Coming back to the first case, one perhaps can conceive that the city man and I might come upon the third rail under such conditions that he was not thinking of it. Instead of saying "third rail" to him I might say, "My! that rail is hot" and he would almost instinctively put his hand upon it to verify my remark. If he survived and could talk about it afterwards, he would say, "Of course I ought to have known and did know that was the third rail, but I did not think." That is the way suggestion works. To illustrate still further, we may speak of hypnotism itself. All of the wonders that are produced under hypnosis are to be explained in exactly this way. The subject is so nearly asleep that nothing gets into his consciousness except the ideas suggested by the operator. Accordingly he is utterly unable to resist any suggestion that is given him. Now coming nearer to our problem, children are naturally very suggestible because they have not the experiences, the ideas. One may easily believe that an eleven-year-old child could be induced to touch the third rail. Furthermore, authority plays an enormous rôle with children. I might take my ten-year-old boy out for a walk. He knows all about third rails and would not touch one. But if I were to say to him, "Son, you can put your hand on this, because there is no current on," he would probably obey without question, because of his implicit trust in me. That confidence in a superior, either in age, intelligence, or position, is one of the characteristics of immature minds and one of the conditions that makes us all suggestible. In the hypnotic terminology again, this is the being _en rapport_. The hypnotized subject obeys the operator and no one else because it is the operator with whom he is _en rapport_--in other words, in whom he has confidence. Now let us come to the situation. It is perfectly clear that Roland Pennington was under strong suggestion and that any vague concepts that he might have had of the wrongfulness of murder or of killing a man were very carefully allayed by the man who had the influence over him and who had the motive for this homicide. The whole statement shows that Roland recognized George as a superior, as one in authority over him and at the same time as a friend, as one on whose word he could absolutely rely. It is a perfect picture of the child following the man. CHAPTER III THE CASE OF FRED TRONSON