614 PSYCHOLOGY. 



the lookers-on. He acts, in sliort, with his usual sense of per- 

 sonal spontaneity and freedom ; and the disbelievers in the 

 freedom of the will have naturally made much of these case* 

 in their attempts to show it to be an illusion. 



The only really mysterious feature of these deferred sug- 

 gestions is the patient's absolute ignorance during the inter- 

 val preceding their execution that they have been deposited 

 in his mind. They will often surge up at the preappointed 

 time, even though you have vainly tried a while before to 

 make him recall the circumstances of their production. The 

 most important class of post-hypnotic suggestions are, of 

 course, those relative to the patient's health — bowels, sleep, 

 and other bodily functions. Among the most interesting' 

 (apart from the hallucinations) are those relative to future 

 trances. One can determine the hour and minute, or the 

 signal, at which the patient will of his own accord lapse inta 

 trance again. One can make him susceptible in future to 

 another operator who may have been unsuccessful with him 

 in the past. Or more important still in certain cases, one 

 can, by suggesting that certain persons shall never be able 

 hereafter to put him to sleep, remove him for all future time 

 from hypnotic influences which might be dangeroiis. This,, 

 indeed, is the simple and natural safeguard against those 

 * dangers of hypnotism ' of which uninstructed persons talk 

 so vaguel}'. A subject who knows himself to be ultra-sus- 

 ceptible should never allow himself to be entranced by an 

 operator in whose moral delicacy he lacks complete confi- 

 dence ; and he can use a trusted operator's suggestions to 

 protect himself against liberties which others, knowing his 

 weakness, might be tempted to take with him. 



The mechanism by which the command is retained until 

 the moment for its execution arrives is a mystery which has 

 given rise to much discussion. The experiments of Gurney 

 and the observations of M. Pierre Janet and others on cer- 

 tain hysterical somnabulists seem to prove that it is stored 

 up in consciousness ; not simply organically registered, but 

 that the consciousness loliich thus retains it is split off, dissociated 

 from the rest of the subject's mind. We have here, in short, an 

 experimental production of one of those 'second' states of the 

 personality of which we have spoken so often. Only here the 



