230 



POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



releasing touch of cold a permutator of highest degree ? It made 

 every other possible, it forged the first link in the chain of forces, 

 vital, mental, moral, in the life of earth and man. 



What is here indicated in outline was suggested by the writer 

 in the Popular Science Monthly for June, 1876. He has since 

 gathered from men of mark in diverse walks of science data from 

 which inferences such as those here set forth may be deduced 

 in ample detail. These data he expects in due time to offer to 

 the public, together with consideration of the facts which mask 

 or qualify the permutative principle in evolution a principle 

 which accounts for the leaps of progress, human and general, for 

 the accelerations of that progress, and for there being chapters 

 missing in its story. 



POSTHYPNOTIC AND CRIMINAL SUGGESTION. 



By Prof. WILLIAM KOMALNE NEWBOLD. 



IN my two preceding articles (March and April numbers) I have 

 discussed what may be termed categorical suggestions and 

 other closely related topics. I shall now take up certain other 

 forms of suggestion. 



From the conception of suggestibility it follows that any 

 mental state, however initiated, tends to produce certain results. 

 The most familiar method of initiation is through the instrumen- 

 tality of language, but there are other methods. What is known 

 as waxlike catalepsy, for example (flexibilitas cerea), is merely a 

 form of suggestibility to motor impressions. When I take the 

 arm of a cataleptic patient and bend it into a given position it re- 

 mains fixed where I put it. In bending it I produce certain sensa- 

 tions, approximately those of a movement ; among the possible 

 results of such sensations is the production of the movement in 

 question, and in the patient's disordinated condition this is the only 

 apparent and perhaps the only actual result. It is also true that 

 a pseudo-catalepsy may be found in less complete forms of dis- 

 ordination, in which the movement which I impress upon the arm 

 is felt by the drowsy upper consciousness and accepted as indica- 

 tive of a command. I saw some years ago a very curious illustra- 

 tion of an analogous motor suggestion in the case of a man who 

 was subject to hystero-epileptic convulsions. Dr. B had hypno- 

 tized him standing ; he then fell backward, and we allowed him to 

 recline with his heels on the floor and his back flat upon the bed. 

 This brought him into a very uncomfortable position, in which 

 his head was bent backward toward his heels. He at once began 

 to show signs of a convulsion, and, in spite of our imperative sug- 

 gestions to keep quiet, grew worse every second. Then it oc- 



