ar malady frequently develop its characteristic symptoms.

Everyone is acquainted with the experience known as "stage fright."
The victim may be a normal person, healthy both in mind and body. He
may possess in private life a good voice, a mind fertile in ideas and a
gift of fluent expression. He may know quite surely that his audience
is friendly and sympathetic to the ideas he wishes to unfold. But let
him mount the steps of a platform. Immediately his knees begin to
tremble and his heart to palpitate; his mind becomes a blank or a
chaos, his tongue and lips refuse to frame coherent sounds, and after a
few stammerings he is forced to make a ludicrous withdrawal. The cause
of this baffling experience lay in the thoughts which occupied the
subject's mind before his public appearance. He was afraid of making
himself ridiculous. He expected to feel uncomfortable, feared that he
would forget his speech or be unable to express himself. These
negative ideas, penetrating to the Unconscious, realised themselves and
precisely what he feared took place.

If you live in a town you have probably seen people who, in carelessly
crossing the street, find themselves in danger of being run down by a
vehicle. In this position they sometimes stand for an appreciable time
"rooted," as we say, "to the spot." This is because the danger seems
so close that they imagine themselves powerless to elude it. As soon
as this idea gives place to that of escape they get out of the way as
fast as they can. If their first idea persisted, however, the actual
powerlessness resulting from it would likewise persist, and unless the
vehicle stopped or turned aside they would infallibly be run over.

One occasionally meets people suffering from a nervous complaint known
as St. Vitus' Dance. They have a disconcerting habit of contorting
their faces, screwing round their necks or twitching their shoulders.
It is a well known fact that those who come into close contact with
them, living in the same house or working in the same office, are
liable to contract the same habit, often performing the action without
themselves being aware of it. This is due to the operation of the same
law. The idea of the habit, being repeatedly presented to their minds,
realises itself, and they begin to perform a similar movement in their
own persons.

Examples of this law present themselves at every turn. Have you ever
asked yourself why some people faint at the s