CHAPTER II

THE HYPNOTIC STATE Not least of the wonders of modern psychical research is the discovery that nothing in all the phenomena is new--that under other names and by other races every sort of manifestation was familiar to the most remote peoples. This would certainly seem to meet the argument of the physicist--it is not necessary to refer again to Professor Tyndall's uncomplimentary phraseology--who declares that all this popular occultism is a product of the last generation or two. Take hypnotism. Hypnotism (or mesmerism) was formerly alleged to be an emanation from the body--an effluence of intense will-power. The belief in such an emanation is centuries old. "By the magic power of the will," wrote Paracelsus, "a person on this side of the ocean may make a person on the other side hear what is said on that side ... the ethereal body of a man may know what another man thinks at a distance of 100 miles or more." Twenty years ago this creed was laughed out of court by Huxley, Tyndall, and other leading men of science. To-day we are told by those who have witnessed the experiments of Charcot, Janet, and others that "the existence of an aura of spirit-force surrounding the body like an atmosphere, in some cases at all events, can be proved as a physical fact." Whatever the explanation, whatever the definition of this miraculous agency, hypnotism is now universally accepted. The manifestations of its power must convince the most sceptical. A spell-bound subject is frequently made to share the sensations of the hypnotist, his ocular perceptions and his sense of touch. In the hypnotic sleep the subject easily becomes insensible to pain. A member of the Society reports that he has seen a youth in this condition who suffered gladly the most injurious attacks upon his own person--who would allow his hair to be pulled, his ears pinched, his fingers even to be scorched by lighted matches. But the same youth would next moment indignantly resent the slightest injury upon his hypnotiser, who would at the time be standing at the other end of the room. One thing in common all the hypnotic methods appear to possess, the diversion of attention from external surroundings and the working of a sub-consciousness in a manner not characteristic of the ordinary life of the subject. In cases described by Mr Greenwood no difficulty was encountered in impersonations suggested to the subject unless they savoured too much of the ridiculous. "Thus," he writes, "a suggestion that M., the subject, was myself and that I was he succeeded; and in his reverse capacity he continued the course of experiments upon himself, devising several original and ingenious varieties to which I, for the sake of the experiment, acquiesced in subjecting myself. He also behaved with considerable dignity and verve as King Edward VII., until I threw a match at his head, a proceeding which appeared to conflict so strongly with dramatic verisimilitude that he lapsed back into his ordinary hypnotic condition, nor could I reinduce the impersonation. On the other hand, statements that he was the Emperor of China, and that he was a nurse and I a baby, failed to carry any conviction, being either received with passive consent or rejected with scorn." It is interesting to note that in the waking state of the subject he explained that he was only conscious that he was not the characters he was bidden to assume, and if asked would have said as much, but that he was irresistibly impelled to act as though he were. The production of sleep in the subject at a distance is one of the latest attested marvels of hypnotism. The long series of experiments made in France by Professor Richet and Professor Janet would appear to attest this power. In some trials made at Havre, in which the experimenters were Professor Janet and Dr Gibert, the subject of the experiment was a certain Madame B. or "Leonie," then a patient of Dr Gibert. The facts were recorded by the late F. W. Myers and his brother, Dr A. T. Myers, who were present: "We selected (he states) by lot an hour (eleven A.M.) at which