bly runs his head against a blank wall of ignorance; for
hypnotism, to most people, means a dangerous power by which an
unscrupulous, strong-willed Svengali dominates an abnormally
weak-willed Trilby whose will continues to grow weaker until the
subject becomes a mere automaton; and most of us would rightly prefer
that a boy should be his own master--even if he were rushing to
headlong ruin--than that he should be the mere puppet of the most
saintly man living. The human will is sacred and inviolable, and we do
unwisely if we seek to control it or to remove those obstacles from
its way by which alone it can gain divine strength. Meanwhile the
stimulus by which the mind acquires self-mastery usually comes from
without in the form of spiritual inspiration; and to remove from a
boy's path an obstacle which blocks it and is entirely beyond his own
strength is equally desirable both in the physical and in the
spiritual realm. Those who think that without this obstacle a boy's
power of self-control is likely to receive insufficient exercise will,
of course, object to the instruction advocated in this book. If it is
unwise to remove this obstacle from a boy's path it is equally unwise
so to instruct him as to prevent the obstacle from arising. In
_trustworthy_ hands hypnotic suggestion is a beneficent power which
has no dangers and no drawbacks, and to decline to use it is to accept
a very serious responsibility.

For the teacher a further difficulty--not to mention that of time--is
that, without betraying a boy's confidence or inducing him to allow
his admissions to be passed on to his father, it is impossible to give
his parents an idea of the urgency of the case.

Altogether the time for hypnotic suggestion in education is not yet,
but the day must come when its use is recognised not only in physical
cases such as nocturnal emissions and constipation, but in all cases
in which the will-power is practically in abeyance, as it is in bad
cases of impurity.

For intelligent parents the difficulties are far less, and if any such
care to pursue the subject farther, I would refer them to the volume
on _Hypnotism_ in the People's Books series or to one of the larger
medical works on the subject, such as _Hypnotism and Suggestion_, by
Dr. Bernard Hollander.

To those who know boys well and love them much, there is something
intensely interesting and pathetic about the spiritual struggle
through which they have to pass. The path