Psychologically considered, this whole affair of saintliness or sinfulness is a matter of the preponderant idea. To have merely resolved is not enough; our moral forces must be drilled and made ready before the battle. This fortifying process we nowadays call "suggestion." By it we can so "set" our minds, so deepen the channels that flow toward the right actions, that when the time of conflict comes our minds will work along those grooves. Habit, to be sure, means a deep-cut channel in the mind; it may require much effort to dig a deeper one to take its place. Unless the work is persistently carried through, the mental currents, diverted temporarily into the new course, will soak through the barriers and find their old bed again. Moreover, different minds differ greatly in their plasticity, their susceptibility to suggestion. But the great fact remains that habits can be made over, temptations rendered harmless, and character formed, by this simple means. It may be worthwhile to remind ourselves of the remarkable power of suggestion. It is most strikingly seen at work in the phenomena of hypnotism, because a person who is hypnotized is in a peculiarly susceptible state; he is asleep to everything but the words of the hypnotist, which thus have full influence over him, except as checked and balanced by the preexisting bias of his mind. Hypnotism is simply the perfect case of suggestion, isolated from disturbing factors. The hypnotizing process itself, the putting to sleep, is only preliminary to the suggestion; and to patients who are difficult to hypnotize, "waking suggestion" is given, with the patient in as relaxed and empty a state of mind as possible. The popular notion that healing through hypnotism is uncanny and dangerous is, of course, entirely erroneous. To be sure, every great power has its dangers from misuse, and hypnotism is not to be used except for proper ends; but there is nothing occult about it. It simply uses the psychological truth that the mind acts on the predominating idea, by lulling to sleep all ideas but the one wanted and impressing that upon the mind. Immediate and lasting moral changes are daily being effected through suggestion by professional hypnotists.