When I reflect on what I once endured from this cause, and how greatly it could have been relieved or alleviated, I feel as if I could beg, with all my heart, every student or teacher of youth to seriously experiment on what I set forth in this book. It is also to be observed, especially by metaphysicians and mental philosophers, that a youth who has shown great indiffer-ence to, let us say mathematics, if he has manifested an aptitude for philosophy or languages, will be in all cases certain to excel in the former, if he can be brought to make a good beginning in it. A great many cases of bad, i.e., indifferent scholarship, are due to bad teaching of the rudiments by adults who took no interest in their pupils, and therefore inspired none.

To determine what course to follow in any Emergency. Many a man often wishes with all his heart that he had some wise friend to consult in his perplexities. What to do in a business trouble when we are certain that there is an exit if we could only find it - a sure way to tame an unruly horse if we had the secret - to do or not to do whatever the question - truly all this causes great trouble in life. But, it is within the power of man to be his own friend, yes and companion, to a degree of which none have ever dreamed, and which borders on the weird, or that which fore-bodes or suggests mysteries to come. For it may come to pass that he who has trained himself to it, may commune with his spirit as with a companion.

This is, of course, done by just setting the problem, or question, or dilemma, before ourselves as clearly as we can, so as to know our own minds as well as possible. This done, sleep on it, with the resolute will to have it recur on the morrow in a clear and solved form. And should this occur, do not proceed to pull it to pieces again, by way of improvement, but rather submit it to another night's rest. I would here say that many lawyers and judges are perfectly familiar with this process, and use it habitually, without being aware of its connection with hypnotism or will. But they could aid it, if they would add this peculiar impulse to the action.

What I will now discuss approaches the miraculous, or seems to do so because it has been attempted or treated in manifold ways by sorcerers and witches. The Voodoos, or black wizards in America, profess to be able to awaken love in one person for another by means of incantations, but admit that it is the most difficult of their feats. Nor do I think that there is any infallible recipe for it, but that there are means of honestly aiding such affection can hardly be denied. In the first place, he who would be loved must love - for that is no honest love which is not sincere. And having thus inspired himself, and made himself as familiar as possible, by quietly observing as dispassionately as may be all the mental characteristics of the one loved, let him with an earnest desire to know how to secure a return, go to sleep, and see whether the next day will bring a suggestion. And as the old proverb declares that luck comes to many when least hoped for, so will it often happen that forethought is thus fore-bought or secured.

It is known that gifts pass between friends or lovers, to cause the receiver to think of the giver, thus they are in a sense amulets. If we believe, as Heine prettily suggests, that something of the life or the being of the owner or wearer has passed into the talisman, we are not far off from the suggestion that our feelings are allied. All over Italy, or over the world, pebbles of precious stone, flint or amber, rough topaz or agate, are esteemed as lucky: all things of the kind lead to suggestiveness, and may be employed in hypnotism.

What was originally known as Fascination, of which the German Fromann wrote a very large volume which I possess, is simply Hypnotism without the putting to sleep. It is direct suggestion. Where there is a natural sympathy of like to like, soul answering soul, such Suggestion is easily established. Among people of a common, average, worldly type who are habitually sarcastic, jeering, chaffing, and trifling, or those whose idea of genial or agreeable companionship is to "get a rise" out of all who will give and take irritations equally, there can be no sympathy of gentle or refined emotions. Experiments, whose whole nature presupposes earnest thought, cannot be tried with any success by those who live habitually in an atmosphere of small talk and "rubbishy" associations.

Fascination should be mutual; to attempt to exert it on anyone who is not naturally in sympathy is a crime, and I believe that all such cases lead to suffering and remorse.

But where we perceive that there is an undoubted mutual liking and good reason for it, fascination, when perfectly understood and sympathetically used, facilitates and increases love and friendship, and may be most worthily and advantageously employed. But to anyone who could for example merely skim over all that I have written, catching an idea here and there, and then expect to master all, I can clearly say that I can give him or her no definite idea of fascination. For Fascination realty is effectively what the old philosophers, who had given immense study and research to the subject in ages when susceptibility to suggestiveness went far beyond anything now known, all knew and declared; that is to say, it existed, but that it required a peculiar mind, and very certainly one which is not frivolous, to understand its nature, and much more to master it.

He who has by foresight, or previous consideration of a subject or desire, allied to a vigorous resolution (which is a kind of projection of the mind by will - and then submitting it to sleep), learned how to bring about a wished-for state of mind, has, in a curious manner, made as it were of his hidden self a conquest yet a friend. He has brought to life within himself a Spirit, gifted with greater powers than those possessed by Conscious Intellect. By his astonishing and unsuspected latent power, Man can imagine and then create, even a spirit within the soul. We make at first the sketch, then model it in clay, then cast it in gypsum, and finally sculpture it in marble.