Page:Mind (Old Series) Volume 9.djvu/516

 504 EDMUND GUKNEY : movements which are evoked by the momentary stimulus of the first idea, to the long-continued and far-spreading muscular contractions which in a sensitive ' subject ' will follow on a brief sensory stimulation : both are signs of the characteristic hypnotic irritability. This view seems strongly confirmed by the fact that, if the boy's muscles be examined, they will be found in the state which corresponds to the first idea that of impossibility and not to the second. I have myself tested this many times. A boy's arm being flexed, he is offered a sovereign to extend it. He struggles till he is red in the face ; but all the while his triceps is remaining quite flaccid, or, if some rigidity appears in it, the effect is at once counteracted by an equal rigidity in the biceps. The idea of the impossibility of extension, i.e., the idea of continued flexion, is thus ' acting itself out,' even when wholly rejected from the mind. It is perhaps well that my space is nearly exhausted ; for it might be held unfitting, in this place, to do more than hint at results, however simple and precise, which break away from every form of hypnotic hypothesis. Community of sensation between ' subject ' and operator ; the distinction by the ' subject ' of the operator's faintest whisper, either amid deafening uproar, or among a number of other faint whispers of similar sound ; local anaesthesia produced in the absence of expectancy by a process which is itself unfelt ; inhibition of speech or memory without a w T ord or sign of any sort ; a writer who should say that he has participated in experiments which establish these facts would grievously imperil his chance of being listened to on the sober ground of Hypnotism. At the same time the naivete and sudden- ness with which the clamorous facts of Hypnotism itself were welcomed within the portals of science, as soon as a savant of established reputation took the trouble to learn (very imperfectly) the ABC of them, and to proclaim that they actually were realities, that his own brother had been experimented on, and that it was not all cheat- ing, as he had all his life supposed may perhaps sug- gest a quiet surmise as to the scientific future of other events which, with all their absurdity and inadmissibility thick upon them, still go through the hollow form of taking place with surprising accuracy. But leaving these matters aside, no sketch of ' the problems of hypnotism ' could be in the least complete without mentioning certain objections which present themselves in the direct path of orthodox