Is Man a Free Agent?

This edition has been fully restored with modern typesetting, custom cover design. The Law of Suggestion is a fierce, unconventional assault on accepted science that recasts human life as the product of suggestion, sensation, and hidden nervous forces. From hypnosis and memory to morality, heredity, and disease, the author argues that people do not act by free will but automatically, responding to cues, associations, and bodily conditions that shape thought before conscious reason can intervene. He defines hypnosis as a deliberate imitation of sleep in which suggestion holds a single thought in place, and uses vivid examples to show how voice, tone, expression, and sensory impressions can override resistance and redirect behavior. The book extends this theory into medicine, sexuality, and diet, dismissing orthodox treatment as mistaken and claiming that drugs merely awaken the body's own mechanisms. It links sin, shame, and "bad" conduct to learned associations and physical irritation, while also advancing sweeping, prejudiced claims about bodily cleanliness, sexuality, and social behavior. In its final sections, it condemns meat, pork, and lard as sources of brutality, disease, and mental dullness, urging a return to purer living and healthier habits.