Page:Mind (Old Series) Volume 12.djvu/427

 414 E. GUENEY I tomed peripheral stimulation, produced by purely mechanical means, has at any rate a first claim to be considered the sufficient cause of the result that follows, whether that result be hypnotic trance or local anaesthesia or rigidity. Here, then (as in cases where actual pressure is applied to the supposed hypnogenetic spots), the rival or supplementary hypothesis of a more specific influence must depend mainly on the difference (above referred to) between the capacities of different manipulators, or of the same operator when working with concentration and attention and when work- ing indifferently and mechanically. 1 But passes are very frequently made without any contact at all, or with very slight and irregular contact ; so that the ' subject,' if he shut his eyes, might be unconscious that they were going on or that they were going on with any regularity. The stimula- tion, therefore, if anything, must be optical. But as the not on the operator, the fact that the arms of the latter are moving more or less rhythmically within his field of vision could hardly overpower his organs in any specific manner, even if the movement were uninterrupted and long con- tinued. This, however, is rarely the case : as a rule the procedure conforms rather to the practice of Dr. Liebeault, who has probably hypnotised more persons in the course of his life than any other operator, and with whom (as Mr. Myers has justly observed) " the passes and touches made are brief and variable". On the whole, then, so far as mere passes without contact can be held to be effective, the fact is a positive and direct argument in favour of a specific physical influence. So far, however, we have not got beyond cases where the ditions involved. We may suspect that the importance of this condition has been sometimes exaggerated. It is very difficult, for instance, sweepingly to attribute the different 1 See Phantasms of the Living, i. 88 ; and the experience of the French hypnotists whose accounts were epitomised in my last paper (MiND No. 46, pp. 218-19). 2 This fixation of the eyes cannot itself be classed as one of the effica- cious modes of monotonous stimulation, since the speciality of it, as Braid observed and taught, is the strain caused by the particular position of the eyeballs ; and the concurrent stimulation of the retina by light is, for hypnogenetic purposes, a mere accident. It is worth noting that, as regards actual entrancement, the fact that the * subject,' by his fixation of his eyes, may be distinctly contributing to his own hypnotisation, tends to mask the difference in the capacities of different operators, which (as we shall see a little later) is better displayed in local and therapeutical effects.
 * subject's ' eyes are frequently fixed on something else, 2 and
 * subject's ' own mental state is, or may be, one of the con-