It has been supposed that the mere fact of being hypnotised tended to weaken the will; that the hypnotised person fell inevitably more and more under the control of the hypnotiser, and even that he could at last be induced to commit crimes by suggestion. In his article "What is Hypnotism?"[89] Dr. Milne Bramwell shows on how small a foundation of fact these fanciful theories have been erected. It may suffice to say here that nothing is easier, either for subject or for hypnotiser, than to _avert_ undue influence. A trusted friend has only to suggest to the hypnotised subject that _no one else_ will be able to affect him, and the thing is done. As to the crimes supposed to be committed by hypnotised persons under the influence of suggestion, the evidence for such crimes, in spite of great efforts made to collect it and set it forth, remains, I think, practically _nil_. This fact, I must add, is quite in harmony with the views expressed in the present chapter. For it implies that the higher subliminal centres (so to term them) never really abdicate their rule; that they may indeed remain passive while the middle centres obey the experimenter's caprice, but are still ready to resume their control if such experiment should become really dangerous to the individual. And this runs parallel with common experience in the spontaneous somnambulisms. The sleeper may perform apparently rash exploits; but yet, unless he be suddenly awakened, serious accidents are very rare. Nevertheless, both in spontaneous and in induced somnambulism, accidents _may_ occur; nor should any experiment be undertaken in a careless or jesting spirit. But the rôle of the hypnotiser, as our command over hypnotic artifice increases, is likely to become continually smaller in proportion to the rôle played by the subject himself. Especially must this be so where the object is to strengthen the subject's own power of will. All that can be done from _without_ in such a case is to imbue the man's spirit with the sense of its unexhausted prerogatives,--the strength which he may then employ, not only to avert pain or anxiety, but in any active direction which his original nature itself admits. These last words may naturally lead us on to our next topic: the influence of suggestion on _character_,--on that function of combined attention and will, which is, of course, also ultimately a function of the possibilities latent in the individual germ. First of all, then, and going back to the evidence already given as to the cure of the victims of morphia, we may say with truth that _there_ we have seen as tremendous a moral _lift_--as sudden an elevation from utter baseness to at least normal living--as can be anywhere presented to us. Here, then, the question arises as to the possible range of such sudden reformations. Did we succeed with the morphinomaniac only because his was a _functional_, and not an _organic_, degradation?