104 ON CERTAIN PHENOMENA OF HYPNOTISM. 



Similarly, a patient seated at a piano, and music placed before her, 

 would go on playing for hours from the same lines without turning 

 over a page. All the complicated co-ordinated movements in- 

 volved in the acts of sewing, and of playing from printed music, 

 which require the action of the higher centres of the brain in their 

 acquisition, have become by habit as purely reflex as are the 

 complex co-ordinated movements of the frog as he balances him- 

 self from the palm to the back of the hand. My space is now 

 drawing to an end, and I regret that there has been only room 

 for a very small part of the interesting facts which could be 

 related on the subject of this article. 



One is driven at last to wonder what is this " Ego " of which 

 we are more supremely conscious than we are, or can be, of any- 

 thing else. Is it a collection of innumerable, separate conscious- 

 nesses controlled into one whole in health, by the highest cerebral 

 centres ; as our bodies, of which we are also supremely conscious 

 as a whole, are composed of many billions of monads, living, 

 dying, devouring one another, multiplying, executing their several 

 functions, independently of any will of ours ? We read of patients 

 of bad character, and with intolerable tempers, becoming valuable 

 members of their families, whilst kept in a continued state of 

 suggestion ; of idle students becoming industrious under similar 

 conditions. Where is the " Ego " here ? For if the subject is 

 allowed to escape the influence of suggestion, no recollection of 

 the better self is left. The phenomena of double life, where the 

 patient really leads the life of two independent individuals, are as 

 yet most imperfectly understood, though they have about them 

 nothing miraculous. Cases, well authenticated, are known, where 

 the patient leads not only two independent, but several lives, in 

 each of which he has no recollection whatever of what he has 

 done, or learned in the others. About six years ago such a case 

 was reported, with the fullest details of time and place, in the 

 British Medical Journal ; the patient being a French peasant-lad. 



We shall doubtless for many a year have cause to say with 

 Hamlet, " There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, 

 than are dreamt of in our philosophy." 



I should feel much obliged to any person reading this paper if he would 

 kindly furnish me with the details of this case, if he has the back numbers of 

 the Journal. Address to " Care of Editor. " 



