Science |Pracji*ess, 



New Series. No. 5. October, 1897. Vol. I. 



SOME PHYSIOLOGICAL ASPECTS O. 

 HYPNOTISM.^ 



MENTAL phenomena may be viewed from two en- 

 tirely different standpoints. With one of these 

 aspects, that furnished by the introspective method, a 

 physiologist has no business to meddle, but the other, in 

 which the Brain is considered as the organ of mind, forms 

 a most important part of the Physiology of the Nervous 

 System. 



Mind is undoubtedly correlated with the existence of 

 special living structures ; the processes which constitute, in 

 physiological parlance, the functional attributes of nervous 

 tissues are transmuted in the crucible of consciousness into 

 the various moods of sensation, thought and volition. The 

 rationale of such transformation is as inexplicable as that of 

 the origin of matter or the commencement of life. 



From the physiologist's point of view, the transmutation 

 is one in which material changes capable of investigation by 

 physical methods are suddenly associated with the pres- 

 ence of immaterial phenomena, the characters of which his 

 methods are impotent to decipher. He recognises that this 

 condition which has suddenly burst into blossom is, from 

 another point of view, existence itself, the conscious some- 

 thing provoked from senseless nothing, but, in spite of this 

 recognition, he knows that the presence of the mental state 



^ A Lecture delivered at Magdalen College, Oxford, March, 1897. 



35 



