526 SCIENCE PROGRESS. 



system highly strung by the fear of detection, she fell a prey 

 to the suggestion started by the sound of the clock and was 

 hypnotised deeply, falling into the cataleptic state on the 

 spot with the things in her hand, to be discovered red- 

 handed some time afterwards, standing a stricken thief 

 Here it was not the word of command but an accidental 

 accessory, a sensory impression, the potent feature of which 

 was that it suggested hypnotisation because it was an 

 immediate antecedent. 



A subject may be thus hypnotised by a verbal command, 

 a eesture, or a written line, even where this is to take effect 

 the next day, or the next week ; any one of these initial 

 phases suggests the whole sequence. The hypnotisation of 

 Trilby by the picture of Svengali, described in Du Maurier's 

 novel, is founded on fact. Further the aw^akening may be 

 achieved in a similar way by suggestion.^ 



It is no wonder, therefore, that such hypnotic subjects 

 should readily respond to sensory impressions, even though 

 these may be far too slight to awaken consciousness in the 

 volitional onlooker. The unconscious subject is an ex- 

 quisitively sensitive machine with a nervous system tuned 

 to react to impressions of peripheral sense organs, which, 

 acting on the ordinary volitional mortal, awaken no 

 consciousness, and what is more they probably never can 

 awaken the consciousness of such a normal individual since 

 unconsciousness and volitional paralysis are essential factors 

 in making the nervous machinery sufficiently sensitive to re- 

 spond to the feeble stimuli. 



Let me give some instances of such exquisite sensibility, 

 choosing cases in which the series has been started by ex- 

 cessively minute impressions in peripheral sense organs. 



1. From the Skin.^h hypnotised subject in a dark 

 room is presented with a blank card from a whole series of 

 fifty-two similar ones and allowed to poise it in the hand ; 



^ This appears to me to be the answer to such critics of the physio- 

 logical theories of Heidenhain and Preyer as Moll. His remark that the 

 termination of Hypnosis by suLigestion is not consistent with Preyer's 

 fatigue theory of onset is in reality a statement that "suggestion" is 

 inexplicable on tliis theory. 



