simple manner which I have indicated, the fashion or mode might at least be inaugurated.  For it is not so much a moral conviction, or an appeal to common sense, which is needed (as writers on ethics all seem to think), but some practical art of keeping men up to the mark in endeavoring to reform, or to make them remember it all day long, since “out of sight out of mind” is the devil’s greatest help with weak minds.

CHAPTER VI.

SUGGESTION AND INSTINCT.

    “Anima non nascitur sed fit,” ut ait.—­TERTULLIANUS.

“Post quam loquuti sumus de anima rationali, intellectuali (immortali) et quia ad inferiores descendimus jam gradus animae, scilicet animae mortalis quae animalium est.”  —­PETRUS GREGORIUS THOLOSANUS.

It must have struck many readers that the action of a mind under hypnotic influence, be it of another or of self, involves strange questions as regards Consciousness.  For it is very evident from recorded facts, that people can actually reason and act without waking consciousness, in a state of mind which resembles instinct, which is a kind of cerebration, or acting under habits and impressions supplied by memory and formed by practice, but not according to what we understand by Reason or Judgment.

All things in nature have their sleep or rest, night is the sleep of the world, death the repose of Nature or Life—­the solid temples, the great globe itself, dissolve to awaken again; so man hath in him, as it were, a company of workmen, some of whom labor by day, while others watch by night, during which time they, unseen, have their fantastic frolics known as dreams.  The Guardian or Master of the daily hours, appears in a great measure to conform his action closely to average duties of life, in accordance with those of all other men.  He picks out from the millions of images or ideas in the memory, uses and becomes familiar with a certain number, and lets the rest sleep.  This master or active agent is probably himself a Master-Idea—­the result of the correlative action of all the others, a kind of consensus made personal, an elected Queen Bee, as I have otherwise described him or her.

But he is not the only thinker—­there are all over the body ganglions which act by a kind of fluid instinct, born of repetition, and when the tired master even drowses or nods, or falls into a brown study, then a marvelously curious mental action begins to show itself, for dreams at once flicker and peer and steal dimly about him.  This is because the waking consciousness is beginning to shut out the world—­ and its set of ideas.