of our Sensations. 265 



Except in the extreme cases just noticed, the shock was 

 experienced only in the fingers or the wrist. 



Some men of science who witnessed these experiments 

 thought that there was no reason to regard the sensations 

 experienced as true hallucinations, but only as due to com- 

 plaisant simulation. In connexion with this I may remark 

 that I mention here only the results obtained in the case of 

 persons upon whose good faith 1 have the best reason to de- 

 pend. My notes relate to a much larger number of subjects ; 

 but I eliminate all those upon whom I have only made a single 

 experiment and those whom I do not know sufficiently well. 

 Moreover the results which will be mentioned under the 

 fourth group dispose of the hypothesis of simulation by their 

 spontaneity. 



Second Group. — I have succeeded in exciting hallucinations 

 of sight by announcing that the magnetized card was revealed 

 to me by a slight vacillation, or displacement, and inducing 

 the person upon whom I was operating to look attentively at 

 each of the cards until he saw one of them move. 12 per- 

 sons out of 27 indicated a card from having seen it move. 

 It is certain, as all the other witnesses of the experiment 

 will testify, that none of the cards had changed its place. 

 One person declared that " the card had raised itself;" another 

 said that " the card had inclined itself with a wavering mo- 

 tion;" while a third, who had frequented the Mesmerists and 

 been put to sleep by them, asserted that at the moment when 

 she looked at the card " she had felt that her eyes were invin- 

 cibly attracted to it." This phenomenon of the attraction of 

 the looks inducing the movement of the whole body of the 

 individual is very well known to mesmerists. 



I would compare with these cases the numerous data that 

 we possess with regard to observers who see certain move- 

 ments of the stars, or other celestial phenomena, which have 

 no real existence. Last year, when the famous comet, which 

 every one remembers, was no longer visible, I happened to 

 assert before six people that I still saw it, and at the same 

 time I indicated to them the point in the heavens where I 

 pretended to see it. Three of these persons saw it as I de- 

 scribed it to them, but indistinctly ; one of them even drew it, 

 not such as he had actually seen it a few weeks before, but as 

 his imagination, excited and guided by my assertions, showed 

 it to him. 



Here is another observation, which I made a few months 

 ago. .Near Roscoff, in Finistere, there is a large granite 

 rock, firmly planted upon a small grass-plot on the shore, 

 and known by the Celtic name of Roch-roum. Finding 



