The term “suggestion” has of late fallen into undeserved disrepute. To most people, as a result of its frequent linking with the term “hypnotism,” it implies something exceptional and weird. Yet in reality suggestion is one of the most universal of facts, and there is nothing “uncanny” about it. Properly defined it means nothing more than the intrusion of an idea into the mind in such fashion that it is accepted automatically, overcomes all contrary ideas, and leads to a specific course of action. The slightest reflection will show that this is of frequent occurrence.

Every time I yawn after having seen another person do so, I am acting on the suggestion given to me by his action. Every time, after reading a skilfully worded advertisement, I buy something which I do not really need, I am again acting under the influence of suggestion. So, too, when, in a moment of abstraction, I imitate any act perceived subconsciously, as in the amusing instance related by Professor Ochorowitz in his book, “Mental Suggestion”:

“My friend, P——, a man no less absent-minded than he is keen of intellect, was playing chess in a neighbouring room. Others of us were talking near the door. I had made the remark that it was my friend’s habit when he paid the closest attention to the game to whistle an air from ‘Madame Angot.’ I was about to accompany him by beating time on the table. But this time he whistled something else—a march from ‘Le ProphÈte.’

“‘Listen,’ said I to my associates, ‘we are going to play a trick upon P——. We will order him to pass from “Le ProphÈte” to “La Fille de Madame Angot.”’

“First I began to drum the march; then, profiting by some notes common to both, I passed to the quicker and more staccato notes of my friend’s favourite air. P—— on his part suddenly changed the air, and began to whistle ‘Madame Angot.’ Every one burst out laughing. My friend was too absorbed in a check to the queen to notice anything.

“‘Let us begin again,’ said I, ‘and go back to “Le ProphÈte.”’ And straightway we had Meyerbeer once more, with a special fugue. My friend knew that he had whistled something, but that was all he knew.”

Here, obviously, we have on the part of the man accepting and acting on the idea suggested to him, a temporary suspension of the critical faculty. Had he been on the alert, had he been aware of Professor Ochorowitz’s intention, he would never have followed the lead thus given, refraining from doing so if only from fear of appearing ridiculous. This element of uncritical, automatic acceptance is fundamental in suggestion, and it is this that makes suggestion such a tremendously important factor in the life of the young.

The child, it has often been said, is the most imitative of beings. This is only another way of saying that childhood is the most suggestible period of life. Precisely because the critical faculty is then undeveloped the child readily accepts and translates into some form of action the suggestions impinging on his mind from the external world. Necessarily some impressions are experienced by him more frequently than others, and by the very fact of repetition these tend to induce in him a more or less fixed mode of reaction. Thus, without the slightest awareness, he acquires good or bad “habits” of thinking and acting, and displays moods and tendencies which, often regarded by parents as quite inexplicable, are the logical and inevitable product of suggestions with which he has been bombarded since his life began.

In this way are to be explained many personal characteristics often mistakenly attributed to the influence of heredity. If a man is a “grouch,” and his young son also displays unmistakable signs of grouchiness, it would indeed be rash to jump to the conclusion that the son had been born grouchy. It may well be—the chances are, it is—that he has acquired a grouchy turn of mind simply through imitation of his father’s habitual attitude. “A little girl only fifteen months old,” to quote one observation by that careful student of child life, B. Perez, “had already begun to imitate her father’s frowns and irritable ways and angry voice, and very soon after she learned to use his expressions of anger and impatience. When three years old this child gravely said to a visitor, with whom she argued quite in her father’s style, ‘Do be quiet, will you? You never let me finish my sentences.’”

Similarly, peculiarities that seem to be wholly physical may thus be handed on from father to child—characteristic gestures with the hands, pursing of the mouth when reading, shrugging the shoulders, etc. Even left-handedness, often conspicuous as a family trait, is probably, in a certain proportion of cases at all events, the result of imitation rather than heredity. In one interesting case cited by Doctor Waldstein (“The Subconscious Self,” pp. 56–59), an English lady, Miss X——, had lost her mother when less than three years of age. A year afterward, during her first attempts at sewing, it was noticed that she was threading her needle with her left hand. This had been the habit of her mother, and Mrs. X—— herself continued throughout her life to use her left hand in threading needles, although she was otherwise right-handed.

“Surely,” said she to Doctor Waldstein, “this is an example of inheritance, for I could not have been taught to sew by my mother.”

When, however, he inquired closely into this lady’s mental make-up, he soon discovered that she was most impressionable, easily and unduly affected by her surroundings, full of prejudices, and given to sudden likes and dislikes. Manifestly, if in adult life she was so suggestible, she must have been even more suggestible in early childhood, and Doctor Waldstein promptly asked himself the question:

“Is it not more natural to assume that the mother’s habit of threading a needle with her left hand, witnessed daily during the first three years of childhood, left its effect upon the ductile memory of the child, so that she adopted the same habit in the absence of other teaching, than to assume a needle-threading centre on the right side of the brain of this particular individual?”

In view, then, of the extreme suggestibility of childhood, and in view of the fact that under ordinary circumstances the impressions most forcibly impinging on a child’s mind are those emanating from his parents, a good parental example is the first essential in utilising the power of suggestion as an aid in education. This may sound trite, but how many parents appreciate all that it involves?

It means the regulation of the whole family life with the special purpose of creating for the child a ceaseless flow of suggestions which, being subconsciously absorbed by him, will give a desirable “set” to his mind. Not merely in their dealings with the child but in their intercourse with one another, with all other members of the family, even with casual visitors, the father and mother will have to be constantly on the alert to manifest only those traits which they desire to see dominant in their little one. If they wish him to be courteous, they themselves must be courteous; if they wish him to grow up industrious, they must be models of enthusiastic industry; if they wish to develop in him sentiments of unselfishness, they must banish selfishness from their hearts.

In a word, they must think and behave as they desire him to think and behave, and, so far as is humanly possible, they must thus behave all the time. This of course necessitates considerable self-restraint and self-training on the parents’ part; but it is absolutely indispensable. The child’s eyes and ears are always wide open; his suggestibility is such that he is prone to absorb and react to any inconsistency of parental speech or behaviour, no matter how occasional or seemingly insignificant it may be. If the father, in a moment of irritation, eases his feelings by a vigorous expletive, the mother may be horrified next day when her little boy utters a strange-sounding word. If the mother, to avoid a tiresome caller, tells a “white lie” through the maid-servant who answers the caller’s ring, neither father nor mother need be astonished if their little girl unexpectedly displays a tendency to untruthfulness; it is not a manifestation of “innate depravity,” it is only another illustration of the power of suggestion to affect the growing child.

Even such a “small matter” as the discussion of the news of the day may become a potent factor for evil in the development of the child. There are not a few parents who, entirely unmindful of their children’s presence, retail to each other the petty chit-chat, the scandals, the deeds of violence and crime, which so many of our newspapers injudiciously “feature.” At the time the child may seem to be paying no heed to the parental discussion; but, if only because it is a discussion between his parents, it is certain to make a profound impression upon him, perhaps to the extent of prompting him to imitate the deeds in question. Hence, in his games, he plays pirate, bandit, train-robber; and sometimes runs away from home and “starts West,” to play bandit and train-robber in earnest. In this way, to the sorrowing parents’ amazement, seeds often are unwittingly sown to grow into poisonous plants.

No less mischievous is the discussion, in the child’s hearing, of such frequent subjects of conversation as the latest musical comedy or “problem play,” the “novel of the hour,” the fluctuations of the stock market, the new fashions in gowns, the fortunes of the local professional baseball team. Parents whose interests are thus lamentably limited, or who choose to talk about little else, need not be surprised if their child manifests a colossal indifference to things really worth while. For his sake, if not for their own, they should cultivate an intelligent interest in good books, good music, good art. Discussing these, they will just as surely enlarge his mental and moral horizon, as by discussing inferior themes they will limit it.

And—another point of prime importance—whatever they talk about, they should make it a practice to use only clear, correct language, and should insist on their child doing the same. Above all, they should not converse with him in “baby talk,” or permit any linguistic errors he may make to go uncorrected. They should not do this for several reasons, chief among which is the fact that an incorrect diction is itself a great obstacle to correct thinking.

“Language,” as one able student of human development, Doctor A. A. Berle, has recently pointed out in his valuable book for parents, “The School in the Home,” “is the tool of knowledge. It is the instrument by which we gain and garner information, by which we co-ordinate what we know and make inferences and express results. But if you blunt the tool, not to say destroy it, before you begin to use it, how are you ever to get knowledge in any proper or real sense? Everything depends upon this tool. The mastery of a proper use of the mother tongue is the first and last requisite of sound and extensive mental development. Language is the key to everything that pertains to human life. Once get a language and you have the key to manners, civilisation, habits, customs, history, and all the complex and fascinating story of humanity. Because you get all these things by reading about them, and to read you must know the language and you must know it accurately and extensively, and be able to follow the masters of it who have embodied their great ideas in literature. That process begins almost at the cradle. It begins by cultivating accuracy and skill in the use of the tongue. It begins by striking at, and out, every false thing, the moment it appears.”

And, commenting on the special dangers of “baby talk,” Doctor Berle justly observes:

“It is not enough that a word be spoken. It makes a great deal of difference how it is spoken. The proper vocalisation of words has an effect upon children, which is often, one may say generally, overlooked. Almost everybody is fond of repeating the baby’s efforts to talk, and ‘baby talk’ lingers in many homes an innocent but costly pleasure, for the parents and the children alike. There are many persons of mature age at this moment who will never pronounce certain words properly, since they became accustomed to a false pronunciation in childhood, because somebody thought it was ‘cute.’ There are many persons who will never get over certain false associations of ideas, because somebody thought it was very amusing and funny to see the child mixing up things in such a beautifully childlike way.”

Putting into practice this first principle of education through the suggestive power of a parental example characterised by correctness of speech, soundness of thought, and the moral qualities of cheerfulness, unselfishness, kindness, politeness, industriousness, and the other virtues, the greatest care must also be taken to “fertilise” the child’s mind through proper adjustment of his physical surroundings. Nothing is more certain—and least appreciated by the average parent—than the fact that every detail in the child’s material environment is of suggestive significance to him. Even the pictures on the walls of his room, the design and arrangement of the furniture and ornaments, the pattern and colouring of the wall-paper, may play a decisive part in shaping his character and quickening or deadening his intellectual activities. For the matter of that, as observation and experiment have repeatedly demonstrated, adults almost as much as children react to the suggestive influence of their home environment, even to the extent at times of thereby being unfavourably affected in health.

That is why sick people are so frequently benefited by change of scene. Travel removes them from the baneful influence of their accustomed environment, and assists in breaking down the mental habits injurious to their well-being. Too often, however, to their bitter disappointment, they suffer a relapse after returning home. Yet they need not remain abroad indefinitely in order to obtain a lasting cure. In many instances they need not go abroad at all, but can secure the desired result by making a change in their home surroundings. A most instructive case in point is afforded by an experience that occurred to Mr. Frank Alvah Parsons, a practical psychologist as well as a successful teacher of art in New York city.

The mother of one of Mr. Parsons’ pupils had long been regarded as a hopeless sufferer from “nerves.” She lived in a suburban town, not many miles from New York, but her condition was such that it had been months since she visited that city, and usually she remained at home, secluded in a private apartment, of sitting-room and bedroom.

One day, having occasion to call on her, Mr. Parsons was much impressed with the fact that the furniture and decorations of both these rooms were exceedingly faulty from a psychological as well as an Æsthetic point of view. The walls of the sitting-room were hung with mirrors, and the room was fairly smothered with bric-a-brac. In both rooms the colouring and design of the wall-paper contrasted harshly with the floor-coverings, while the furniture, though expensive, was gaudy and inharmonious. He talked the situation over with her daughter, and between them they persuaded her to allow them to make radical alterations in the furnishings of her rooms.

They papered the walls with a soft sage-green paper, without design. The woodwork was made lighter, with a shade of green in it. A brass bedstead was installed, the yellow of the brass blending well with the green of the paper and woodwork. The bric-a-brac was unceremoniously bundled out, and, excepting for a few green draperies and some well-chosen pictures, the rooms were left without ornament. Mahogany furniture, of a quiet, dignified style, replaced the gilded chairs and tables previously there.

The effect was to substitute for the former nerve-irritating environment one that gave out a constant stream of restful, soothing, strengthening suggestions; and the therapeutic value of the change was increased by Mr. Parsons wisely insisting that the patient should not leave the refurnished rooms for two weeks. He desired to expose her, at once and systematically, to the full suggestive effect of her new surroundings. At the end of a month, although she had been told that she would be an invalid for life, she felt strong enough to undertake a shopping expedition to New York, and soon was as well as in her earlier days of robust health.

In this case, of course, the cure was effected at a cost beyond the means of most people. It is not everybody who can afford to refurnish and redecorate his living-quarters. But the point is that everybody can so arrange his environment to begin with as to extract from it suggestions that will assist in maintaining his health and happiness, and in promoting the proper upbringing of his children. This is equally within the reach of a dweller in a Fifth Avenue mansion, a Newport palace, a crowded East Side tenement, or a lonely, isolated farm-house, miles from the nearest village. I might cite many illustrative instances to bear out this statement. Here is one, reported by an observant New York physician:

“The refined tastes and joyous dispositions of the elder children in a family with whom I often came into contact were a matter of some surprise to me, as I could not account for the common trait among them by the position or special characteristics of the parents: they were in the humblest position socially, and all but poor. My first visit to their modest home furnished me with the natural solution, and gave me much food for reflection.

“The children—there were six—occupied two rooms into which the sunlight was pouring as I entered; the remaining rooms of the apartment were sunless for the greater part of the day; the colour and design of the cheap wall-paper were cheerful and unobtrusive; bits of carpet, the table-cover, and the coverlets on the beds were all in harmony, and of quiet design in nearly the elementary colours; everything in these poor rooms of poor people had been chosen with the truest judgment for Æsthetic effect, and yet the mother seemed surprised that I could make so much of what seemed to her so simple.”

That colours have a profound psychological effect on human beings is a fact which should be appreciated far more generally than is now the case. Used in small quantities, either in the clothing or in household decoration, the colour red, for instance, is most stimulating, both in the way of helping to overcome depression, and quickening the intellectual processes. But when used in any great amount it tends to over-stimulation, with resultant nerve-strain. According to an English savant, Havelock Ellis, who has made a careful study of the psychology of colours, there are some people so constituted that they become violently excited, fall into convulsions, or faint, if obliged even for a short time to look at anything vividly red.

The same effect has been noted from yellow. In one instance, the case of a man operated on at the age of thirty for congenital cataract, it is recorded that “the first time he saw yellow, he became so sick that he thought he would vomit.” And that yellow has a nerve-stimulating effect fully comparable with that of red is curiously indicated by the statement of a friend of mine, a professor in a Western university, who says:

“Whenever the day is overcast, or I have to do a piece of work calling for unusual mental exertion, I always wear a red or yellow necktie. I find that either colour has a stimulating effect on my mental processes.”

On the other hand, the colour violet appears to have a deadening effect. Another acquaintance, a member of the Harvard University professorial staff, and a well-known psychologist, assures me that the sight of anything violet almost nauseates him, and gives rise to a most depressed feeling. In such a case, however, it may be that the colour is subconsciously associated with some unpleasant occurrence in the earlier life, and that the nausea and depression are merely symbolical manifestations of the presence in the subconsciousness of some memory of this occurrence, concerning which there is no conscious recollection. (This important point will later be discussed in detail.)

Of more immediate significance is the fact that violet rays are sometimes used to quiet unruly patients in asylums for the insane, and that the alienist Osburne, after many years’ experience, testifies that “in the absence of structural disease, violet light—for from three to six hours—is most useful in the treatment of excitement, sleeplessness, and acute mania.”

Altogether, there is warrant for the assertion that red, yellow, and violet are colours that should not be used overmuch, either in one’s apparel or in the decorating of one’s home. Blue, green, grey, and brown, on the contrary, have psychological qualities that make them particularly desirable for decorative purposes.

Care must always be exercised, though, to work out a colour scheme that harmonises, since discordant colour effects inevitably carry to the mind suggestions of discordant thinking and feeling and doing. As a first aid to the study of colour harmony—a subject which, as soon as its significance to human welfare is more generally recognised, will be taught far more systematically than at present—I recommend painstaking observation of the colour schemes developed by master artists, as shown in the paintings to be seen in the art museums of our cities; or, better still, excursions into the country, where, in the colour combinations of earth and sky, tree and water, mountainside and valley meadow, one can gain invaluable hints from that greatest of artists, Nature. On such excursions, need I add, the children should be taken along, to receive early lessons in the appreciation of true beauty.

But now, while thus utilising to the full the educational possibilities opened by the suggestibility of childhood—while reinforcing the educational value of example by the educational value of a well-arranged home environment—it must also be recognised that the child’s extreme suggestibility carries with it certain dangers. As was said, the essential element in every successful suggestion is the automatic, uncritical acceptance of whatever idea is thus intruded into the mind. It goes without saying that, so long as the critical faculty remains unawakened and untrained, it will always be possible to intrude by suggestion erroneous as well as sound ideas.

More serious still, there is warrant for adding that unless the child’s critical powers be developed at an early age—unless he be taught from the outset of his life how to observe accurately and reason closely—the tendency to uncritical acceptance may become more or less of a habit. That, under present conditions of child training, this is a real danger is clearly shown by the results of recent experiments by French and German psychologists.

In Germany, Kosog, visiting a school-room before the beginning of the lesson-hour, placed three objects, a pen-holder, a pocket-knife, and a piece of chalk, so near the edge of the teacher’s desk that they could be plainly seen by every pupil in the room. During the brief recess that followed the first lesson-hour, he removed these objects, and after the pupils had reassembled asked them what they had seen on the desk the previous hour. Hardly one of them, it turned out, had noticed the objects at all. Next day, after leaving the desk entirely bare the first hour, he put the same question to them at the beginning of the second hour. Now 26 per cent. of the pupils asserted that they had seen the pocket-knife, 57 per cent. the chalk, and 63 per cent. the pen-holder.

In France, the headmaster of a school, following the instructions of the famous psychologist, Alfred Binet, announced to a class of eighty-six boys that he intended to test their memory of the length of lines. A line two inches long, ruled on white cardboard, was shown to each boy, who, after looking at it, had to draw it as accurately as he could on a sheet of paper. The boys were then told that they would be asked to draw another line a little longer than the first, and were accordingly given a second line to copy. In reality it was shorter than the first, being only an inch and three quarters long. Yet out of the entire class only nine resisted the suggestion and believed their eyes and their memories rather than the master’s statement. The other seventy-seven boys—some of whom were fourteen years old—made the second line longer than the first.

A variation of the same experiment was made on another class, to whom a series of thirty-six lines was shown, one after the other. Of these lines the first five progressively increased in length, while the remainder were uniformly long. Not one of the forty-two boys who were asked to copy them reached the maximum length at the fifth line, while nine industriously continued making their lines longer up to the last line shown them. The first five lines, that is to say, had acted as a suggestion having sufficient force to induce in them, despite the evidence of their eyes, a belief that the entire series similarly increased in length.

Much the same thing, as everyday observation shows, occurs in the case of full-grown men and women. The judicious have long grieved at the gullibility with which people who are by no means illiterate and uneducated accept and act upon the most preposterous suggestions of the fraudulent advertiser, from the patent-medicine man to the swindling promoter. Political mountebanks and charlatans daily ride into power through nothing else than skilfully working on the suggestibility of the voters. So, too, religious cults, no matter how fantastic, gain a foothold and a following. “I am Elijah,” some one announces, and straightway a multitude proclaim him Elijah. “There is no such thing as disease,” says another, and thousands take up the cry, accepting the absurd suggestion with as much unthinking readiness as was shown by the French boys who, although they had concrete evidence to the contrary, accepted their master’s deceptive statements.

What these, and even more glaring evidences of undue suggestibility, really mean is that there is something wrong with our educational methods. Appreciating this, there is an increasing tendency to criticise and condemn the school system. “Our common schools,” exclaims President Emeritus Charles W. Eliot, of Harvard University, “have failed signally to cultivate general intelligence, as is evinced by the failure to deal adequately with the liquor problem, by the prevalence of gambling, of strikes accompanied by violence, and by the persistency of the spoils system.” From the standpoint also of mere efficiency much complaint is made. The charge is even heard that the public schools of to-day make for mediocrity, and that instead of fostering they in reality retard the development of a child’s intellect. In the words of a recent critic (The Psychological Clinic, vol. iv., p. 141):

“The public school attempts the impossible feat of making a course for all children, irrespective of strength, mentality, inheritance, or home environment—whether they are to be lawyers or blacksmiths, artisans or mathematicians. Plainly, this course cannot suit all children. Is it, then, adapted to the bright child? Doctor Witmer, Professor of Psychology in the University of Pennsylvania, says, ‘The public schools are not giving the bright child a square deal. He is marking time, waiting for the lame duck to catch up.’ Is the course intended to fit the dull pupil? Evidently not, in view of the tears shed by the many who, despite their efforts, fail to keep up to grade.

“It has been suggested that the course has been designed for the average pupil. The ‘average’ pupil does not exist. You cannot strike an average between a goose and an eagle, nor can you add a dull pupil and a bright pupil together and get anything. A course of study based on this idea is not fitted to any one. Instead, then, of a school to fit the pupil, the pupil is made to fit the school. The lock-step masquerades under the name of discipline. The rigid curriculum tends with each passing year to produce more and more the type of factory employÉs, obliterating individuality and forcing all into the same mould.”

That there is a large measure of truth in these criticisms cannot be denied, and our school authorities to-day are bestirring themselves to effect sundry greatly needed reforms. But is it wholly fair to cast on the schools the blame for human irrationalities of thought and conduct? Nay, is it not possible, in view of the fact that habits are formed so early in life, that the real trouble may be that the material with which the schools have to work—the children of the nation—is more or less unworkable by the time it gets to the schools? Is it not reasonable to assume that neglect of proper instruction in the pre-school period has permitted the formation of faulty and well-nigh unchangeable modes of thinking and feeling?

“But,” I hear a puzzled parent protest, “do you mean that the formal education of the child should be begun before he has reached school age? Would you have us lay on the tender mind the burden of actual study?”

I mean precisely that. Not only do I believe that the postponement of formal education to “school age” is a serious pedagogical error, but I also believe that “actual study,” properly directed, would by no means prove such a “burden” on the mind of the child as most people take for granted.

I am willing to go further than this, and to contend, for reasons which I shall endeavour to make clear, that if the formal education of children were begun earlier than is the rule at present, and if it were carried out with the supplementary aid of education through a really good example and a really well arranged environment, our boys and girls would develop not only into morally superior men and women, but also into men and women of mental attainments fairly comparable with those to-day displayed by the comparative few acclaimed as men and women of “genius.”