perform a number of elaborate preparatives, which,
however valuable to the student of psychology, serve with the layman
only to distract the mind, and by fixing the attention on the mechanism
impair the power of the creative idea. Moreover, they cause the
subject to exert efforts to attain a state the very essence of which is
effortlessness, like the victim of insomni