Page:Mind (Old Series) Volume 9.djvu/494

 482 EDMUND GUENET : attendant swarm ; and conduct thus ceases to have reference to anything except the predominant idea. And the differ- ence between that isolation of the dominating idea which is the cause of automatic answers and actions in the case of the absorbed mathematician, and the isolation of the do- minating idea in the hypnotic automaton though to a superficial observer the states seem similar just because each produces irrational actions clearly goes to the very root of the phenomenon, regarded as mental. The mathematician has no fraction of attention to spare for external solicita- tions: his mind is in a state peculiarly impregnable to them; the mind of the hypnotic ' subject ' is absolutely at their mercy. The one mind is working with unusual force and individuality in its self-elected channel, and what its owner says or does in response to external influence is as little attended to by him as the influence itself. The other mind is working with marked absence of individuality in a channel elected by others, and what its owner says or does in re- sponse to external influence is that on which his attention is concentrated to the complete exclusion of every other thought. The attempted explanation of the phenomena on mental ground, by bringing the mental condition within the recog- nised domain of abstraction or automatism, thus falls to pieces. Braid's explanation was a very different one. He fearlessly took physical ground, and attributed the hyp- notic effects to an exceptional and profound nervous change produced by a particular muscular straining. His experi- ments and conclusions, which were the foundations of the actual science of Hypnotism, are too well known to need recapitulation. They dealt, it is true, chiefly with the lower phenomena the obvious bodily effects, and Braid's grasp of the subject on the psychical side was certainly very imperfect ; still his claims to have traced to their true source effects which had hitherto been ascribed to imagina- tion and imitation are sufficiently explicit to pass as a sug- gestion, at any rate, of a physiological basis for the higher phenomena with which we are here chiefly concerned. Since his time, the principal gain to our knowledge has been the proof that it is not necessary that the eye should be the -organ employed, or even that the strain should be of a muscular sort at all. With sensitive ' sub- jects,' the ticking of a watch held at the ear, and light monotonous passes acting on the nerves of touch, have been found as effective as the fixed gaze. But this, it will be observed, is a mere extension of Braid's doctrine ; for the