ON CERTAIN PHENOMENA OF HYPNOTISM. 101 



that it may not be inverted nor even inclined. If the cardboard 

 is turned round the portrait is no longer seen ; if it is turned 

 upside down the portrait is seen with its head downwards. The 

 subject never makes a mistake. If his eyes are covered, or if the 

 experimenter stands behind him while changing the position of the 

 object, his answers are always in conformity with its original 

 localisation. If the card be mixed with a dozen other precisely 

 similar cards, he sees it at once. But what is still more 

 extraordinary is that this hallucinatory vision is modified in 

 precisely the same way as ordinary vision. An opera-glass brings 

 imaginary objects nearer, or makes them appear further off, 

 according to the end of the glass presented to the eye, precisely 

 as if the objects were real. Moreover, the opera-glass will not 

 make objects appear more or less remote unless it has been 



adapted to the subject's sight. W , who is short sighted, 



could see nothing through a glass adapted to C— 's long sight. 



If a prism is used the imaginary object appears doubled, the 

 images appearing to be one below the other, or side by side, 

 according to the position of the^prism. Precautions are, of course, 

 taken that the subjects should not be aware that they are looking 

 through glasses or prisms. We have here phenomena resulting 

 from some action of the visual centres which we do not under- 

 stand, but we have nothing which conflicts with known laws. A 

 subject cannot see through a real person who has been made 

 invisible by suggestion. She imagines that she can, but she 

 cannot describe correctly what is going on behind where the real 

 person is obscuring the field of vision. In the same manner a 

 subject may be made to imagine himself the victim of various 

 accidents and diseases, but he cannot describe correctly the 

 symptoms of any disease he has not really had. Also, on looking 

 through an imaginary microscope, the image on a slide (of a 

 spider's leg, for instance) wall appear enormously large, but no 

 object will be perceived that is invisible to the naked eye. The 

 diameter of the pupil varies with the assumed distance of the 

 imaginary object. M. Fere says, " When we desired two of our 

 patients to look at a bird perched on a steeple, or flying high in 

 the air, the pupil was gradually dilated until its normal diameter 

 was nearly doubled. When we caused the bird to fly down, the 



