Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 50.djvu/532

514 the supernormal field the facts already reported, should they be substantiated by further inquiry, would go far toward showing that consciousness is an entity governed by laws and possessed of powers incapable of expression in material conceptions.

I do not myself regard the theory of independence as proved, but I think we have enough evidence for it to destroy in any candid mind that considers it that absolute incredulity as to its possibility which at present characterizes the average man of science.

Now, if it were proved true, what explanations can it provide for the phenomena of suggestibility and automatism?

The simplest way of looking at the facts is to ascribe them to a partial separation of mind and body. This notion is based upon the fact that the memory of the secondary state is so often lost. The mind may be supposed to be asleep while another person plays upon the sensitive machine which it has just been using. When memory is retained, we may suppose that consciousness, upon being reunited to its body, reads off, as it were, the traces left in the brain by what was going on in its absence. This is the notion which the very word automatism connotes, and it has been held more or less clearly by many writers. It accounts very well for most of the facts of hypnotic states, for the simpler forms of post-hypnotic suggestion, and is especially suggested by hysterical losses of sensation and movement, and by successive personalities. The same fundamental conception may be interpreted in accordance with the theory of dependence by ascribing all these phenomena to brain processes of too low a degree of intensity to awaken consciousness.

But this notion breaks down when applied to the more advanced stages of motor automatism, as fully developed automatic writing, to simultaneous personalities, to the more advanced forms of post-hypnotic suggestion, to trance and ecstasy. In all these cases we have as good evidence for the existence of consciousness as we ever have, save that the consciousness which we infer does not become a part of some recognized person's memories. Consequently we must admit either that organized matter, or some tertium quid which is neither mind nor matter, is capable of producing the effects which we ascribe to consciousness, or else that there sometimes exists in connection with a given body a consciousness distinct from that known to us.

The first of these alternatives would practically bring us back to the theory of dependence. The second, the doctrine of a tertium quid, is found in many writers, although there is no agreement as to the characteristics of the third entity. This notion is indeed descended from the ancient distinction between body, soul, and spirit. The tertium quid is usually conceived as a semimaterial