528 SCIENCE PROGRESS. 



There is always one feature which is in favour of the 

 truth of these observations ; they have been observed in 

 very sensitive soninambuhstic subjects ; that is to say, the 

 recognition is achieved by people whose nervous system, 

 through the frequent will-paralysis of hypnotism, is precisely 

 in the condition in which it is able to respond to stimuli, 

 which in ordinary life would be quite ineffectual. 



The clairvoyant marvels of hypnotic stances, telling the 

 number of a bank-note which an operator reads and puts in 

 his waistcoat pocket, and other things of this kind, may, in 

 many cases, possibly in all, be due to collusion and fraud, 

 but there is no absolute physiological reason why they 

 should be. Any person in the presence of such a hypno- 

 tised subject is really placed before an exquisitely sensitive 

 machine which can respond to changes in his face, hands» 

 eyes and voice, too small to be noted by either himself or 

 any conscious bystander ; it is certain that if such small 

 changes occur they must produce physical phenomena of 

 light, sound, etc. ; it is certain that these must stream into 

 and play upon the sense-organs ; it is probable, there is 

 no physiological reason against it, that the peripheral sense- 

 organs may be in such a state of poise that they respond to 

 these stimuli even though exquisitely minute, and it is not 

 impossible that, if the terminal organs in eye, ear and skin 

 do respond, the minute messages sent to the brain may 

 produce the same effects as they would do if the person 

 were in ordinary life, and the impulses were the same but 

 much stronger. Further, every investigator may himself, 

 by changes of which he is unconscious, suggest, and suggest 

 unconsciously, to the hypnotised subject an idea which he 

 has in his mind through such agencies as the muscles of 

 expression, etc. The possibilities of suggestion are so 

 extensive that it would be rash to fix a limit to them. 



A great gulf, however, exists between all such responses 

 to sensory stimulation, which, however improbable, are 

 physiologically possible, and the doings of the clairvoyance 

 who professes to tell not merely a past, but a present 

 which cannot be known by the bystanders, which is 

 happening the other side of the world, or outside the 



