Let a person faint in a crowded room, and a good per cent. of the women present will begin to fan themselves.  The room has suddenly become insufferably close.  After we have read half a hundred times that Ivory soap floats, a fair proportion of the population is likely to be seized with desire for a soap that floats,—­not because they have any good reason for doing so, but simply because the suggestion has “taken.”  As for the harbingers of spring, they are neither the birds nor the wild flowers, but the blooming windows of the milliners, which successfully suggest in wintry February that summer is coming, and that felt and fur are out of season.  It is evident that all advertising is suggestion.

The training of children, also, if it is done in the right way, is largely a matter of suggestion.  The little child who falls down and bumps his head is very likely to cry if met with a sympathetic show of concern, while the same child will often take his mishaps as a joke if his elders meet them with a laugh or a diverting remark.  Unlucky is the child whose mother does not know, either consciously or intuitively, that example and contagion are more powerful—­and more pleasant—­than command and prohibition.

=Everything Suggestive.= Human beings are constantly communicating, one to another.  Sometimes they “get over” an idea by means of words, but often they do it in more subtle ways,—­by the elevation of an eyelid, the gesture of a hand, composure of manner in a crisis, or a laugh in a delicate situation.  A suggestion is merely an idea passed from one person to another, an idea that is accepted with conviction and acted upon, even though there may be no logic, no reason, no proof of its truth.  It is an influence that takes hold of the mind and works itself out to fulfilment, quite apart from its worth or reasonableness.  Of course, logical persuasion and argument have their place in the communication of ideas; an idea may be conveyed by other ways than suggestion.  But while suggestion is not everything, it is equally true that there is suggestion in everything.  The doctor may give a patient a very rational explanation of his case, but the doubtful shake of the head or the encouraging look of his eye is quite likely to color the patient’s general impression.  The eyes of our subconscious are always open, and they are constantly getting impressions, subtle suggestions that are implied rather than expressed.

=Abnormal Suggestibility.= While everybody is suggestible, nervous people are abnormally so.  It may be, as McDougall suggests, that they have so large an amount of submission or negative self-feeling in their make-up that they believe anything, just because some one else says it is true.  Sometimes it is lack of knowledge that makes us gullible, and at other times the cause of our suggestibility is failure to use the knowledge that we have.  Sometimes our ideas are locked away in air-tight compartments with