1 88 ROUGH WAYS MADE SMOOTH'. 



whether it was possible to pass over a duck in a canoe. Of 

 course on the approach of either canoe a duck would try to 

 get out of the way on one side or the other ; but on the 

 course of the canoe being rapidly changed, the duck would 

 have to change his course. Then the canoe's course would 

 again be changed, so as to compel the duck to try the other 

 side. The canoe drawing all the time nearer, and her 

 changes of course being made very lightly and in quicker 

 and quicker alternation as she approached, the duck would 

 generally get bewildered, and finally would allow the canoe 

 to pass over him, gently pressing him under water in its 

 course. The process, in fact, was a sort of mild keel- 

 hauling. The absolute rigidity of body and the dull stupid 

 stare with which some of the ducks met their fate seems to 

 me (now : I was not in 1859 familiar with the phenomena 

 of hypnotism) to suggest that the effect was to be explained 

 as Czermak explains the hypnotism of the pigeons on which 

 he experimented. 



We shall be better able now to understand the phenomena 

 of artificial somnambulism in the case of human beings. If 

 the circumstances observed by Kircher, Czermak, Lewissohn, 

 and others, suggest, as I think they do, that animal hypnotism 

 is a form of the phenomenon sometimes called fascination, 

 we may be led to regard the possibility of artificial somnam- 

 bulism in men as a survival of a property playing in all pro- 

 bability an important and valuable part in the economy 

 of animal life. It is in this direction, at present, that the 

 evidence seems to tend. 



The most remarkable circumstance about the completely 

 hypnotised subject is the seemingly complete control of the 

 will of the ' subject ' and even of his opinions. Even the mere 

 suggestions of the operator, not expressed verbally or by signs, 

 but by movements imparted to the body of the subject, are 

 at once. responded to, as though, to use Dr. Garth Wilkinson's 

 expression, the whole man were given to each perception. 

 Thus, 'if the hand be placed/ says Dr. Carpenter, ' upon the 

 top of the head, the somnambulist will frequently, of his own 



