WHAT IS MESMERISM? 185 



is essentially the abolition of consciousness and will, 

 by the repression for the time being of the intellectual 

 centres. It is useless and needless to say how this 

 occurs ; it is sufficient to say it does occur. In one 

 way or another, the hypnotiser succeeds in abolishing 

 the intellectuality of his subject. The lower centres 

 are stimulated and come to the front. Automatic life 

 replaces the conscious existence ; and the individual 

 is, temporarily, as clay in the hands of the potter : he 

 is made to think and act at the behest and command 

 of the individual who has succeeded in reducing him to 

 the level of a mere machine. 



This is the essence of hypnotism. Sir Andrew 

 Clark put the matter in other words when he said 

 that the liability of any one to be mesmerised stood in 

 inverse ratio to their intellectual development. If this 

 means anything at all, it implies exactly what I meant 

 when I declared that it is the intellectually sensitive 

 (or weak) who are the hypnotiser's best subjects. 



After this declaration, I have no more to say on the 

 subject. If Dr. Bramwell or any other hypnotiser can 

 persuade certain people that they are not ill, that pain 

 has left them, and that they must be made unconscious 

 while being operated upon, I have no concern whatever 

 with his procedure. All I maintain is, that he will 

 not, and cannot, succeed with people having a fair or 

 complete share of volition and intellectual force. 



Nor do I envy those who can be " mesmerised." 

 As I have often expressed it, a person who is hypno- 

 tised is in the position (qua his brain) of having the 

 captain of the ship deposed from the quarterdeck, and 

 the cabin-boy installed in the captain's place. And 

 this is not an agreeable, safe, or healthy proceeding 

 either on shipboard or in mental life. 



