Another instance is that of a young man who, contemplating suicide, carried a revolver about with him for a whole day. He spoke of suicide to his friends, occasionally discharged shots into the ground, and finally, during the evening, blew his brains out. That he contemplated suicide was evident from his conversation, but that his mind was not made up, is also evident from the delay he occasioned. In fact, his whole behaviour indicates a faint desire to cling to something stronger than himself in order to brace himself against his haunting fears. The revolver fascinated him. He dallied with it, made up his mind, changed it again, and finally the influence became supreme for a moment, and he fired the fatal shot. Throughout the day, he very probably thought of the grief of his relatives and of the young woman he was soon to marry, he pictured the consternation of his friends, read the newspaper accounts of his act, saw his funeral, and let his mind run altogether in morbid channels. Thus it was that the vision of his own act exerted an hypnotic influence upon him which became at the critical moment supreme and irresistible. When the picture is real and not imaginary, and when the circumstances of a parent's or brother's or friend's suicide may easily be recalled and the mind allowed to dwell upon them, how much greater would the influence become, especially when the same example has served to diminish the idea of the enormity of the act. Where persons lend themselves to the idea that an hereditary influence exists and may spring upon them at any moment, they are almost sure either to destroy themselves or else to develop some form of insanity. There are cases of murder and assassination (apparently hereditary crime) where the conditions are so similar that the hypnotic power of circumstances may likewise be urged as sufficient cause.