312 THE PLAY OF ANIMALS. 



ent psychic processes may run parallel, that there may be 

 a separate subliminal consciousness acting with entire 

 independence. When, for instance, the seventeen hand- 

 claps were registered obediently to post-hypnotic sug- 

 gestion, the waking consciousness took no note of the 

 count. However, there often seems to be a kind of 

 unconscious connection, like a subterranean wire lead- 

 ing from the subliminal to the waking consciousness, 

 that can not be accounted for by the ordinary change 

 from one state to the other. Even in the deepest ab- 

 sorption, when for a long time there is no recollec- 

 tion of the real ego, we do not substitute appearances 

 for reality. A simple hypnotic experiment of MolFs 

 will illustrate the fact of such a connection: "I told 



X in the hypnotic state that when he awoke he 



should lay an umbrella on the floor. When he did 

 awake I told him to do what he chose, and at the same 

 time I gave him a folded paper, on which I had written 

 what he would do. He carried out the suggestion, 

 and was amazed when he read the paper. He declared 

 that he thought he was doing something this time that 

 had not been suggested.^^ * In a case like this the idea 

 of the act must come over from the subliminal con- 

 sciousness without the subject^s suspecting whence it 

 comes. Emotions, too, may be conveyed in the same 

 way. The subject laughs on awaking, as has been 

 suggested during hypnosis, without knowing that he 

 is obeying a command, and finds some other reason 

 for it.t 



* A. Moll, Der Hypnotismus, p. 128. 



f That this is not always so is proved by those occasions when 

 the subject bursts out laughinfj. but afterward knows nothing 

 about it ; the feeling is not transferred to the major consciousness. 

 Ibid., p. 120. 



