Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 67.djvu/605

Rh second, the age of Mesmerism, when personal magnetism was supposed to be the attractive power; the third, the age of Braid, when the science was put on a physiological basis; the fourth, the age of Bernheim and Charcot, when the idea of suggestion was brought to the front and hypnotism was used indiscriminately; and lastly, the fifth, the age we are in now, where the tendency is to restrict hypnotism and to classify it for specific uses.

Each individual has a separate state of consciousness which changes as do the thoughts therein. It is in the waking state that we have separate individualities. Now let us see the gradations of this consciousness. At this present moment we shall say we are listening intently to a sermon. That is the thing uppermost in our minds, and as long as our minds are upon it we are exercising acute consciousness. But, even if our attention to this sermon is the central thing, in the fringe of our mental picture a number of other thoughts are jumping around, any one of which may be powerful enough to force its way into the middle of the picture and to usurp its place. For example, all the while we are listening to this sermon we are more or less conscious that the seats we are in are hard, that somebody is talking next to us, etc. Our seats may become so uncomfortable that it may occupy our whole attention, or something outside may seem of more interest. If our attention jumps from one thing to another, it is called diffused consciousness. The next step to diffused consciousness is the dreamy state where the mind is half way between waking and sleep. Anything may come into the mind while in this state and be the predominant idea, to be chased out again by a next idea. It is for this reason that dreams usually present such a chaos and jumble. Our thoughts tumble over one another to get from the fringe of consciousness to the foreground. Any external sensation will be greatly exaggerated and may turn the trend of our thought. A warm bed might feel like the fire of hell, a heavy dinner with indigestion like the battles of heroes using our poor bodies as the fighting ground. As dreams gradually fade away we approach our first hypnosis or sleep, which, in the beginning, is slight, but gradually deepens, finally consciousness being entirely lost.

Thus we have traced the process of natural sleep to which hypnotic sleep is closely akin. The person at first has a diffused attention, he then confines his attention to sleep, he next passes into a dreaming state, then into a light sleep and lastly into a deep sleep.

The differences between it and natural sleep are as follows: first, the state ordinarily is produced by another; secondly, the person must have faith; and thirdly, the phenomena in the sleep must be produced by suggestion. The two latter were fully recognized years ago and