Page:Mind (Old Series) Volume 9.djvu/518

 506 EDMUND GUBNEY : of an idea that the ' subjects ' believe that their mesmerist has special power, and as a consequence of that belief succumb to him. But it really seems absurd to suppose that this faith in a single individual's power is unfailingly complete and absorbing in every member of a set of careless boys who are new to the whole business, and whose obedi- ence to the simple directions which they receive, and passive acceptance of what happens to them, certainly do not suggest any nice criticism of the nature and limits of their operator's faculties. There is no difficulty in impressing such ' subjects ' with the idea that some other person present, who may be of a more dominant and imposing aspect than their recognised controller, is also a powerful ' mesmerist ' ; but this preparatory idea will not be found to invest that person with any of the controller's powers. The hypothesis of suggestion and expectancy is still more obviously inappropriate where the end in view is not the production, but the termination, of the trance-condition. It would be very strained to imagine that the mind of the dominated at the time when the condition was being pro- duced, by the idea that only the producer of it has the power to put a stop to it. Yet he will often remain completely uninfluenced by the efforts of others to awake him, and that, too, even when only a light phase of the trance has been induced. The upward passes, or the slap of the hands and sudden call, which are at once effective when used by the right operator, may be repeated in vain by others. This fact has occasionally led to very awkward results ; as, for instance, in London some years ago, when one mesmerised ' subject ' was set to mesmerise some one else, and then, after he had succeeded in producing a state of profound coma, passed himself into a condition in which it was im- possible to impress him with the necessity of undoing his own work. This disagreeable incident suggests another well-known class of phenomena of which no explanation on any purely hypnotic hypothesis seems possible the so-called ' cross- mesmerism ' or agitated bewilderment which is apt to result when a mesmerised person is subjected to new treatment from a second operator, before the effects of the former treat- ment have disappeared. The phenomena are of too alarm- ing and distressing a kind to admit of deliberate experiment, but when once seen, are not easily mistaken ; and a slight but sufficient indication of their nature is sometimes afforded in a momentary way by the violence which the
 * subject ' is in every case dominated, or even that he was