Indeed I am willing to maintain and prove in this connexion that a very large percentage of cases which are now being treated in our public and private lunatic asylums, have been allowed to develop insanity by reason of this disregard of the mental attitude. I cannot stop now to consider this interesting subject of insanity, but I must note in passing that the very large percentage of the cases I have mentioned should never have been allowed to arrive at the condition which made it necessary to send them to an asylum in the first instance. Very many of them, so far from lacking mental control, possess minds of quite exceptional ability. Some are instances of subjects who in the first place have assumed a deliberate attitude to subserve a private end, such as the avoidance of uncongenial work, or the overindulgence of some desire or perverted sense, the result being that the attitude which was first adopted deliberately, became afterwards a fixed habit, and so uncontrollable. When therefore we are seeking to give a patient conscious control, _the consideration of mental attitude must precede the performance of the act prescribed_. The act performed is of less consequence than the manner of its performance. It is nevertheless a remarkable fact that although the patient or enquirer into the system may apprehend this truth, he often finds an enormous difficulty in altering some trifling habit of thought which stands between him and the benefit he clearly expects. And the simple explanation of this apparently strange enigma is that the majority of people fall into a mechanical habit of thought quite as easily as they fall into the mechanical habit of body which is the immediate consequence. I will take an instance from a subject outside my own province in order to bring the matter home, but I will preface my illustration by pointing out that I personally am not in the least concerned to alter the habit of thought of either of the persons I bring forward as examples, and I only cite well-known political propaganda in order to give vividness to my picture.