Within a generation, owing to the great increase of population, prosperity and personal comfort, nervous susceptibility has also gained in extent, but there has been no check to petty abuse of power, selfishness, which always comes out in some form of injustice or wrong, or similar vexations. Nay, what with the disproportionate growth of vulgar wealth, this element has rapidly increased, and it would really seem as if the plague must spread _ad infinitum_, unless some means can be found to _invogliare_ and inspire the offenders with a sense of their sins, and move them to reform. And it is more than probable that if all who are at heart sincerely willing to reform their morals and manners could be brought to keep their delinquencies before their consciousness in the very simple manner which I have indicated, the fashion or _mode_ might at least be inaugurated. For it is _not_ so much a moral conviction, or an appeal to common sense, which is needed (as writers on ethics all seem to think), but some practical art of keeping men up to the mark in endeavoring to reform, or to make them remember it all day long, since "out of sight out of mind" is the devil's greatest help with weak minds. CHAPTER VI. SUGGESTION AND INSTINCT. "Anima non nascitur sed fit," ut ait.--TERTULLIANUS. "Post quam loquuti sumus de anima rationali, intellectuali (_immortali_) et quia ad inferiores descendimus jam gradus animae, scilicet animae mortalis quae animalium est." --PETRUS GREGORIUS THOLOSANUS. It must have struck many readers that the action of a mind under hypnotic influence, be it of another or of self, involves strange questions as regards Consciousness. For it is very evident from recorded facts, that people can actually reason and act without waking consciousness, in a state of mind which resembles instinct, which is a kind of cerebration, or acting under habits and impressions supplied by memory and formed by practice, but not according to what we understand by Reason or Judgment. All things in nature have their sleep or rest, night is the sleep of the world, death the repose of Nature or Life--the solid temples, the great globe itself, dissolve to awaken again; so man hath in him, as it were, a company of workmen, some of whom labor by day, while others watch by night, during which time they, unseen, have their fantastic frolics known as dreams. The Guardian or Master of the daily hours, appears in a great measure to conform his action closely to average duties of life, in accordance with those of all other men. He picks out from the millions of images or ideas in the memory, uses and becomes familiar with a certain number, and lets the rest sleep. This master or active agent is probably himself a Master-Idea--the result of the correlative action of all the others, a kind of consensus made personal, an elected Queen Bee, as I have otherwise described him or her.