mentioned because I wish to emphasise that if too much is made of a
passing hesitation over any one article of food, if it becomes the
belief of the mother or nurse that a strong distaste is present, then
if she is not careful her attitude in offering it, because she is
apprehensive of refusal, will exert a powerful suggestion on the
child's mind. Still worse, it may cause words to be used in the
child's hearing referring to this peculiarity of his. By frequent
repetition it becomes fixed in his mind that this is part of his own
individuality. He sees himself--and takes great pleasure in the
thought--as a strange child, who by these peculiarities creates
considerable interest in the minds of the grown-up people around him.
When the suggestion takes root it becomes fixed, and as likely as not
it will persist for his lifetime. It may be habitually said of a child
that, unlike his brothers and sisters, he will never eat bananas, and
thereafter till the day of his death he may feel it almost a physical
impossibility to gulp down a morsel of the offending fruit. So, too,
there are people who can bolt their food with the best of us, who yet
declare themselves incapable of swallowing a pill.

Another example of the force of suggestion, whether unconscious or
openly exercised by speech, is given us in the matter of sleep. Among
adults the act of going to bed serves as a powerful suggestion to
induce sleep. Seldom do we seek rest so tired physically that we drop
off to sleep from the irresistible force of sheer exhaustion. Yet as
soon as the healthy man whose mind is at peace, whose nerves are not
on edge, finds himself in bed, his eyes close almost with the force of
a hypnotic suggestion, and he drops off to sleep. With some of us the
suggestion is only powerful in our own bed, that on which it has acted
on unnumbered nights. We cannot, as we say, sleep in a strange bed. It
is suggestion, not direct will power, that acts. No one can absolutely