Page:Mind (Old Series) Volume 9.djvu/489

 No. 36.] [OCTOBER, 1884. MIND A QUARTERLY REVIEW OF PSYCHOLOGY AND PHILOSOPHY. I. THE PROBLEMS OF HYPNOTISM. By EDMUND GUENEY. OF all physical analogies, the one which most constantly suggests itself outside the limits of the physical universe is that of the pendulum. Alike in our sensory experience where excitement leads on to fatigue and satiety begets aversion, and in the wider domains of religion and politics where movements and opinions so constantly tend to one extreme by a mere impetus of repulsion from the other, the rhythmic law of action and reaction is ever at work. But sensation and sentiment by no means exhaust the region to which these further applications of the law extend : we find it operating where it would least be sought, and invading the passionless paths of science herself. The characteristic instinct of the scientific spirit is, of course, to simplify and unify : as science advances, theories of a multitude of sepa- rate agents, whether personal deities or abstract faculties, gradually give way to the recognition of large general laws. But if in the main this tendency towards unity and simpli- fication brings nothing but good, it is inevitable that an end in itself so eminently conducive to intellectual peace and satisfaction should also act as a temptation that in yield- ing to the generalising instinct the mind should sometimes be swayed too fast and too far, and so be landed in premature 33