Page:Mind (Old Series) Volume 12.djvu/236

 FUETHEE PEOBLEMS OF HYPNOTISM. (l.) 223 affection exists or not is an open question. The negative answer involves the difficulty that, whenever the psychical transferences occur, a certain nervous process, correlated with the impressed idea in the brain of the recipient, presents a close similarity to a certain nervous process correlated with the impressing idea in the brain of the transmitter, and would not have presented that similarity but for the trans- mission, while yet the twin processes are united by no phy- sical nexus. The affirmative answer involves the difficulty that distance is not known to have any effect on the transmis- sion, which is contrary to what obtains in all known exhibi- tions of vibratory energy. (Both horns of the dilemma can of course be avoided on the supposition that the accepted view as to the necessary correlation of psychical with nervous events is only a rough approximation to a more complete truth, which the limitations of our view of matter and phy- sical forces keep out of our sight.) But if it exists, this mode of physical affection is at any rate something per- se ; it is remote from any of the recognised modes, to which eyes and ears and nerve-endings are indispensable instruments, and in which the effect on the impressed organism (to wit, certain chemical explosions of nerve- and brain-matter) bears no resemblance whatever, but only a correspondence, to the physical facts visible or aud- ible, or tactile or olfactory in the impressing organism. And this difference is so radical that, for purposes of termi- nology, the neglect of the hypothetical physical basis, and the appropriation of the word ' psychical ' to transferences where the psychical facts are patent, while no physical fact of any sort is cognisable by our senses or our instruments, seems as defensible as it is convenient. The above theory has been stated in general outline only, and needs guarding and amplifying in several ways. But I must first pause to consider an objection that may be made to it in limine. It may be said that, in opposing the concep- tion of thought-transference, pure and simple, to that of a. physical effluence or current of force, operating across indefinite spaces, and neither nullified nor confused by other physical effluences or currents proceeding from other human beings on its route, I have simplified the issue over- much, and that there is a third possible hypothesis : namely, that a force is set in operation which is truly psychical, in the sense that it originates in the operator's mind, while its medium of transmission, if it has one, remains unknown and unguessed, but which is different from and independent of any known psychical or physical agency; the ultimate