(Reprinted from the "Renaissance politique, littéraire et artistique" of the 18th of December, 1920)
In the course of the month of September, 1920, I opened for the first time the book of Charles Baudouin, of Geneva, professor at the Institute J. J. Rousseau in that town.
This work, published by the firm of Delachaux and Niestlé, 26, rue Saint-Dominique, Paris, is called: "Suggestion et Autosuggestion". The author has dedicated it: "To Emile Coué, the initiator and benefactor, with deep gratitude".
I read it and did not put down the book until I had reached the end.
The fact is that it contains the very simple exposition of a magnificently humanitarian work, founded on a theory which may appear childish just because it is within the scope of everyone. And if everyone puts it into practice, the greatest good will proceed from it.
After more than twenty years of indefatigable work, Emile Coué who at the present time lives at Nancy, where he lately followed the work and experiments of Liébault, the father of the doctrine of suggestions, for more than twenty years, I say, Coué has been occupied exclusively with this question, but particularly in order to bring his fellow creatures to cultivate autosuggestion.
At the beginning of the century Coué had attained the object of his researches, and had disengaged the general and immense force of autosuggestion. After innumerable experiments on thousands of subjects, he showed the action of the unconscious in organic cases. This is new, and the great merit of this profoundly, modest learned man, is to have found a remedy for terrible ills, reputed incurable or terribly painful, without any hope of relief.
As I cannot enter here into long scientific details I will
80
