382 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



and their laughter, like their weeping, often ends in a remarkable 

 excess of excitement. 



One of the most interesting phenomena of somnambulism was 

 described thirty years ago by the Englishman Braid. If we put the 

 limbs of a magnetized person into a particular position or the body 

 into a particular attitude, the feelings which correspond with the posi- 

 tion or attitude will be called up by it. Thus, if we thrust out the 

 fists of a subject, his features will immediately take on the expression 

 of rage or menace. If we join his hands in the attitude of prayer, he 

 will fall upon his knees, and his features will give the appearance of 

 one who is engaged in supplication. His face thus assumes the true 

 expression of the passions ; and no painter, no sculptor, has succeeded 

 in representing terror, disgust, contempt, wrath, amorous tenderness, 

 religious ecstasy, with as much likeness to the life as do somnambulists, 

 even the least intelligent ones, when we excite those feelings in them. 

 This is because the mind, concentrated upon itself, is not disturbed by 

 any of the external causes of excitement which continually and gen- 

 erally without our knowledge impose a restraint upon our internal 

 feelings. The anger of a somnambulist is a typical anger, ideal, and 

 his countenance will wear the expression of it in a high degree accord- 

 ing as the feeling that animates him is strong and unmixed. 



The magnetizers make wonderful pretensions. They declare that 

 all these facts are of the earth earthy, and, assuming to rise away 

 above their plane, they have imagined that the intelligence of the 

 somnambulists is capable of pulling aside the curtains from the future, 

 of penetrating the mystery of things that are and will be. They have 

 talked of clairvoyance as a power of seeing without the aid of the eyes, 

 as for example of reading a shut book, of hearing without the aid of 

 the ears, of being present at a conversation which is taking place at 

 the same moment at the other end of the world. Justice must be 

 done to these fables ; there is nothing supernatural in somnambulism, 

 any more than in the demoniac attack, and no well-demonstrated fact 

 has ever permitted us to conclude that such a thing as double sight or 

 clairvoyance exists. The somnambulists who are exhibited in the 

 theatres and at fairs, as, for example, the celebrated Lucille who was 

 shown several years ago, are really put to sleep, but the condition of 

 genuine somnambulism into which they have fallen does not exclude 

 them from the power of simulating clairvoyance. They are aware of 

 what they are doing, and they know very well that it is their business 

 to divine the future. They are ancesthetic, and we may pinch them, 

 prick them, burn them, without exciting a painful sensation. The 

 phenomena of catalepsy may also be very easily produced upon them. 

 Their intelligence, over-excited by their nervous affections, enables 

 them to find ingenious answers. In a word, the clairvoyants of the 

 theatres and fairs are really asleep, but they are not diviners, only sick 

 persons, and their true place would be in a hospital for the insane. 



