i66 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



heard, which he can trace to a previous expectancy. Of this I can 

 give you a very striking illustration in a case narrated by Dr. Tuke. 

 A lady, whose mind had been a good deal occupied on the subject 

 of drinking-fountains, was walking from Penrhyn to Falmouth, and 

 thought she saw in the road a newly-erected fountain, with the in- 

 scription, " If any man thirst, let him come hither and drink." Some 

 time afterward, on mentioning the fact with pleasure to the daughters 

 of a gentleman whom she supposed to have erected it, she was greatly 

 surprised to learn from them that no such drinking-fountain existed ; 

 and, on subsequently repairing to the spot, she found nothing but a 

 few stones, which constituted the foundation on which her exjiectant 

 imagination had built an ideal superstructure. 



The same may be said Avith regard to the control exercised over 

 the muscular movements of the biologized " subject," by the persua- 

 sion that he must or that he cannot perform a particular action. His 

 hands being placed in contact with one another, he is assured that he 

 cannot separate them, and they remain as if firmly glued together, 

 in spite of all his apparent efforts to draw them apart. Or, a hand 

 being held up before him, he is assured that he cannot succeed in 

 striking it ; and not only does all his power seem inadequate to the 

 performance of this simple action, but it actually is so as long as he 

 remains convinced of its entire impossibility. So I have seen a strong 

 man chained down to his chair, prevented from stepping over a stick 

 on the floor, or obliged to remain almost doubled upon himself in a 

 stooping position, by the assurance that he could not move. On the 

 other hand, an extraordinary power may be called forth in any set of 

 muscles as in hypnotized subjects by the assurance that the action 

 to be performed by them may be executed with the greatest facility. 

 This, again, is quite conformable to ordinary experience ; the assur- 

 ance that we can perform some feat of strength or dexterity nerving 

 us to the eflbrt; while our power is weakened by our own doubts of 

 success, still more by the unfavorable impression produced by a con- 

 fident prediction of failure. It is only needed for the mind to become 

 completely " possessed" by the one or the other conviction for it to 

 produce the bodily results of this kind which I have over and over 

 again witnessed. 



Now the phenomena of the " biological " condition seem to me of 

 peculiar significance, in relation to a large class of those which are 

 claimed as manifestations of a supposed "spiritual" agencj'. "When 

 a number of persons of that " concentrative and imaginative turn of 

 mind " which predisposes them to the "biological" condition sit for 

 a couple of hours (especially if in the dark) with the expectation of 

 some extraordinary occurrence such as the rising and floating in the 

 air, either of the human body, or of chairs or tables, without any 

 physical agency; the crawling of live lobsters over their persons ; the 

 contact of the hands, the sound of the voices, or the visible luminous 



