ARTIFICIAL SOMNAMBULISM. 189 



accord, draw up his body to its fullest height, and throw his 

 head slightly back ; his countenance then assumes an expres- 

 sion of the most lofty pride, and his whole mind is obviously 

 possessed by that feeling. When the first action does not 

 of itself call forth the rest, it is sufficient for the operator to 

 straighten the legs and spine, and to throw the head some- 

 what back, to arouse that feeling and the corresponding 

 expression to its fullest intensity. During the most com- 

 plete domination of this emotion, let the head be bent for- 

 ward, and the body and limbs gently flexed ; and the most 

 profound humility then instantaneously takes its place.' Of 

 course in some cases we may well believe that the expres- 

 sions thus described by Dr. Carpenter have been simulated 

 by the subject. But there can be no reason to doubt the 

 reality of the operator's control in many cases. Dr. Carpenter 

 says that he has not only been an eye-witness of them on 

 various occasions, but that he places full reliance on the tes- 

 timony of an intelligent friend, who submitted himself to Mr. 

 Braid's manipulations, but retained sufficient self-conscious- 

 ness and voluntary power to endeavour to exercise some 

 resistance to their influence at the time, and subsequently to 

 retrace his course of thought and feeling. ' This gentleman 

 declares/ says Dr. Carpenter, ' that, although accustomed to 

 the study of character and to self-observation, he could not 

 have conceived that the whole mental state should have 

 undergone so instantaneous and complete a metamorphosis, 

 as he remembers it to have done, when his head and body 

 were bent forward in the attitude of humility, after having 

 been drawn to their full height in that of self-esteem.' 



A most graphic description of the phenomena of hypno- 

 tism is given by Dr. Garth Wilkinson : ' The preliminary 

 state is that of abstraction, produced by fixed gaze upon 

 some unexciting and empty thing (for poverty of object 

 engenders abstraction), and this abstraction is the logical 

 premiss of what follows. Abstraction tends to become more 

 and more abstract, narrower and narrower ; it tends to unity 

 and afterwards to nullity. There, then, the patient is, at the 



