Page:A hundred years hence - the expectations of an optimist (IA hundredyearshenc00russrich).pdf/142

 progress. And it is not alone the physical constitution of man that will be interrogated. Everything assists the belief that this century will be among other things the century of psychical advance. We appear to be on the verge of great discoveries concerning the human mind, and especially concerning the relation of body to consciousness. Hypnotism has only during a comparatively short time been the subject of systematic observation, even in France; but at any time during the last ten years results have been achieved which, if foreseen a century ago, would certainly have produced a widespread recrudescence of belief in witchcraft. What the developed science of a hundred years hence will be capable of would certainly be a great deal more surprising if we could foresee it to-day. It is reported from the Salpetrière Hospital that a woman, under hypnosis, has had the existence of a picture on a blank sheet of paper suggested to her with such vividness that, on the suggestion being revived at a subsequent period, even after a considerable interval, she was able to detect that the "picture" was upside down, the blank paper having been actually reversed. This phenomenon is attributed to a great accentuation of the sense of vision produced by hypnotism, it being supposed that the paper, perfectly blank on ordinary observation, had really some