1883.] Thought Reading . 401 
adtion in his brain, which he would be able to interpret as 
having its source in the thought of a hazel-nut. 
The consideration of the second constituent in thought 
reading — the abnormal exaltation of sensitiveness in the 
operator, A — must not detain us beyond the time required 
for a brief allusion to the several stages leading by a per- 
fectly natural gradation to the most highly exalted condition 
of receptivity. All our examples will be found to illustrate 
the amazingly extended principle of compensation in Nature. 
Take the case of a man born blind or deaf. The absence 
of a sense damages the integrity of his intellectual power : 
in spite of which the blind man often has his power of 
hearing wonderfully acute, and the deaf man often has 
unusually clear vision. Let us pass on to the ordinary 
condition of sleep. In sleep sense impressions are all sus- 
pended ; reason, judgment, and even volition, are in abey- 
ance ; yet in sleep we become conscious of that delicate 
process which is ever going on, day and night, and which, 
when we are awake, is unconscious cerebration, or the 
phosphorescent action of the brain. It is unperceived 
during the day whilst the senses are active, being over- 
powered by their stronger impressions, just as the light of 
the stars is unseen in the clear daylight. The aCtion of 
unconscious cerebration may sometimes be detected if we 
are suddenly aroused just at the first commencement of a 
doze. It is very delicious, and its interruption is exceed- 
ingly irritating. In sleep it passes into dreaming, which 
may or may not be agreeable. In the state of reverie the 
train of thought is more coherent, the senses are not 
wholly paralysed, we see figures in the fire, and the likeness 
of a whale in the cloud, or something else ; but volition is 
wanting. In somnambulism volition is aCtive ; the senses 
also are in a normal condition ; but reason and judgment 
are suspended, and the sleep-walker crosses a chasm by a 
narrow plank, heedless of the consequences of a fall, or 
works a sum in arithmetic vainly attempted during the dis- 
tractions of waking hours. 
All these states are perfectly natural : we attribute them 
to no mysterious agency; and though the parcelling out of 
the reason, the will, the imagination, the judgment, — now 
one and now another of these being suspended, — is very 
surprising, yet not more so than the phenomena in insanity. 
Yet sleep, reverie, somnambulism, and catalepsy lead up so 
closely to the hypnotised and mesmerised conditions that 
why the one class of affections should be less a subject for 
scientific investigation thanlhe other does not appear. 
