Page:Mind (Old Series) Volume 9.djvu/127

 THE STAGES OF HYPNOTISM. 115 as would naturally involve it, .;/., if he is made to believe he is a statue ; and I have known insensibility, which originated in this way, continue for some little time after the delusion was with- drawn, and another substituted the phenomenon being the more remarkable in that the ' subject,' who had been receiving the most ,ge nipping with total indifference, actually shed tears at the memory of a.rzV/^/Wy nipping, which he was told had been ad- ministered to him on the previous day. Closure of the eyes, again, may be present in a state which in respect of every other ntom is the alert one : indeed, unless the spasm which brings down the eyelid during hypnotisation be relieved by some distinct local process, the eye might naturally remain closed as much during the alert stage as during the deep. Nor can we even account the bodily activity which may be evoked during the alert ge, in contrast with the torpidity of the deep one, as a really sharp or essential distinction. The activity, it will be remem- bered, always has to be evoked ab crtm, and often much against the ' subject's ' inclination. If left to himself, he will sit as passive in the former state as in the latter, and the one will insensibly merge into the other. The difference here, then, might seem to be one rather of degree than of kind ; and the two states to be merely the less and the more advanced stage on the path to com- plete torpor. I may add that the advance of ///<///<;/ decline, where it can be marked, seems to be of the same graduated kind. Thus a subject ' who, first in the alert and then in the deep state, is assured that he is going to be hanged next morning, will succumb to the idea with about equal readiness in both cases ; and the only observable difference will be that in the deep state he does not seem equally to realise its gravity. A ' subject ' for instance, with whom I tried this particular experiment and who was rendered decidedly grave when in the alert state, was chiefly occupied, in the deep state, with the half-jocular invention of dodges to avoid pain. But, where the whole mental condition is so abnormal, it is hard to regard such slight differences in the power of judgment as important or distinctive, or to regard them as other than steps in a single process of mental unhingeing. The question then presents itself : Is there any distinction of Ttind between the two states any single test by which we can make sure in which of them the ' subject ' is any sort of phenomena, capable of constant reproduction, which will draw a clear line between them, and not merely represent a gradual and continuous decline of hypnotic waking into hypnotic sleep? I believe that there i.< such a distinction ; and that the phenomena needed to establish it are to be found in the domain of niemnry. And as memory will afford the means not only for distinguishing the one stage of hypnotism from the other, but also further for dis- tinguishing the ' hypnotic state ' as a whole from the normal one, I may attempt to make my rapid sketch embrace all its various conditions, so far as I have been able to observe them.