Page:Mind (Old Series) Volume 12.djvu/244

 FUETHEB PEOBLEMS OF HYPNOTISM. (l.) 231 ence was so radical as to make the inclusion of the two sets of facts under a common conception decidedly difficult. I fully admit this, if the conception is to be a physical one : I admit, that is, the difficulty (which better knowledge might overcome) of formulating a theory of ' brain-waves ' which should make it seem as natural that B should receive a telepathic impression of A, who is thinking of other things or not thinking at all, as that B should receive a telepathic impression of a card on which A is painfully concentrating his attention, or of a scene which engages A's eyes at the moment when he is passing through a crisis of emotional excitement. But until physics and physiology can offer some explanation of the former fact on its own account, I do not think that their failure to supply an obvious ground of connexion between the former fact and the latter is a reason for doubting the reality of a connexion which on psychical grounds is strongly suggested. And keeping to the psychical aspect, we may say that the idea of self is an altogether exceptional one, occupying, even when it is not prominent, a permanent place in the background or middle distance of consciousness ; and that the idea of its corporal embodiment i.e., of that expression of it which is almost inevitably represented in other people's ideas of it is asso- ciated more or less closely with a vast number of the items of thought and feeling which make up everyone's daily experience. Nor does the hypothesis of a wider self, em- bracing planes or stages of consciousness beyond the con- sciousness of normal experience, involve anything which would affect this exceptional position of the idea of self; for the segregation of conscious states which that hypothesis supposes, in no way involves a disruption of individuality ; and the pervading sense of association with an objective organism may perfectly well be common to all the states. It cannot then, I think, seem very surprising if those special mental activities which at special seasons condition a tele- pathic transfer whether at the approach of death, or in the shock of sudden danger or excitement, or in the concentra- tion of attention and will necessary for an experiment in distant hypnotising are accompanied by a special self- realisation, a true quickening of the idea of self, even though that idea does not detach itself on the plane of consciousness which limits our ordinary conception of personality. I am aware of the risk of paying one's self with words in such speculations; and I specially recognise the danger of physical analogies, such as I have just used in the word plane. Modes of expression derived from a known order of facts