ARTIFICIAL SOMNAMBULISM. 193 



withdrawn from the finger before the somnambule was intro- 

 duced.' The sense of touch has, in other cases, been singu- 

 larly intensified, insomuch that slight differences of heat, 

 which to ordinary feeling were quite inappreciable, would 

 be at once detected, while such differences as can be but 

 just perceived in the ordinary state would produce intense 

 distress. 



In some respects, the increase of muscular power, or 

 rather of the power of special muscles, is even more striking, 

 because it is commonly supposed by most persons that the 

 muscular power depends entirely on the size and quality 

 of the muscles, the state of health, and like conditions, 

 not on the imagination. Of course every one knows that 

 the muscles are capable of greater efforts when the mind 

 is much excited by fear and other emotions. But the 

 general idea is, I think, that whatever the body is capable 

 of doing under circumstances of great excitement, it is in 

 reality capable of doing at all times if only a resolute effort 

 is made. Nor is it commonly supposed that a very wide 

 difference exists between the greatest efforts of the body 

 under excitement and those of which it is ordinarily capable. 

 Now, the condition of the hypnotised subject is certainly 

 not one of excitement. The attempts which he is directed 

 to make are influenced only by the idea that he can do what 

 he is told, not that he must do so. When a man pursued 

 by a bull leaps over a wall which under ordinary conditions 

 he would not even think of climbing, we can understand 

 that he only does, because he must, what if he liked he 

 could do at any time. But if a man who had been making 

 his best efforts in jumping, cleared only a height of four feet, 

 and presently being told to jump over an eight-feet wall, 

 cleared that height with apparent ease, we should be disposed 

 to regard the feat as savouring of the miraculous. 



Now Dr. Carpenter saw one of Mr. Braid's hypnotised 

 subjects a man so remarkable for the poverty of his physi- 

 cal development that he had not for many years ventuied 

 to lift up a weight of twenty pounds in his ordinary state 



o 



