NORMAL AND HEIGHTENED SUGGESTIBILITY. 649 



When hypnotized, he passes into a light sleep, remains vaguely 

 conscious of his surroundings, and remembers all that happens. 

 The smaller muscles, as those of the eyelids, lips, and fingers, are 

 entirely under my control, but the larger groups only in part. I 

 can affect all his senses to some degree except that of hearing. 

 The sense of sight is also refractory, and, although I can obliterate 

 it, it is only for a few moments. I lean over him, look him in the 

 eyes, and say, " I am getting dim you can not see me clearly now 

 I am fading out altogether I am gone you are blind." " No," he 

 says, " I see you still." He tells me afterward that I did grow 

 faint and for a moment vanished, but almost instantly reappeared 

 in brighter colors than before. I put a chair before him and say : 



" There is Mr. S . You see him clearly he is looking at you." 



" No," is the reply, " I do not see him ; he is not there." I repeat 

 it over and over again, but without effect. I try again. We are 



in Prof. F J s lecture room, and R is sitting in the large chair 



on the platform. " There," I say, " in front of you, is Prof. F ." 



R denies it, denies it several times, and then suddenly admits it. 



When I press him to tell me exactly what he sees, I find that he 

 fancies himself sitting in the body of the room where he usually 



sits during lectures, and sees Prof. F standing on the platform 



in an attitude he frequently adopts. In other words, R - is 

 dreaming with his eyes open, and his dream is determined by my 



command, he himself supplying for the dream of Prof. F a 



suitable associative setting. At another time I told R to re- 

 flect upon the name " Henry Jones," and put in his hand a pencil. 

 After some time the hand fell to twitching and then swiftly wrote 

 "Henry." "What are you doing?" I ask. "Thinking of that 

 name." " What is your hand doing ? " " Nothing." " What did 

 it do a moment ago?" "It moved." " Did you move it ?" "No." 

 " What did it move for ? " "I don't know." No questioning on 

 my part could elicit any consciousness of the writing. In other 

 words, the touch suggestion given by contact with the pencil had 

 re- enforced the motor tendencies of the thought, and the thought 

 had literally written itself. 



I have not myself seen any cases of toxaemic suggestibility, 

 but many are reported in the literature of the subject. For 

 example, Dr. Janet describes a patient suffering from alcoholic 

 delirium who was suggestible in the highest degree. Dr. Carpen- 

 ter quotes from Dr. Moreau a description of the effects of hash- 

 eesh, than which nothing could better describe the augmentation 

 in the developmental and associative tendencies of the suggested 

 states. "We become the sport of impressions of the most oppo- 

 site kind; the continuity of our ideas may be broken by the 

 slightest cause. We are turned, to use a common expression, by 

 every wind. By a word or gesture our thoughts may be success- 



