The most distinguishing character of the unconscious untruthfulness of their self-reproaches is their habit of telling others how wicked they are, what terrible things they have done, and then they ask if they (the hysterical) are not hopelessly abandoned sort of people. No one who really feels remorse could talk in such a way. The fallacy of representing the hysterical as being eminently moral is one which even Breuer and Freud have shared. The hysterical simply become imbued with moral ideas which are foreign to them in their normal state. They subordinate themselves to this code, they cease to prove things for themselves, they no longer exercise their own judgment. Probably these hysterical subjects approach more closely than any other natures to the moral ideal of the social and utilitarian ethics which regard a lie as moral if it is for the good of society or of the race. Hysterical women realise that ideal ontogenetically inasmuch as their standard of morality comes from without, not from within, and practically as they appear to act most readily from altruistic motives. For them duty towards others is not merely a special application of duty towards oneself. The untruthfulness of the hysterical is proportional to their belief in their own accuracy. From their complete inability to attain personal truth, to be honest about themselves--the hysterical never think for themselves, they want other people to think about them, they want to arouse the interest of others--it follows that the hysterical are the best mediums for hypnotic purposes. But any one who allows him or herself to be hypnotised is doing the most immoral thing possible. It is yielding to complete slavery; it is a renunciation of the will and consciousness; it means allowing another person to do what he likes with the subject. Hypnosis shows how all possibility of truth depends upon the wish to be truthful, but it must be the real wish of the person concerned: when a hypnotised person is told to do something, he does it when he comes out of the trance, and if asked his reasons will give a plausible motive on the spot, not only before others, but he will justify his action to himself by quite fanciful reasons. In this we have, so to speak, an experimental proof of Kant’s “Ethical Code.”