240 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



are in the community a few individuals who, although of good 

 natural disposition, are so weak that they can be used as passive 

 instruments for the performance of crimes, there are probably 

 very few of them ; those few are seldom known ; if known, they 

 will seldom fall into the hands of a person inclined to abuse their 

 weakness, and, if they do, the part played by the hypnotizer will 

 frequently be detected. 



But if the dangers of criminal suggestion do not appear seri- 

 ous, there is a real danger connected with its possibility. The 

 plea of " emotional insanity " often adopted by sympathetic juries 

 is becoming somewhat timeworn, and in hypnotic suggestion 

 adroit lawyers may find an even more dangerous substitute. 



Suppose, for example, that A is accused of a crime for which 



no adequate motive can be shown. But B had a motive for 



its commission ; B is acquainted with the phenomena of sug- 

 gestion, A is known to be extremely suggestible, and B 



has had ample opportunity of influencing him. In such a case 



no amount of evidence that A committed the crime could set 



aside in my mind a " reasonable doubt " of A 's guilt. The 



occasional escape of a criminal on this pretext I would not regard 

 as a great matter, but the stigma which his acquittal would cast 



upon B , a stigma not the less real because incapable of proof 



or disproof, is a serious thing. 



A similar line of reasoning has been used once at least with 

 what seem to me more happy results. On the 25th of January, 



1888, a young married woman — Mme. G , the wife of a French 



engineer living in Algiers, and said to be one of the most beauti- 

 ful women in the country — was found lying dead not far from 

 her home, with two bullets through her head. Near by lay a 

 man named Chambige, a friend of her husband's, seriously 



wounded but living. Chambige claimed that Mme. G had 



been in love with him and he with her, and that they had agreed, 

 in view of the hopelessness of their passion, to die together ; he 

 had shot her first and then himself. There was not a shred of evi- 

 dence to show that Mme. G had ever had more than a friendly 



regard for Chambige, mingled perhaps with the pity a happy 

 woman feels for a lonely and disappointed man. To all appear- 

 ance she had always been a most loving and virtuous wife, with 

 no thought for anything but her husband and children. It was 

 proved that on the day of her death she had seemed as placid and 

 cheerful as usual, showing not a sign of mental perturbation; 

 that she was in the highest degree hypnotizable and suggestible, 

 and had frequently unwittingly hypnotized herself by looking 

 too long at a fixed point. It was also shown that Chambige had 

 been madly in love with her, that he probably was acquainted 

 with hypnotism, that he was a restless and unbalanced spirit 



