estion_.

Whereas we constantly give ourselves unconscious autosuggestions,
all we have to do is to give ourselves conscious ones, and the
process consists in this: first, to weigh carefully in one's mind the
things which are to be the object of the autosuggestion, and
according as they require the answer "yes" or "no" to repeat several
times without thinking of anything else: "This thing is coming", or
"this thing is going away"; "this thing will, or will not happen, etc.,
etc. . . ." [*] If the unconscious accepts this suggestion and
transforms it into an autosuggestion, the thing or things are realized
in every particular.

[*] Of course the thing must be in our power.

Thus understood, _autosuggestion_ is nothing but hypnotism as I
see it, and I would define it in these simple words: _The influence of
the imagination upon the moral and physical being of mankind_.
Now this influence is undeniable, and without returning to previous
examples, I will quote a few others.

If you persuade yourself that you can do a certain thing, provided
this thing be _possible_, you will do it however difficult it may be.
If on the contrary you _imagine_ that you cannot do the simplest
thing in the world, it is impossible for you to do it, and molehills
become for you unscalable mountains.

Such is the case of neurasthenics, who, believing themselves
incapable of the least effort, often find it impossible even to walk a
few steps without being exhausted. And these same neurasthenics
sink more deeply into their depression, the more efforts they make
to throw it off, like the poor wretch in the quicksands who sinks in
all the deeper the more he tries to struggle out.

In the same way it is sufficient to think a pain is going, to feel it
indeed disappear little by little, and inversely, it is enough to think
that one suffers in order to feel the pain begin to come immediately.

I know certain people who predict in advance that they will have a
sick headache on a certain day, in certain circumstances, and on that
day, in the given circumstances, sure enough, they feel it. They
brought their illness on themselves, just as others cure theirs by
_conscious autosuggestion_.

I know that one generally passes for mad in the eyes of the world if
one dares to put forward ideas which it is not accustomed to hear.
Well, at the risk of being thought so, I say that if certain people are
ill mentally and physically, it is that they _imagine_ t