Page:Mind (Old Series) Volume 12.djvu/241

 228 E. GUENEY I mez ? But let someone who has not prievously hypnotised the subject pronounce such a command as authoritatively as he likes, and no hypnotic result will follow. I would not indeed venture to assert that it is impossible that trance should be thus induced in an extremely sensitive ' subject ' ; but I cannot discover that it ever has been so induced. The necessary condition then seems to be that the suggestion or command shall come from the original operator ; that is to say, rapport is involved at any rate to the extent of memory of a past relation between the two parties. But here there seems, at first sight, a certain difficulty in connecting the near (or physical) with the distant (or psychical) suggestion. In the former case the idea of the operator in the 'subject's' mind, and a sense of the past relation with him, is practi- cally ensured by his actual presence and voice; the 'subject' cannot help associating the command, when it comes, with the person who gives it. But when the two parties are separated, and the command is telepathically conveyed, there is nothing to connect it in the ' subject's ' mind with the person who transmits it, unless an idea suggestive of that person is simultaneously transmitted. Now among the recorded examples of hypnotisation at a distance we do undoubtedly find a certain number where such an idea seems clearly to have been transmitted, since it unmis- takably appears in the ' subject's ' consciousness. This was the case with Mme. B., who was able to distinguish whether it was Dr. Gibert or Prof. Janet who was affecting her ; and the occasion when Dr. Dusart's ' subject ' was conscious of his inhibitory influence may fairly be referred to the same class. But in other cases the trance-con- dition, supervenes without any conscious occupation of the ' subject's ' mind with the person who is influencing him. We might even go further and say that it supervenes without even the idea of itself being presented as an ob- viously separate and prior condition. We cannot, as in cases of verbal suggestion, point to the moment when the idea obtains lodgment in the mind, and trace its effects from that moment. The consciousness of the idea, so far as it exists, is indistinguishable from the general mental condition of on-coming trance. Now as regards the mere fact that the mental suggestion is truly transferred, even in the cases where the recipient is not conscious of it, a proof of the strongest kind is afforded by the cases where he is conscious of it. It seems almost inconceivable that experiments in telepathic hypnotisation which agree in every point except this of the ' subject's '