Page:Mind (Old Series) Volume 9.djvu/125

 THE STAGES OF HYPNOTISM. 113 so during the i-.ourse of the manifestations, it is not unfrequently otherwise at their close ; and a ' subject ' who has been allowed, perhaps, to lapse into sleep, while others are being operated on, is often roused and even sent away, without its being observed that he has been roused not into a state of normal wakefulness, but only into the alert stage of hypnotism. To all appearance he is quite himself ; and, the performance being over, it does not occur to anyone to try whether he is still at the mercy of com- mands and delusions ; while the general stir and commotion prevent him from lapsing again into sleep. So he goes off home, acting and answering in a quite natural manner, till the effect wears gradually off ; or, as more often happens, he continues to feel drowsy, and headachy, goes to bed, and wakes up in his usual condition next morning. Passing now to the deep stage, we find that this in turn is liable to be confounded with a contiguous condition, namely, the genuine hypnotic sleep into which it tends to merge. It re- sembles that condition in the fact that the eyelids are closed ; that, if one of them be forcibly raised, the eyeball is found to be rolled upwards ; in the general insensibility to pain and to ordi- nary modes of stimulation. And there exists here precisely the same chance as we noted in the former case, that the particular stage will escape detection. If the ' subject ' be left to himself, he will have no opportunity to manifest its characteristics, but, passing rapidly through the period during which these might be evoked, will soon lose consciousness and individuality in profound slumber. With some ' subjects,' moreover, the invasion of mental torpor is so rapid that it might be hard to fix and retain them in the genuine deep stage, even if the proper means were adopted. But many others, if taken in time, after their eyes are closed and they have become insensible to pain, but before sleep has inter- vened, will prove quite capable of rational conversation ; they are mentally awake, even when their bodies are almost past movement, and when even a simple command is obeyed in the most languid and imperfect manner. The state is, however, harder to sustain at an even level than the alert one, owing to a stronger and more continuous tendency to lapse into a deeper condition. In the alert state the ' subject ' can usually be kept going for an indefinite tune : in the deep state he usually shows an increasing dislike to being questioned or meddled with. Enough, perhaps, has been said to show how the two stages of hypnotism may be distinguished from normal waking 011 the one hand and from blank slumber on the other. But the marks which have been so far given as distinguishing the two stages from one another are by no means equally constant and precise. The closure of the eyes, the insensibility to pain, the disinclination, amounting sometimes almost to inability, to move, are all in a genei-al way characteristic of the deep stage ; and to them may be added a diminution of the irritability of the conjunctiva and 8