HYPNOTISM. 601 



The suggestion-theory may therefore he approved as coi^rect, 

 provided ive grant the trance-state as its prerequisite. The 

 three states of Charcot, the strange reflexes of Heiden- 

 hain, and all the other bodily phenomena which have been 

 called direct consequences of the trance-state itself, are not 

 such. They are products of suggestion, the trance-state 

 having no particular outward sj-mj^toms of its own ; but 

 without the trance-state there, those particular suggestions 

 could never have been successfully" made.* 



THE SYMPTOMS OF THE TRANCE. 



This accounts for the altogether indefinite array of symp- 

 toms which have been gathered together as characteristic 

 of the hypnotic state. The law of habit dominates hypnotic 

 subjects even more than it does waking ones. Any sort of 

 personal peculiarity, any trick accidentally fallen into in 

 the first instance by some one subject, may, by attracting 

 attention, become stereotyped, serve as a pattern for imi- 

 tation, and figure as the type of a school. The first sub- 

 ject trains the operator, the operator trains the succeeding 

 subjects, all of them in jDerfect good faith conspiring to- 

 gether to evolve a perfectly arbitrary result. With the ex- 

 traordinary perspicacity and subtlety of perception which 

 subjects often display for all that concerns the operator 

 with whom they are en rapport, it is hard to keep them 

 ignorant of anything which he expects. Thus it happens 

 that one easily verifies on new subjects what one has 

 already seen on old ones, or any desired symptom of which 

 one may have heard or read. 



The symptoms earliest observed by writers were all 

 thought to be typical. But with the multiplication of ob- 



* The word ' suggestion ' has been bandied about too much as if it ex- 

 plained all mysteries: When the subject obeys it is by reason of the 'ope- 

 rator's suggestion ' ; when he proves refractory it is in consequence of an 

 'auto-suggestion ' which he bus made to himself, etc., etc. What explains 

 everything explains nothing ; and it must be remembered that Avhat needs 

 explanation here is the fact that in a certain condition of the subject sug- 

 gestions operate as they do at no other time; that through them functions 

 are affected which ordinarily elude the action of the waking will ; and that 

 usually all this happens in a condition of which no after-memor\ remains. 



