8o8 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



unable to cry for help or to run. At another time, when about 

 twelve years old, his grandfather died. He stole unobserved into 

 the room where the body lay and lifted the shroud. No sooner 

 had his eyes fallen upon the dead face than he lost all power of 

 thought and of movement and remained fixed, the shroud uplifted 

 in his hand and his eyes staring at the corpse, until some one came 

 in and drew him away. As soon as I heard this account it struck 

 me that he would probably prove to be a good hypnotic patient. 

 Although himself very skeptical, he allowed me to try, and in 

 three minutes I had him in a deep lethargy in which he was 

 almost absolutely suggestible. It did not occur to me at the time 

 to look for signs of incoordination, but two years later I found 

 that his visual field was much restricted that is, he was blind to 

 its outlying portions and also that his sensation of touch was 

 more or less impaired. I have no doubt that the facility with 

 which his upper consciousness was both accidentally and inten- 

 tionally displaced sprang from the same conditions of which 

 these symptoms of sensory incoordination gave evidence. 



Hypertrophy of these two kinds may be the lot of any mental 

 state. When it is a percept that usurps the conscious field, we 

 speak of the patient as being " fascinated " ; if the percept is 

 attended by great emotional disturbance, we use such phrases as 

 " spellbound with horror," " drunk with joy,'' etc. When the 

 hypertrophied states are chiefly ideas without marked emotional 

 accompaniments, we speak of the patient as being " in trance," 

 " seeing a vision," or simply as " dreaming." If the visions are 

 accompanied by intensely pleasurable emotions the state is termed 

 " ecstasy." In the higher grades of ecstasy the concrete visions 

 disappear and clear consciousness is lost in a flood of emotions of 

 an intensely pleasurable character. The types of trance in which 

 the emotion is acutely disagreeable grief, terror, remorse are 

 usually classed as diseases, partly because they unfit the patient 

 to a greater degree for the duties of life, and partly because they 

 often spring from organic disease, especially of nutrition. The 

 disordered physiological processes give rise to floods of vague but 

 intensely disagreeable sensations, and these in turn generate the 

 horrible and terrifying visions. Many trance states are revealed 

 in the patient's movements, but for the present I shall speak only 

 of those which are remembered and described afterward. 



The attainment of ecstasy has been the aim of many religious 

 sects in ancient and modern times, by whom it is conceived to be 

 a direct union with the Divine ; these form an important branch 

 of the group of religious mystics, all of whom believe that the 

 human soul is capable of direct union with God during this 

 pi-esent life. But our information as to the various possible 

 types of ecstasy is very defective. The essential element is the 



