Page:Mind (Old Series) Volume 12.djvu/418

 FURTHER PROBLEMS OF HYPNOTISM. (ll.) 405 effect on the ' subject '. It may very likely be the case that the hypnotisers and ' subjects ' who, if the necessary trial were made, would yield us examples of telepathic hypnotisa- tion, are more numerous in proportion to the total number of hypnotisers and ' subjects,' than are the persons who at death produce a marked telepathic impression on some friend or relative, in proportion to the total number of persons possessing friends and relatives. But this seems quite sufficiently accounted for by the fact, already noticed, that the hypnotic ' subjects ' are hit (so to speak) at a specially explosive spot. The idea that reaches them has been associated on former occasions with precisely the marked consequence that now again ensues ; whereas the idea of a friend, or even of a friend's death, has not on former occasions been associated with any marked conse- quence, such as a hallucination suggestive of his presence. The hypnotic 'subjects,' in short, have been adapted by artificial means to respond strongly to the telepathic stimulus ; while of people at large it is only a small minority in whom the natural condition for such strong response exists. And here let it be specially observed that it is by absence of response, not absence of stimulus, that we shall most readily and reasonably account for the rarity, in comparison with the numbers who die,, of telepathic affections of the friends and relatives of dying persons. That rarity has been felt as an initial obstacle to the whole telepathic theory ; and there is no doubt that telepathic action becomes more comprehensible the more universal we can consider it. Now if, as analogy would indicate, the marked cases of tele- pathic phantasms are only the ' ostensive instances ' of a class of events which may occur with all degrees of diminish- ing intensity, we may fairly suppose some of the degrees to be sub-liminal ; and if so, numbers of spontaneous trans- ferences might naturally take place, conditioned by the normal bonds of affection or acquaintance, which fail to pro- duce any recognisable effect fail, that is, to make their way into normal consciousness as clear ideas or sensory hallu- cinations through a lack of some necessary condition in the recipient mind. 1 This may, perhaps, be made clearer by an illustration drawn from certain further facts of hypnotism, which are 1 On this view, it will be seen, telepathic phantasms (and possibly tele- pathic affections of every sort) can be represented no less than the special classes above-mentioned as emergences or developments of ideas which have in the first instance affected an unconscious part of the percipient's mind.