different from man to man. We all know the stubborn persons who are
always inclined to resist whatever is proposed to them and who do not
believe what is told them, and we know the credulous ones who believe
everything that they see printed. But the degree of suggestibility
changes no less from hour to hour with the individual. In a state of
fatigue or under the influence of alcohol or under the influence of
strong emotions, in hope and fear, the suggestibility is reenforced.
The highest degree of suggestibility is that mental state which we
call hypnotism, in which the power to resist the proposed idea of
action is reduced to a minimum. But the chief factor in making us
suggestible is the method by which the idea of action is proposed, and
in psychology we speak of suggestion whenever an action is proposed by
methods which make the mind yielding. It certainly is not
objectionable to exert suggestive influence. Suggestions are the
leading factors in education, in art, and in religion. The
authoritative voice with which the teacher proposes the right thing
has a most valuable suggestive power to suppress in the child the
opposite misleading impulse. But surely suggestions can become
dangerous and destructive. If actions are proposed in a form which
paralyzes the power to become conscious of the opposite impulses, the
voice of reason and of conscience is silenced, and social and moral
ruin must be the result.

Everybody at once thinks of the endless variety of advertisements. An
announcement which merely gives information is of course no
suggestion. But if perhaps such an announcement takes the form of an
imperative, an element of suggestion creeps in. To be sure we are
accustomed to this trivial pattern, and no one completely loses his
power to resist if the proposition to buy comes in the grammatical
form of a command. If we had reached the highest degree of
suggestibility, as in hypnotism, we could not read "Cook with gas"
without at once putting a gas stove into our kitchen. Yet even such a
mild suggestion has its influence and tends slightly to weaken the
arguments which would lead to an opposite action. The advertisements,
however, which the brokers send to our house and which are spread
broadcast in the homes of the country to people who have no technical
knowledge of stock-buying are surely not confined to such child-like
and bland forms of suggestion. The whole grouping of figures, the
distribution of black and