Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 49.djvu/255

Rh without religion and without morality. Prof. Liégeois, of the Faculty of Law at Nancy, has published a study of the case, in which he endeavors to show that Mme. G was in all probability innocent, that Chambige hypnotized her in the parlor of her own home on the morning of the day of her murder, and then lured her to ruin and death by a posthypnotic suggestion. No one, I think, who is at all acquainted with the possibilities of suggestion will deny that Prof. Liégeois's interpretation is within the realm of possibility, and for my own part I am inclined to regard it as more probable than the tale told by Chambige. If the theory of suggestion had done no more than clear this young wife's memory from the stain cast upon it by her murderer, it would be worthy of serious consideration.

To sum up, I believe, with Prof. Delbœuf, that the danger from criminal suggestions, although real, is not much greater than that arising from criminal dreams. It is known that crimes have been committed by somnambulists as the result of the dreams which possess and control them, but we do not regard the fact as a reasonable ground of apprehension. We can not lay too much stress upon the fact that the phenomena of hypnotic suggestion, strange as they appear to the uninitiated, find their nearest normal analogues in those of sleep and dreams, and are subject to much the same limitations.



F every man considered it a matter of conscience to give voice in his vote to the feminine element in his household, it would put another aspect upon the demand for woman suffrage. If, after a family conclave, the husband, father, or brother quietly pocketed his own conflicting opinion, sallied forth and supported the measures favored by the home majority, what right-minded woman could complain? It would be merely an extension of the main principle of republican government. Only those women without male relatives would be unrepresented, and for them special provision could be made.

This hypothetical condition, however, is so far from fact that it sounds facetious, and the picture of a household wherein a gentle-minded man revises his sentiments to adequately set forth the contrary views of his womankind seems altogether Utopian, yet such a situation is one in which it might be justly claimed that men were the actual political representatives of women.

Some men there are, though rarissimœ aves, fair enough to 