ory in which a man was thus simply
_talked_ into sacrificing his property. The great power latent in this
form of suggestiveness is well known to knaves in America where it is
most employed. This is the whole secret of the value of advertising.
People yield to the mere repetition in time. Attention and Interest
may in this way be self-induced from repetition.

It is true that an image or idea may be often repeated to minds which
do not think or reflect, without awakening attention; _per contra_,
the least degree of thought in a vast majority of cases forms a
nucleus, or beginning, which may easily be increased to an indefinite
extent. A very little exercise of the Will suffices in most cases to
fix the attention on a subject, and how this can be done will be shown
in another chapter. But in many cases Attention is attracted with
little or no voluntary effort. On this fact is based the truth that
when or where it is desired, Attention and Interest may be awakened
with great ease by a simple process.

It may be remarked on the subject of repetition of images or ideas,
that a vast proportion of senseless superstitions, traditions or
customs, which no one can explain, originate in this way, and that in
fact what we call _habit_ (which ranks as second nature) is only
another form or result of involuntary attention and the unconsciously
giving a place in the memory to what we have heard.

From the simple fact that even a man of plain common-sense and strong
will may be driven to sleeplessness, or well nigh to madness, by the
haunting presence of some wretched trifle, some mere jingle or rhyme,
or idle memory, we may infer that we have here a great power which
_must_ in some way be capable of being led to great or useful results
by some very easy process. I once wrote a sketch, never completed, in
which I depicted a man of culture who, having lost an old manuscript
book which he had regarded in a light, semi-incredulous manner as a
_fetish_, or amulet, on which his luck depended, began to be seriously
concerned, and awaking to the fact, deliberately cultivated his alarm
as a psychological study, till he found himself, even with his eyes
wide open as an observer in terrible fear, or a semi-monomaniac. The
recovery of his lost charm at once relieved him. This was a diversion
of Attention for a deliberate purpose, which might have been varied
_ad infinitum_ to procure very useful results. But I have myself known
a man in the U