Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 50.djvu/561

Rh have the two fundamental facts of the representation of the movement before it is performed and the perception of the movement as it is performed, or the model and the copy states of consciousness. These are illustrated in a remarkable way in automatic handwriting or the performance of graphic movements which are unknown to the principal consciousness and in a great variety of other movements which are brought about in the secondary consciousness by sensations, ideas, and states of all kinds which may occur in the principal consciousness. A curious manifestation of this reunion of consciousnesses is that of suggestions from unconscious indications, as when the infliction of a certain number of pricks on an unconscious member gives rise to a suggestion of the number, or when the pressure of a coin or other design suggests a rude reproduction of the design more exact in detail than is made when the organism is in the normal condition. The connections of these consciousnesses are in fact capable of producing hallucinations of all the senses, fixed ideas, and emotional effects.

Among experiments cited in which the person is induced to perform unconscious movements is that of the exploring pendulum described by Chevreul, the oscillations of which depend on psychological movements in the mind of the performer of the experiment, it registering the unconscious movements of the hand and making them perceptible by increasing them. Automatic handwriting is a psychological action of a similar nature, but a little more delicate and more complex.

What are called unconscious movements of healthy subjects and the various reactions of the secondary personalities of hysterical patients are really identical, but differ in extent, in external circumstance, or in degree of development; and healthy subjects may present special conditions of mind that tend to bring on mental disintegration, as when attention is divided among a great many subjects or when it is intensely concentrated on one thing and distracted as to all others; but the unconsciousness thus produced does not reach the degree of development attained in hysterical persons and is not as brilliant. It will not spontaneously write letters and confessions, but is still something positively existing.

Recent researches have thrown new light upon phenomena of spiritism, or so-called "spiritualism," by showing that these phenomena are due largely to mental disaggregation or division. There is no essential difference between the experiments described upon hysterical patients and the more spontaneous experiments that the spiritists practice upon themselves. The principal differences lie in the minor, or, one might almost say, anecdotal conditions—i. e., in the medium, the terms employed, or the imagined explanations.