It is a treatment easier to practise during daylight, in company, when distractions are plentiful, than in the solitude of the night. Triumphantly to battle with an obsession at night, when the vitality is low and the egoism intensified, is extremely difficult. But the small persistent successes of the day will gradually have their indirect influence on the night. A great deal can also be done by simple resolute suggestion. Few persons seem to know--what is, nevertheless, a fact--that the most effective moment for making resolves is in the comatose calm which precedes going to sleep. The entire organism is then in a passive state, and more permanently receptive of the imprint of volition than at any other period of the twenty-four hours. If regularly at that moment the man says clearly and imperiously to himself, "I will not allow my business to preoccupy me at home; I will not allow my business to preoccupy me at home; I will not allow my business to preoccupy me at home," he will be astonished at the results; which results, by the way, are reached by subconscious and therefore unperceived channels whose workings we can only guess at. And when the obsession is beaten, destroyed, he will find himself not merely fortified with the necessary pluck and initiative for importing a new interest into his existence. His instincts of their own accord will be asking for that interest, for they will have been set free. V In choosing a distraction--that is to say, in choosing a rival to his business--he should select some pursuit whose nature differs as much as possible from the nature of his business, and which will bring into activity another side of his character. If his business is monotonous, demanding care and solicitude rather than irregular intense efforts of the brain, then let his distraction be such as will make a powerful call upon his brain. But if, on the other hand, the course of his business runs in crises that string up the brain to its tightest strain, then let his distraction be a foolish and merry one. Many men fall into the error of assuming that their hobbies must be as dignified and serious as their vocations, though surely the example of the greatest philosophers ought to have taught them better! They seem to imagine that they should continually be improving themselves, in either body or mind. If they take up a sport, it is because the sport may improve their health. And if the hobby is intellectual it must needs be employed to improve their brain. The fact is that their conception of self-improvement is too narrow. In their restricted sense of the phrase, they possibly don't need improving; they possibly are already improved to the point of being a nuisance to their fellow-creatures; possibly what they need is worsening. In the broad and full sense of the phrase self-improvement, a course of self-worsening might improve them. I have known men--and everybody has