SUGGESTIBILITY AND KINDRED PHENOMENA. 523 



the sensation had succeeded in developing, the least suggestion of 

 torture as an explanation would have been quenched by a mass of 

 inconsistent ideas. In sleep the grotesque notion finds no obstacle 

 to its acceptance. Who has not dreamed of himself as being in 

 some public place and then suddenly become aware that he is 

 naked and exposed to the gaze of the crowd ? What is this but 

 the coalescence of the sensations arising from his actual state as 

 he lies in bed with the thought systems representing his imagi- 

 nary experiences ? 



If one puts a man asleep and all the while keeps talking to 

 him, touching him and otherwise keeping him aware -of one's 

 presence, one gets in many cases a peculiar type of sleep known 

 as a hypnotic state. We may suppose that all the elements com- 

 posing the man's normal consciousness are disordinated and for 

 the most part extinguished, but the one group which he calls the 

 consciousness of the presence of his friend Smith who is hypnotiz- 

 ing him still remains. That has no chance to go to sleep, as it 

 were, and consequently in his disordinated brain all processes 

 originated by that one still active group tend to work out their 

 normal results with a precision and certainty unknown in wak- 

 ing life. He is either totally dead to all other stimuli, or can be 

 made aware of them only with difficulty. Frequently the attempt , 

 to force such a stimulus upon him is followed by great nervous 

 excitement, somewhat like that which usually follows a great 

 shock or surprise. This is, I think, the true character of the 

 suggestibility found in hypnotic states and of the so-called phe- 

 nomenon of rapport. 



Another common form of disordination is that which accom- 

 panies a " nerve storm." We know that if a mass of heated and 

 moisture-laden air begins to escape into the upper and colder 

 regions of the atmosphere at any point, the upgoing current, no 

 matter how slender at the outset, may increase in volume and 

 velocity until it develops into a vast storm center hundreds of 

 miles in extent. So also does it appear that a relatively small and 

 localized nerve explosion is capable, under conditions which we 

 do not at all understand, of propagating itself irregularly through 

 the nervous system, ignoring the usual association paths, until 

 the entire nervous mechanism is exhausted. Such a progressive, 

 periodic disturbance is said to be epileptiform. The causes of the 

 various forms of epilepsy are often unknown. Some, however, 

 are due to mechanical irritation of the cortex, as by a depression 

 of the skull, an extravasation of blood, disease of the membranes, 

 or the growth of a tumor on the cortex. Others are produced 

 by some continuous and intense peripheral irritation, as that 

 springing from an unhealed wound, an ingrown nail, etc. Others 

 still are due to the memory of some great shock or fright, and 



