Page:Philosophical Review Volume 1.djvu/323

Rh example, whatever starts up at the spell of another's personal fascination, or takes its cue from the secret hopes, fears, likings, and repugnancies of our own inner nature, must be considered as a fruit of suggestion, the law of which, according to Dr. Schmidkunz, is as follows: "Under certain circumstances the mind may be so impressed that the idea of a phenomenon, once communicated to it, develops into the phenomenon itself, or in other words, that the content of the psychical phenomenon becomes a real phenomenon" (p. 56). It is easy to see what a mass of illustrations human history affords for suggestion understood in this wide way; and Dr. Schmidkunz, by accumulating and varying his examples, does his best to make us realize the immensity of the field.

But a question now arises: If suggestion be nothing but an immediate belief in what is conceived, and if one idea is believed and acted on thus immediately, whilst another is not, what are the conditions, either in the idea itself or in the subject of the experience, which determine the latter's 'suggestive' character? Dr. Schmidkunz tells us that one idea is suggestive to one sort of subject, another to another. This difference in the subject is called by Dr. Schmidkunz his suggestive individuality, to distinguish it from his suggestibility, which means merely the degree of his liability to Suggestion. This degree is increased by certain transitory states in which he may find himself, such as sleep, intoxication by alcohol, ether, hasheesh, opium, etc., states of concentration or absent-mindedness, states of solemn or fearful emotion, etc., and these are called by our author hypnoid conditions.

Of such conditions the hypnotic trance is of course the chief. The division of the book which treats of this topic, whilst far from giving a complete account in detail of all the curious phenomena which the various operators have elicited from their trance-subjects, in a broader way discusses all the general effects of trance. Dr. Bernheim and others have of late so minimized the importance of the trance-condition as to make it seem little more than an ordinary somnolence, suggested by the operator amongst all the other things which he suggests. "Iln'y a pas d'hypnotisme," declares M. Delbœuf in the Revue de l’Hypnotisme for last November, meaning that there is nothing but affirmation on the operator's part and belief on the subject's, and that the slumber which it is the usual routine to induce is less a means of making the later suggestions succeed, than a sign that here is a person in whom they will succeed. But our author, contrary to what one might expect, admits (pp. 101-103) that the hypnotic trance, however closely allied it may be to ordinary sleep, is not identical therewith. It contains in an intense degree that element of 'suggestibility' ab extrawhich in common sleep either lies 'latent' or shows itself but slightly. Moreover, it includes phenomena (not, indeed, in all subjects, but in many) which