Page:Occult Japan - Lovell.djvu/371

Rh these secondary ones as easily stirred by the first as they would be in normal life. The brain cells are all abnormally torpid. In consequence, as the motion passes along them very little side action is roused, and, as it is the ramifying side-thoughts that make comparison possible and constitute judgment, the hypnotic subject sees no incongruity in his actions and performs each with a self-abandonment to it that insures a perfection of performance unattainable in his complex normal state of mind.

The force of the habitual ideas makes itself felt by hindering and even preventing the performance of a suggested idea that conflicts with the subject's character. Indeed, other things equal, the grooves of temperament are followed by the train of thought. Less force is necessary to set them in motion. Not only is the subject's action under a suggested idea in keeping with his character, but it is impossible to get him to do things which are abhorrent to it. To induce a subject who is not essentially depraved to commit murder, for example, is practically beyond even the operator's power.