e as if one were
reciting a litany.

Here are the magic words: _"Every day, in every respect, I am
getting better and better"._

They must be said twenty times following, with the help of a string
with twenty knots in it, which serves as a rosary. This material detail
has its importance; it ensures mechanical recitation, which is
essential.

While articulating these words, _which are registered by the
unconscious,_ one must not think of anything particular, neither of
one's illness nor of one's troubles, one must be passive, just with the
desire that all may be for the best. The formula _"in every respect"_
has a general effect.

This desire must be expressed without passion, without will, with
gentleness, _but with absolute confidence._

For Emile Coue at the moment of autosuggestion, _does not call in
the will in any way, on the contrary;_ there must be no question of
the will at that moment, but the _imagination,_ the great motive
force infinitely more active than that which is usually invoked, the
imagination alone must be brought into play.

"Have confidence in yourself," says this good counsellor, "believe
firmly that all will be well". And indeed all is well for those who
have faith, fortified by perseverance.

As deeds talk louder than words, I will tell you what happened to
myself before I had ever seen M. Coue.

I must go back then to the month of September when I opened M.
Charles Baudouin's volume. At the end of a substantial exposition,
the author enumerates the cure of illnesses such as enteritis, eczema,
stammering, dumbness, a sinus dating from twenty years back which
had necessitated eleven operations, metritis, salpingitis, fibrous
tumours, varicose veins, etc., lastly and above all, deep tubercular
sores, and the last stages of phthisis (case of Mme. D----, of Troyes,
aged 30 years, who has become a mother since her cure; case was
followed up, but there was no relapse). All this is often testified to
by doctors in attendance on the patients.

These examples impressed me profoundly; _there_ was the miracle.
It was not a question of nerves, but of ills which medicine attacks
without success. This cure of tuberculosis was a revelation to me.

Having suffered for two years from acute neuritis in the face, I was
in horrible pain. Four doctors, two of them specialists, had
pronounced the sentence which would be enough, of itself alone, to
increase the trouble by its fatal influence on the mind