backbone of my theory and practice, upon which I feel that I cannot insist too strongly, is that THE CONSCIOUS MIND MUST BE QUICKENED. It will be seen from this statement that my theory is in some ways a revolutionary one, since all earlier methods have in some form or another sought to put the flexible working of the true consciousness out of action in order to reach the subconsciousness. The result of these methods is, logically and inevitably, an endeavour to alter a bad subjective habit whilst the objective habit of thought is left unchanged. The teachings of the “New Thought” and of many sects of faith-healers set out clearly enough that the patient must think rightly before he can be cured, but they then set out, automatically, to carry out their teaching by prescribing “affirmatives” or some sort of “auto-suggestion,” both of which are in effect no more than a kind of self-hypnotism, and, as such, are debasing to the primary functions of the intelligence. I will take a simple instance from my own experience to illustrate a case in point. A patient, whom I will call X, came to me with an obstinate stammer arising from a congenital defect in the co-ordination of the face, tongue, and throat muscles. Whenever X attempted to speak he drew down his upper lip. This was the outward sign of a series of vicious acts connected with a train of muscular movements, a sign that the ideo-motor centres were working to convey a wrong guiding influence to the specific parts concerned in the act of speech. These guiding influences rendered X quite incapable of speech, and would, indeed, have had the same effect upon any other individual who produced the same working of the parts concerned. To insist in such a case that X should repeat, “I can speak” or “I won’t stutter,” would be merely to endeavour to reach a supposed omniscient subconscious self which would counteract the evil by the exercise of some assumed and separate intelligence possessed by it. I undertook the case by appealing to X’s intelligence. Now, strange as it may seem (and I intend to treat this curious perversion in my next chapter), X’s objective intelligence is not so easily reached and influenced as might appear. He has formed a muscular habit of drawing down his lip independently of his conscious control, and the line of suggestion set up by the wish to speak induces at once a reflex action of a complicated set of muscles. X has learned to do this automatically, and at first seems incapable of controlling those lip muscles when the wish to speak is initiated.