"A psychological introduction seemed to me indispensable, for it is a daily discovery with me, how much the monistic foundation of the doctrine of suggestion is misunderstood. Normal dream-life, the theory of suggestion, and the relation of the latter to medicine and to mental disorders generally, demanded substantial complements, and the addition of a few new instances of therapeutic suggestion seemed to me advantageous."
In agreement with this proposition he says in the first chapter of his pamphlet:
"Hypnotism throws much light on the phenomenon we call consciousness, and in a manner that substantially agrees with the monistic world-conception. To understand hypnotism in other relations, we must know what we have to understand by consciousness and its relation to nervous activity….
"With dualists, who regard the soul as one thing and the body together with all matter and all the forces of nature thereto appurtenant as a totally different thing, the doctrine of the psychical faculties follows of itself: herein the consciousness, the will, the mind, and the rest must be regarded as separate departments of the soul….
"The monistic conception of the world aims to reduce all cosmic phenomena to a single unity, and regards matter, force, and consciousness ultimately as only forms of appearance of a same primitive potency. Especially, however, it denies, that the soul is anything else than forces of nature….
"Considered from the monistic point of view, consciousness by itself is nothing; as Ribot ('The Diseases of Memory') correctly remarks with Huxley and others, 'Consciousness is merely the accompaniment of certain nervous processes; it is as incompetent to influence the latter as the shadow is the steps of the wayfarer it follows.' It follows, however, immediately from this, that the notions of consciousness and subject, or subjectivism, are identical and undefinable. Consciousness is merely the subjective form of appearance of nervous activity….
"Consequently, our human consciousness denotes only a summarised, synthetical, subjective illumination Of the more powerful portion of our cerebral activity….
"A very important phenomenon of consciousness takes place, further, in the reviviscence of previous combinations of cerebral activity, that is in the play of memory-images. We have here to deal with the connection in time of the activity of the brain, that is with the relative illumination of this activity by consciousness. Especially on this field does hypnotism throw valuable light. The whole process of memory is in itself completely independent of consciousness and exhibits very interesting laws, for which I refer the reader to Ribot (l. c.). We discover the laws of the memory in ourselves for the greater part through the illumination by consciousness of the activity of the brain. But it is not proper to oppose a conscious memory to the organic or unconscious memory. There is but one memory, which consists a) in the weakened preservation of the vibrations of every cerebral action (nervous activity in general), b) in the powers of reviviscence, or, better, power of re-invigoration of these actions, and often, c) in the re-cognition, that is in the identification, of the re-invigorated activity with the original one (localisation in time)….
"We all possess a second consciousness, the consciousness of dreams or sleep, which, qualitatively, does not differ in essential respects from the consciousness of the waking state….
"We may not, accordingly, place conscious and unconscious activity in opposition to each other."