CHAPTER X
SUGGESTION
A GENTLEMAN remarked : " The psychologists write learn edly these days about * suggestion/ as if they had discovered something new. I have been making suggestions all my life." The humorous words, not untinged with sarcasm, have exactly as much point as if he had said : " The physi ologists write learnedly about digestion, as if they had dis covered something new, whereas I have been digesting food all my life." Processes, of course, must go on long before the science of them grows up. There were living organisms ages before there was any Biology; vegetation grew un counted ages before there was a Botany; men produced and exchanged goods for many centuries before a science of Economics was dreamed of. Critical reflection upon the on goings of nature and life arose after the world was old, and there are many regions yet into which the search-light of methodical observation has not been flashed. The scien tific study of suggestion as a distinct psychical process is comparatively recent. It is probable that the study of hypnosis and other kindred abnormal phenomena, so power fully attractive to the scientific attention, led to the analysis of the normal process of suggestion, just as in many other instances attention to the exceptional has awakened interest in the far more important facts which, because of their familiarity, escaped observation.
The word " suggestion " as used in popular speech is ex tremely indefinite in meaning. In popular parlance, " to suggest " is about the same as " to indicate," " to point out," " to call attention to." In this vague meaning suggestion is simply the bringing to the mind a presentation which in some way influences or modifies the current of thought;
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