I have attempted to trace the inevitable _rise_ of hypnotism--its necessary development out of the spontaneous phenomena which preceded and which might so naturally have suggested it. I have shown, nevertheless, its almost accidental initiation, and then its rapid development in ways which no single experimenter has ever been able to correlate or to foresee. I am bound to say something further as to its prospect in the future. A systematic appeal to the deeper powers in man--conceived with the generality with which I have here conceived it--cannot remain a mere appanage of medical practice. It must be fitted on in some way to the whole serious life of man; it must present itself to him as a development of faiths and instincts which lie already deep in his heart. In other words, there must needs be some _scheme of self-suggestion_,--some general theory which can give the individual a basis for his appeal, whether he regards that appeal as directed to an intelligence outside himself or to his own inherent faculties and informing soul. These helps to the power of generalisation--to the feeling of confidence--we must consider now. The schemes of self-suggestion which have actually been found effective have covered, not unnaturally, a range as wide as all the superstition and all the religion of men. That is to say that each form of supernatural belief in turn has been utilised as a means of securing that urgently-needed temporal blessing--relief from physical pain. We see the same tendency running through fetichistic, polytheistic, monotheistic forms of belief. Beginning with fetichistic peoples, we observe that _charms_ of various kinds,--inert objects, arbitrary gestures, meaningless words,--have probably been actually the most general means which our race has employed for the cure of disease. We know how long some forms of primitive belief persisted in medicine,--as, for example, the doctrine of _likenesses_, or the cure of a disease by some object supposed to resemble its leading symptom. What is, however, even more remarkable is the efficacy which charms still continue in some cases to possess, even when they are worn merely as an experiment in self-suggestion by a person who is perfectly well aware of their intrinsic futility. Experiments on this subject seem to show that the mere continual contact of some small unfamiliar object will often act as a reminder to the subliminal self, and keep, at any rate, some nervous disturbances in check. Until one reads these modern examples, one can hardly realise how veritably potent for good may have been the savage amulet, the savage incantation.