We may read numberless statements of hypnotic conditions being turned to account for religious and magical ends. Next to measured movements of one’s own body, we find that listening to rhythmic sounds and the monotonous repetition of incantations is the surest key to this state of dreamy consciousness.[52] In Salvation Army methods the catchy, swinging songs are an indispensable means of eliciting the ecstatic condition, though, through the power of auto-suggestion, the expectation of the state is also strongly influential. It is the singing, however, as Souriau says, which throws the hearer into a state of mild hypnosis and renders him accessible to any suggestion.[53] When the end in view is a religious one, the ecstatic subject sees all sorts of visions, and can swear to the appearance of saints or gods. When the measure is martial in its suggestions, the subject becomes belligerent; when it excites sexual feeling, he responds in that direction; in short, his soul, being entirely under the influence of the hypnotist, will reflect, and involuntarily respond to, every suggestion. We see, then, that these intense emotional effects are only in part attributable to sound as such; rhythm is not entirely responsible for them, but figures rather as a contingent cause through which suitable suggestions act as the immediate cause of emotional disturbances. “Hypnotism,” says Souriau, “is but a means, never an end. Art employs this means the better to control our minds and keep our imagination in the limits prescribed by her suggestions. What we owe to her is not sleep, but the dream.”[54]