THE POWER OF SUGGESTION
When plate-glass windows first came into use, Rogers, the poet, took a
severe cold by sitting with his back to what he supposed was an open
window in a dining-room but which was really plate-glass. All the time
he was eating he imagined he was taking cold, but he did not dare ask
to have the window closed.
We little realize how much suggestion has to do with health. In
innumerable instances people have been made seriously ill, sometimes
fatally so, by others telling them how badly they looked, or suggesting
that they had inherited some fatal disease.
A prominent New York business man recently told me of an experiment
which the friends of a robust young man made upon him. It was arranged
that, beginning in the morning, each one should tell him, when he came
to work, that he was not looking well, and ask him what the trouble
was. They were to say it in a way that would not arouse his
suspicions, and note the result. At one o'clock this vigorous young
man had been so influenced by the suggestion that he quit work and went
home, saying that he was sick.
There have been many interesting experiments in the Paris hospitals
upon patients in a hypnotic trance, wounds being inflicted by mental
suggestion. While a cold poker was laid across their limbs, for
example, the subjects were told that they were being seared with a
red-hot iron, and immediately the flesh would have the appearance of
being severely burned.
I have known patients to collapse completely at the sight of surgical
instruments in the operating room. I have heard them say that they
could actually feel the cutting of the knife long before they took the
anesthetic.
Patients are often put to sleep by the injection into their arms of a
weak solution of salt and water, which they are led to think is
morphia. Every physician of large experience knows that he can relieve
or produce pain simply by suggestion.
Many a physician sends patients to some famous resort not so much for
the waters or the air as for the miracle which the complete change of
thought effects.
Even quacks and charlatans are able, by stimulating the hope of those
who are sick, to produce marvelous cures.
The mental attitude of the nurse has much to do with the recovery of a
sick person. If she holds the constant suggestion that the patient
will recover; if she stoutly affirms it, it will be a wonderful
rallying help to the forces which make for life. If, on the other
hand, she holds the conviction that he is going to die, she will
communicate her belief, and this will consequently depress the patient.
We are under the influence of suggestion every moment of our waking
lives. Everything we see, hear, feel, is a suggestion which produces a
result corresponding to its own nature. Its subtle power seems to
reach and affect the very springs of life.
The power of suggestion on expectant minds is often little less than
miraculous. An invalid with a disappointed ambition, who thinks he has
been robbed of his chances in life and who has suffered for years,
becomes all wrought up over some new remedy which is advertised to do
marvels. He is in such an expectant state of mind that he is willing
to make almost any sacrifice to obtain the wonderful remedy; and when
he receives it, he is in such a receptive mood that he responds
quickly, and thinks it is the medicine which has worked the magic.
Faith in one's physician is a powerful curative suggestion. Many
patients, especially those who are ignorant, believe that the physician
holds the keys of life and death. They have such implicit confidence
in him that what he tells them has powerful influence upon them for
good or ill.
The possibilities of healing power in the affirmative suggestion that
the patient is going to get well are tremendous. The coming physician
will constantly reassure his patient verbally, often vehemently, that
he is absolutely bound to recover; he will tell him that there is an
omnipotent healing power within him, and that he gets a hint of this in
the power which heals a wound, and which refreshes, renews, and
recreates him during sleep.
It is almost impossible for a patient to get well while people are
constantly reminding him how ill he looks. His will-power together
with all his physical recuperative forces could not counteract the
effect of the reiteration of the sick suggestion.
Many a sick-room is made a chamber of horrors because of the depressing
suggestion which pervades it. Instead of being filled with sunshine,
good cheer, and encouragement, it is often darkened, God's beautiful
sunshine shut out; ventilation is poor; everybody has a sad, anxious
face; medicine bottles and surgical apparatus are spread about;
everything is calculated to engender disease rather than to encourage
health and inspire hope. Why, there is enough depressing suggestion in
such a place to make a perfectly well person ill!
What people need is encouragement, uplift, hope. Their natural
resisting powers should be strengthened and developed. Instead of
telling a friend in trouble, despair, or suffering that you feel very
sorry for him, try to pull him out of his slough of despond, to arouse
the latent recuperative, restorative energies within him. Picture to
him his God image, his better self, which, because it is a part of the
great immortal principle, is never sick and never out of harmony, can
never be discordant or suffer.
Right suggestion would prevent a great majority of our divorces. Great
infatuation for another has been overcome by suggestion in numerous
instances. Many women have been thus cured of a foolish love for
impossible men, as in the case of girls who have become completely
infatuated with the husband of a friend. Fallen women have been
entirely reclaimed, have been brought to see their better, finer,
diviner selves through the power of suggestion.
The suggestion which comes from a sweet, beautiful, charming character
is contagious and sometimes revolutionizes a whole neighborhood. We
all know how the suggestion of heroic deeds, great records, has aroused
the ambitions and stirred the energies of others to do likewise. Many
a life has turned upon a few moments' conversation, upon a little
encouragement, upon the suggestion of an inspiring book.
Many men who have made their impress upon history, who have left
civilization a little higher, accomplished what they did largely
because their ambition was aroused by suggestion; some book or some
individual gave them the first glimpse of their possibility and enabled
them to feel for the first time a thrill of the power within them.
The suggestion of inferiority is one of the most difficult to overcome.
Who can ever estimate the damage to humanity and the lives wrecked
through it! I know men whose whole careers have been practically
ruined through the constant suggestion, while they were children, that
they would never amount to anything.
This suggestion of inferiority has made them so timid and shy and so
uncertain of themselves that they have never been able to assert their
individuality.
I knew a college student whose rank in his class entitled him to the
highest recognition, whose life was nearly ruined by suggestion; he
overheard some of his classmates say that he had no more dignity than a
goose, and always made a very poor appearance; that under no
circumstances would they think of electing him as class orator, because
he would make such an unfortunate impression upon an audience. He had
unusual ability, but his extreme diffidence, timidity, shyness, made
him appear awkward and sometimes almost foolish,--all of which he would
undoubtedly have overgrown, had he not overheard the criticism of his
classmates. He thought it meant that he was mentally inferior, and
this belief kept him back ever after.
What a subtle power there is in the suggestion of the human voice!
What emotions are aroused in us by its different modulations! How we
laugh and cry, become indignant, revengeful, our feelings leaping from
one extreme to the other, according to the passion-freighted or
love-freighted words which reach our ear; how we sit spell-bound, with
bated breath, before the great orator who is playing upon the emotions
of his audience, as a musician plays upon the strings of his harp, now
bringing out tears, now smiles, now pathos, now indignation! The power
of his word-painting makes a wonderful impression. A thousand
listeners respond to whatever he suggests.
The voice is a great betrayer of our feelings and emotions. It is
tender when conveying love to our friends; cold, selfish, and without a
particle of sympathy during business transactions when we are trying to
get the best of a bargain.
How we are attracted by a gentle voice, and repulsed by one that is
harsh! We all know how susceptible even dogs and horses are to the
different modulations of the human voice. They know the tone of
affection; they are reassured and respond to it. But they are
stricken with fear and trembling at the profanity of the master's rage.
Some natures are powerfully affected by certain musical strains; they
are immediately lifted out of the deepest depression and despondency
into ecstasy. Nothing has touched them; they have just merely felt a
sensation through the auditory nerve which aroused and awakened into
activity certain brain cells and changed their whole mental attitude.
Music has a decided influence upon the blood pressure in the arteries,
and upon the respiration. We all know how it soothes, refreshes, and
rests us when jaded and worried. When its sweet harmonies fill the
soul, all cares, worries, and anxieties fly away.
George Eliot, in "The Mill on the Floss," gives voice to what some of
us have often, doubtless, felt, when under its magic spell. "Certain
strains of music," she says, "affect me so strangely that I can never
hear them without changing my whole attitude of mind for a time, and if
the effect would last, I might be capable of heroism."
Latimer, Ridley, and hundreds of others went to the stake actually
rejoicing, the spectators wondering at the smile of ineffable peace
which illumined their faces above the fierce glare of the flames, at
the hymns of praise and thanksgiving heard amid the roar of crackling
fagots.
"No, we don't get sick," said an actor, "because we can't get sick.
Patti and a few other stars could afford that luxury, but to the
majority of us it is denied. It is a case of 'must' with us; and
although there have been times when, had I been at home, or a private
man, I could have taken to my bed with as good a right to be sick as
any one ever had, I have not done so, and have worn off the attack
through sheer necessity. It's no fiction that will power is the best
of tonics, and theatrical people understand that they must keep a good
stock of it always on hand."
A tight-rope walker was so ill with lumbago that he could scarcely
move. But when he was advertised to appear, he summoned all his will
power, and traversed the rope several times with a wheelbarrow,
according to the program. When through he doubled up and had to be
carried to his bed, "as stiff as a frozen frog."
Somewhere I have read a story of a poor fellow who went to hang
himself, but finding by chance a pot of money, he flung away the rope
and went hurriedly home. He who hid the gold, when he missed it,
hanged himself with the rope which the other man had left. Success is
a great tonic, and failure a great depressant.
The successful attainment of what the heart longs for, as a rule,
improves health and happiness. Generally we not only find our treasure
where our heart is, but our health also. Who has not noticed men of
indifferent health, perhaps even invalids, and men who lacked energy
and determination, suddenly become roused to a realization of
unthought-of powers and unexpected health upon attaining some signal
success? The same is sometimes true of persons in poor health who have
suddenly been thrown into responsible positions by death of parents or
relatives, or who, upon sudden loss of property, have been forced to do
what they had thought impossible before.
An education is a health tonic. Delicate boys and girls, whom parents
and friends thought entirely too slender to bear the strain, often
improve in health in school and college. Other things equal,
intelligent, cultured, educated people enjoy the best health. There is
for the same reason a very intimate relation between health and morals.
A house divided against itself can not stand. Intemperance, violation
of chastity, and vice of all kinds are discordant notes in the human
economy which tend to destroy the great harmony of life. The body is
but a servant of the mind. A well-balanced, cultured, and
well-disciplined intellect reacts very powerfully upon the physique,
and tends to bring it into harmony with itself. On the other hand, a
weak, vacillating, one-sided, unsteady, and ignorant mind will
ultimately bring the body into sympathy with it. Every pure and
uplifting thought, every noble aspiration for the good and the true,
every longing of the heart for a higher and better life, every lofty
purpose and unselfish endeavor, reacts upon the body, makes it
stronger, more harmonious, and more beautiful.
"As a man thinketh in his heart, so is he." The body is molded and
fashioned by the thought. If a young woman were to try to make herself
beautiful, she would not begin by contemplating ugliness, or dwelling
upon the monstrosities of vice, for their hideous images would be
reproduced in her own face and manners. Nor would she try to make
herself graceful by practising awkwardness. We can never gain health
by contemplating disease any more than we can reach perfection by
dwelling upon imperfection, or harmony through discord.
We should _keep a high ideal of health and harmony constantly before
the mind_; and we should fight every discordant thought and every enemy
of harmony as we would fight a temptation to crime. _Never affirm or
repeat about your health what you do not wish to be true_. Do not
dwell upon your ailments nor study your symptoms. Never allow yourself
to think that you are not complete master of yourself. Stoutly affirm
your own superiority over bodily ills, and do not acknowledge yourself
the slave of an inferior power.
The mind has undoubted power to preserve and sustain physical youth and
beauty, to keep the body strong and healthy, to renew life, and to
preserve it from decay, many years longer than it does now. The
longest lived men and women have, as a rule, been those who have
attained great mental and moral development. They have lived in the
upper region of a higher life, beyond the reach of much of the jar, the
friction, and the discords which weaken and shatter most lives.
Many nervous diseases have been cured by music, while others have been
greatly retarded in their development by it. Anything which keeps the
mind off our troubles tends to restore harmony throughout the body.
It is a great thing to form a habit, acquire a reputation, of always
talking up and never down, of seeing good things and never bad, of
encouraging and never discouraging, and of always being optimistic
about everything.
"Send forth loving, stainless, and happy thoughts, and blessings will
flow into your hands; send forth hateful, impure, and unhappy thoughts,
and curses will rain down upon you and fear and unrest will wait upon
your pillow."
There is no one principle that is abused to-day in the business world
more than the law of suggestion. Everywhere in this country we see the
pathetic victims of those who make a business of overpowering and
controlling weaker minds. Thus is suggestion carried even to the point
of hypnotism as is illustrated by unscrupulous salesmen and promoters.
If a person steals the property of another he is imprisoned, but if he
hypnotizes his victim by projecting his own strong trained thought into
the innocent, untrained, unsuspecting victim's mind, overcomes his
objections, and induces him voluntarily to buy the thing he does not
want and can not afford to buy, perhaps impoverishing himself for years
so that he and his family suffer for the necessities of life, no law
can stop him. It would be better and should be considered less
criminal for a man to go into a home and steal articles of value than
to overpower the minds of the heads of poor families and hypnotize them
into signing contracts for what they have really no right and are not
able to buy.
Solicitors often command big salaries because of their wonderful
personal magnetism and great powers of persuasion. The time will come
when many of these "marvelous persuaders," with long heads cunningly
trained, traveling about the country, hypnotizing their subjects and
robbing them of their hard-earned money, will be regarded as criminals.
On the other hand, suggestion is used for practical good in business
life.
It is now a common practise in many concerns to put in the hands of
their employees inspiring books and to republish in pamphlet form
special articles from magazines and periodicals which are calculated to
stir the employees to new endeavor, to arouse them to greater action
and make them more ambitious to do bigger things. Schools of
salesmanship are using very extensively the psychology of business and
are giving all sorts of illustrations which will spur men to greater
efficiency.
The up-to-date merchant shows his knowledge of the power of suggestion
for customers by his fascinating show-windows and display of
merchandise.
The restaurant keeper knows the power of suggestion of delicious viands
upon the appetite, and we often see tempting dishes and articles of
food displayed in the window or in the restaurant where the eye will
carry the magic suggestion to the brain.
A person who has been reared in luxury and refinement would be so
affected by the suggestion of uncleanliness and disorderliness in a
cheap Bowery eating-place that he would lose the keenest appetite. If,
however, the same food, cooked in the same way, could be transferred to
one of the luxurious Broadway restaurants and served upon delicate
china and spotless linen with entrancing music, the entire condition
would be reversed. The new suggestion would completely reverse the
mental and physical conditions.
The suggestion of the ugly suspicions of a whole nation so overpowered
Dreyfus during his trial that it completely neutralized his
individuality, overbalanced his consciousness of innocence. His whole
manner was that of a guilty person, so that many of his friends
actually believed him guilty. After the verdict, in the presence of a
vast throng which had gathered to see him publicly disgraced, when his
buttons and other insignia of office were torn from his uniform, his
sword taken from him and broken, and the people were hissing, jeering,
and hurling all sorts of anathemas at him, no criminal could have
exhibited more evidence of guilt. The radiations of the guilty
suggestion from millions of people completely over-powered his own
mentality, his individuality, and, although he was absolutely innocent,
his appearance and manner gave every evidence of the treason he was
accused of.
There is no suggestion so fatal, so insinuating, as that of impurity.
Vast multitudes of people have fallen victims to this vicious, subtle,
fatal poison.
Who can depict the tragedies which have been caused by immoral, impure
suggestion conveyed to minds which were absolutely pure, which have
never before felt the taint of contamination? The subtle poisoning
infused through the system makes the entrance of the succeeding vicious
suggestions easier and easier, until finally the whole moral system
becomes saturated with the poison.
There is a wonderful illustration of the power of suggestion in the
experience of what are called the Stigmatists. These nuns who for
years concentrated all of their efforts in trying to live the life that
Christ did, to enter into all of His sufferings, so completely
concentrated all of their energies upon the Christ suffering, and so
vividly pictured the wounds in their imaginations, that their thought
really changed the chemical and physical structure of the tissues and
they actually reproduced the nail marks in the hands and feet and the
spear wound as in the side of the crucified Christ.
These nuns devoted their lives to this reproduction of the physical
evidences of the crucifixion. The fixing of the mind for a long period
of time upon the wounds of the hands, feet, and the side, were so
vivid, so concentrated, that the picture was made real in their own
flesh. In addition to the mental picturing, they kept constantly
before them the physical picture of the crucified Christ, which made
their mental picture all the more vivid and concentrated. The
religious ecstasy was so intense that they could actually see Christ
being crucified, and this mental attitude was outpictured in the flesh.