Page:Mind (Old Series) Volume 9.djvu/514

 502 EDMUND GUENEY things if he had chosen ; but it may also be present in full force, and may even be directly opposed to the course of action pursued. What is abrogated is not the sense of desire or the power of willing, but the sense of self-determi- nation and the power of choosing. Even here questions of degree come in. In the very lightest stage as exemplified by the boy who strove to pick up the bank-note it cannot be said that choice, any more than desire, is abrogated ; while even in a deeper stage, a ' subject ' will sometimes experience such a sense of repugnance as seems to involve some residual power of avoidance ; and occasionally he will retain com- plete power of choice in some isolated particular. l At the same time, this suspension of choice must be accepted as the most marked and central characteristic of the higher form of the hypnotic trance. And for those who regard the intui- tion of free-will as a subjective illusion, it is a point worth notice that decided abnormalities of conduct should present themselves precisely when, and in proportion as, the sense of having a free-will and being a choosing ego disappears. The variations are at any rate concomitant ; and if nothing else varies, such concomitance would, outside metaphysics, be held to imply some sort of causal connexion. It may perhaps be objected that it would be incorrect to say that nothing else varies that the essential variation is simply a change in the particular motive that assumes prominence ; e.g., that when a command is given to put the hand between the bars of the fire, and the determinant motive to a normal mind would be the dread of being burnt, the determinant motive to a hypnotised mind is the desire to obey the controller. But this is not at all in accordance with the evidence of many hypnotic ' subjects ' who have been able to recall and give an account of their state of mind. They are often conscious of the falseness of what is told them, and of the folly and harmfulness of the things they are bidden to do 2 ; they are even sensible of a strong objection to doing them, and not 1 1 was recently experimenting with a youth who had formerly been a telegraph-boy, and who had taken a strong dislike to the metier. When hypnotised, he was at the mercy of any suggestion or command, except one : nothing would induce him to carry a telegram. In its strength of resistance to the hypnotic niono-ideism, this repugnance really itself reached the mono-ideistic intensity ; for the refusal was unaffected by considera- tions that would certainly have reversed it in the youth's normal state, e.g., when he was told that the matter was one of life and death, and that he should have ,20 for the job. 2 See a case reported by Dr. Hack Tuke, in the Journal of Mental Science, for April, 1883, p. 70.