So much for the primary facts: what, now, of the ‘operator’? Well, it is quite possible to hypnotise oneself, just as it is quite possible to put oneself to sleep by counting sheep or listening to an imaginary rain. One has only to _mean_ or _intend_ to oneself that the hypnotic state is coming, and—if there is no interruption—it will presently come; self-suggestion or autosuggestion may be as effective as the suggestion of an operator. For _in every case the influence that the operator has over the subject is an influence given him by the subject_; the immediate conditions of hypnosis lie in the subject himself, and not in the personality of some other man. The professional operator has, it is true, two advantages. He asserts emphatically that he ‘can hypnotise’; he advertises; and we tend to believe emphatic and repeated statements, however groundless they may really be; so that we are likely to give him an influence over us before we have even seen him. Secondly, the operator knows, from long experience with hypnotised subjects, how the individual shall most readily be brought into the hypnotic state, how (that is) his complete attention may be secured and directed: whether by coaxing or by bullying, whether by strokes of the hand that suggest a gradual flow of power or by a smart blow on the back of the neck that produces a momentary helplessness and confusion. _All the ‘methods’ of hypnotising are so many tricks to bring about a state of undivided attention and a corresponding suggestibility in the subject._ So the operator has genuine advantages, but they are advantages that might be secured by anyone who took the trouble; they are not connected with special gifts or superiorities.