The Will. 751 



subjects, was known to swing a 28 Ib. weight around his head by his 

 little finger. His muscular development was very deficient and in his 

 ordinary state he shrank from the least exertion. His power in this 

 case came from the concentration of all his nervous energy upon the ef- 

 fort, which in this state can be done not because, as some say, the will 

 is set aside 1 and the man is governed by the idea suggested by the < 'pro- 

 fessor," but because that part of the brain is dull and passive, which in 

 its waking state would supply such elements of doubt and distraction as 

 would counteract and weaken the idea suggested by the professor. So 

 that the resulting will formed of these mutually cancelling and discord- 

 ant elements is, in the waking state, far weaker than in that of artificial 

 somnambulism. When this subject was assured by the professor that he 

 was physically incompetent to lift a handkerchief, he failed to do it after 

 apparently strenuous efforts. Here the only active idea the man had on 

 the subject was unfavorable to the formation of an efficient volition, so 

 it was not formed. When a person is under the influence of some over- 

 powering emotion which absorbs all his attention he is in a state some- 

 what analogous to that of the hypnotic subject who is engrossed by a 

 single idea. < An Old cook maid tottering with age, having heard an 

 alarm of fire, seized an enormous box containing her whole property, and 

 ran down stairs with it as easily as she could have carried a dish of 

 meat. After the fire had been extinguished she could not lift the box 

 a hairs-breadth from the ground and it required two men to convey it up 

 stairs again. " The principle illustrated in this case is precisely the 

 same as that in the case of Mr. Braid's subject mentioned above. But 

 nobody will pretend the woman's will was set aside. On the contrary it 

 was astonishingly strengthened by an unusual stimulus. When we have 

 a doubt regarding our abilit} T to perform something, it ma} r be, and often 

 is, modified by the expression of the opinions of other people in the na- 

 ture of suggestions which go to form strengthening or detracting ele- 

 ments of our will. 



Again, a desire may fail to become an operative will. This happens 

 when the subject insanely or hysterically loses his belief in his ability to 

 do what he desires. He is like the hypnotic subject who thought he 

 could not lift a handkerchief and therefore could not. 



Carpenter cites the case of a man who could not do so simple a thing 

 as" take off his coat when he wanted to go to bed, although he greatly de- 

 sired to do so, and had all his faculties about him except an efficient 

 will to move the necessary muscles. Once he could not for half an hour 

 pick up a glass of water he had ordered and wished to take. 



In another case the inefficiency of the will was limited to the man's 

 going into or past vacant spaces. It took some minutes to pass through 



1 Carpenter takes this ground. 



