100 ON CERTAIN PHENOMENA OF HYPNOTISM. 



of his own free will. I will give one instance, M. Bernheim 



said to S 5 formerly a sergeant, whilst he was in a state of 



somnambulism, " On what day will you be free during the first 

 week of October?" The ex-sergeant replied, " On Wednesday." 

 '' Then listen to me. Go to Dr. Liebault on the first Wednesday 

 in October, and you will see the President of the Republic, who 

 will give you a medal and a pension." He said that he would go, 

 but remembered nothing of it when he awoke. On the 3rd of 

 October, however, sixty-three days after the suggestion, S. pre- 

 sented himself at Dr. Liebault's. Without paying attention to 

 anyone he went to the left side of the room, made a respectful 

 salute, and said, " Your Excellency." Then he extended his 

 right hand, as if receiving something, and said, " I thank your 

 Excellency." Dr. Liebault then asked him to whom he was 

 speaking, and he replied, " To the President of the Republic." 



That curious and most mysterious process which we call 

 unconscious cerebration may enable persons who have been 

 hypnotised to perform certain actions at a given date, without 

 recollection in the interim, just as anyone in ordinary life may 

 forget a name, or a fact, or a date, and find it suddenly '• come 

 back " to the memory without conscious effort. So, too, we 

 constantly remember with extreme suddenness some action to be 

 performed at the time we recollect it, though we have forgotten all 

 about it in the meantime. Many of us wake from deep sleep at 

 a particular time every morning, and there must be a something 

 keeping guard, a habit impressed on some brain-cell. A child 

 falls out of bed, until some process of unconscious cerebration is 

 established which prevents us from falling out of bed in the 

 deepest or in the most uneasy sleep. 



The phenomena, which I venture to think are the least explain- 

 able by any laws known at present to us, are some of those 

 attending hallucinations of vision, and the " transposition of the 

 senses " caused by the action of a magnet. 



If, by means of suggestion, a portrait is caused to appear on a 

 sheet of cardboard, of which both sides are alike, the picture will 

 always be seen on the same side of the cardboard, and, in what- 

 ever direction it may be presented, the subject will always place it 

 in the position which it occupied at the moment of suggestion, so 



