Thus do willingly accepted beliefs, religious, social, or scientific, gradually and silently permeate the whole being and show their results in character.
A little reflection shows, however, that these two forms of suggestion shade into one another; and that no hetero-suggestion, however impressively given, becomes active in us until we have in some sort accepted it and transformed it into an auto-suggestion.

Theology expresses this fact in its own special language, when it says that the will must co-operate with grace if it is to be efficacious.

Thus the primacy of the will is safe-guarded.

It stands, or should stand, at the door; selecting from among the countless dynamic suggestions, good and bad, which life pours in on us, those which serve the best interests of the self.
As a rule, men take little trouble to sort out the incoming suggestions.
They allow uncriticized beliefs and prejudices, the ideas of hatred, anxiety or ill-health, free entrance.

They fail to seize and affirm the ideas of power, renovation, joy.