A subject that has attracted much attention, whenever hypnotism has been under discussion, has been the possibility of crime being committed under the influence of hypnotic suggestion. The best authorities in hypnotism seem to be agreed that subjects can not be brought by hypnotic influence to perform actions that are directly contrary to their own feeling of right and wrong. The supposed exceptions to this rule are rather newspaper sensations than real compelled crimes. There is no doubt, however, that a tendency to the performance of certain wrong actions, so that the normal disinclination to their performance becomes much less than before, may be cultivated by a series of hypnotic as well as by waking suggestions. Where the individual influenced is {132} already characterised by weakness of will in certain directions, the added weight of the motives furnished by hypnotic suggestion may prove sufficient to turn the scale of responsibility. It is probably because of such influence that a recent case in France has attracted world-wide attention. In general, however, it may be said that normal individuals can not be brought to the commission of crime by hypnotic suggestion, and the plea of irresponsibility, for this reason, is not worthy of consideration. There are phases of this important problem, however, which require further careful study. Undoubtedly some of the so-called inherited tendencies to the commission of crime are really instances of the influence of auto-suggestion that has kept the possibility of some criminal act constantly before the mind. Some of the cases of hereditary dipsomania are almost surely of this character. Persons whose parents have been the subject of inebriety lose something of their own will power to keep away from intoxicating drink by the reflection that it is hopeless for them to struggle against an inherited tendency. A series of cases have been reported in which suicide has occurred in successive generations in the same family at about the same time of life. There seems no doubt that suggestion must have great influence in such cases. In one well-authenticated report, mentioned in the chapter on suicides, the members of the family were officers in the German army, and the eldest son, the family representative, committed suicide within the same five years of life, in four successive generations. The last member of the family had refused to marry, because of this doom hanging over the house, and had often referred to the possibility of suicide in his own case. In his early years he seemed to have the idea that he might escape the family fate, but after middle life he settled down irretrievably to the persuasion that he would inevitably go like the others.