Page:Mind (Old Series) Volume 12.djvu/229

 216 E. GUENEY I ordinary sleep, checked and transformed at once to normal wakefulness by external solicitations. It would at any rate be worth inquiry whether there is any stage in the path to unconsciousness, as produced by ordinary anaesthetic agents, during which the well-known phenomena of hypnotic sug- gestion could be in some degree reproduced. But however that may be, the hypnotism which we know where the change is independent of toxic substances and is comparatively stable when once induced will always retain its peculiar character. And the tendency of recent inquiry has been, on the whole, to give further emphasis and precision to the view which would confine original hypnogenetic efficacy to special peripheral excitations, either of the organs of special sense or applied in the way of pressure to special points or tracts on the body. The reason of the specific cerebral change, the course of the nervous discharges which issue in the inhibition of central control or in the various muscular peculiarities which hypnotised persons present, these are as unknown as ever ; but the known points of attack by which the central citadel can be reached have multiplied ; and where sensitiveness reaches a certain point, the operator can bring about a series of well- marked modifications of the trance-condition by physical manipulation, with almost as much certainty as the organist can manipulate his stops. 1 The very latest advance, how- ever, would seem, at first sight, to have been in exactly the opposite direction, and to suggest a mode of affection in which no part is played either by peripheral stimulus, or by suggestion and expectancy tending, through association, to re-induce a state induced in the first instance by peripheral stimulus. I refer to the recently recorded French successes in the production of sommeil a distance hypnotic trance due to the concentration of the hypnotiser's will without the ' subject's ' knowledge, and altogether beyond the range of the ' subject's ' senses. Not that this form of experiment is by any means new : the history of hypnotism or mes- merism, as in this connexion it has been more often called has presented a good many sporadic instances of such distant effects. 2 But even had the earlier reports been given with complete detail and with ample corroboration (which 1 See especially Dr. A. Pitre's Des Zones hysterogenes et r hypnogenes (Bordeaux, 1885)." 2 Phantasms of the Living, vol. i., p. 88 ; vol. ii., pp. xxvi. and 679-87. For another discussion of the subject see Mr. F. W. H. Myers's paper on " Telepathic Hypnotism," in the Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research, pt. x.