ADYAB PAMPHLETS

No. 202

pnotism and Mesmerism

BY
ANNIE BESANT

October, 1935

'HEOSOPHICAL PUBLISHING HOUSE

ADYAR, MADRAS, INDIA
 NOTE

MESMERISM and hypnotism differ completely in

their method. In hypnotism the nerve-ends of a
sense-organ are first fatigued, and then by continu­
ance of the fatigue are temporarily paralysed ; and
the paralysis spreads inwards to the sense-centre in
the brain, and a state of trance results. The
fatigue is brought about by the use of some
mechanical means, such as a revolving mirror, a
disc, an electric light, etc. A frequent repetition
of this fatigue predisposes the patient to fall readily
into a state of trance, and permanently weakens the
sense-organs and the brain. When the Ego has left
his dwelling, and the brain is thus rendered passive,
it is easy fpr another person to impress ideas of
action upon it, and the ideas will then be carried
out by the patient, after coming out of trance, as
though they were his own. In all such cases he
is the mere passive agent of the hypnotizer.
The method of true mesmerism is entirely
different. The mesmerizer throws out his own
Auric Fluid, . . . through the etheric double,
on his patient; he may thus, in the case of sickness,
regularize the irregular vibrations of the sufferer,
 iv

or share with him his own life-force, thereby in­

creasing his vitality. For nerve-atrophy there is
no agent so curative as this, and the shrivelling
cell may clairvoyantly be seen to swell up under
the flow of the life-current. The prSnic current
flows most readily from the tips of the fingers, and
through the eyes; passes should be made along
the nerves from centre to circumference, with a
sharp shake of the fingers away from the patient
and the operator, at the end of the pass. The hands
should be washed before and after the operation,
and it should never be undertaken unless the mind
is quiet and the health strong. The loss of vitality
should be made good by standing in the sun, with
as little clothing on as possible, breathing deeply
and slowly, and retaining the breath between each
inspiration and exhalation as long as is convenient,
i.e., not long enough to cause any struggle or
gasping. Five minutes of this should restore the
prflpic balance. 1 '
" H. P. Br
 HYPNOTISM
AND MESMERISM i

FOR many years the scientific world in

Germany and France has been stirred to its
depths by the experiments in hypnotism made
by some of the leading physicians of each
country. Both from the philosophical and the
practical sides it has been realized that the
strange power which formed the subject of
investigation was one of supreme importance
in its bearing on the constitution and conduct
of man. Many of the records of alleged feats
by witches and wizards of the middle ages—
regarded by the nineteenth century as the
mere drivel of superstitious ignorance—paled
their ineffectual fires before the wonders of the
new experimenters, while the visions of the
saints received startling pendants from the
Salpetridre. In Germany, the State, with
1 Contributed to L u c i f e r for October, 1889, edited by H.P.B.
 2

characteristic promptitude, appears to have

armed itself against the practical dangers
which threaten to assail society, with a law
which forbids unqualified persons to practise
hypnotism. On the other hand, the Material­
ists, recognizing by a true intuition the fatal
character of the new departure for the
Materialist philosophy, assailed the experi­
menters with quite theological virulence,
scoffing at their experiments and decrying
their motives. The famous Dr. Ludwig
Biichner—whose services alike to medicine
and biology have been great—'has vehemently
attacked those of his compatriots who have
entered the new path. In the last edition of his
Kraft und stoff he speaks " of the legerdemain
and claptrap of magnetisers, clairvoyants,
thaumaturgists, spiritualists, hypnotists and
other jugglers" l. Yet even he alludes to the
hypnotic as a " highly interesting condition " 2
and suggests that " it is probable that
hypnotism accounts for much that occurs at
exhibitions of animal magnetism." He
remarks, indeed, that "the whole effect is
1 Force and Matter, English translation, p. 338.
1 Ibid., p. 346.
 3

brought about by strictly natural causes

a statement with which Theosophists, at
least, will not quarrel.
Hypnotism—derived from forvo?, sleep—
obtained its name from its resemblance to
somnambulism; in most respects the hypnotic
resembles the mesmeric or magnetic trance,
but differs from it in this, that suggestions
made to a person under hypnotism are carried
out when the hypnotic state has apparently
passed away, and not during the trance as in
ordinary mesmerism. Every one has seen
the mesmerized person obey the mesmerizer,
accept his fictions as facts, and perform at his
bidding acts of the most startling absurdity.
But when the patient recovers his senses the
spell is broken. Not so with hypnotism. The
patient opens his eyes, walks about, goes
away, performs the ordinary duties of life, but
obeys with undeviating regularity the impulse
communicated by' the hypnotizer, imagining
all the time that he is acting as a free agent
while he is the bond-slave of another's will.
There can be little doubt, however, that all
these phenomena are but phases of the same
condition. Hypnotism is a new name, not a
 4

new thing, its differentia being but extensions

of the old " mesmerism
From the time of Mesmer onwards attention
has from time to time been directed to the
curious phenomena obtained by mesmeric
passes, fixity of gaze, etc., but MM. Binet
and Fere, in their work on Lz Magnetisme
Animalgive to Dr. James Braid, a Manchester
surgeon, the credit of being " the initiator of
the scientific study of animal magnetism"
(p. 67). " Magnetism and hypnotism ", say
these authors, " are fundamentally synonym­
ous terms, but the first connotes a certain num­
ber of complex and extraordinary phenomena,
which have always compromised the cause of
these fruitful studies. The term hypnotism is
exclusively applied to a definite nervous state,
observable under certain conditions, subject to
general rules, produced by human and in no
sense mysterious processes, and based on
modifications of the functions of the patient's
nervous system. Thus it appears that
hypnotism has arisen from animal magnetism,
just as the physico-medical sciences arose
1 The references in the text are to the English translation

issued under the title " Animal Magnetism ".

 5

from the occult sciences of the Middle Ages."

graid found that many persons could hypnotize
themselves by gazing fixedly at an object
a little above the head in such a position
that the eyes, when fixed on it squinted—or, to
put the matter in a more dignified fashion, in
such a position as induced a convergent and
superior strabismus. The fixation of the
attention was also necessary, and Braid
considers that the insensibility of idiots to
hypnotism arises from their incapacity for
fixed attention (pp. 69, 70). At the Sal-
petriere, Dr. Charcot and his pupils, dealing
with hysterical patients, 1 found that catalepsy
could be produced by sudden sounds or vivid
light, and that the patient could be made to
pass from the cataleptic to the somnambulic
or lucid hypnotic condition by friction on the
scalp, pressure on the eyeballs, and other
methods. Speaking generally, Dr. Richer
states that stimulants " which produce a
sudden shock to the nervous system and
cause a sleep whose abrupt commencement is
accompanied by marked hysterical symptoms,
1 Etudes cliniaues sur la Grande Hysterie. Par le Docteur
Paul Richer.
such as twitching of the limbs, movements of
swallowing, a little foam on the lips, pharyn.
geal murmur, etc., give rise to the nervous
condition termed lethargy ; while those which
gently impress the nervous system and
cause none of the hysterical symptoms to
which I have alluded, produce a sleep which
comes on progressively and without shock,
the characteristics of which, differring from
those of lethargy, belong to the special nervous
state known under the name of somnambulic "
(p. 519), or hypnotic. The ticking of a watch,
the steady gaze of the Doctor, magnetic passes,
a verbal command, etc., will throw many
subjects into a hypnotic trance.
The condition of the hypnotized person may
vary from insensibility to accute sensitiveness.
The body may be rendered insensitive to pain,
so that critical operations may be performed
without the use of a material anaesthetic, and
a number of such cases are on record. On
the other hand hypnotization often produces
extreme hyperaesthesia. Binet and Fere
say: "In somnambulism (hypnotism) the
senses are not merely awake, but quickened
to an extraordinary degree. Subjects feel the
 7

cold produced by breathing from the mouth at

a distance of several yards (BraidJ. Weber's
compasses applied to the skin, produce a two­
fold sensation with a deviation of 3°, in regions
where, during the waking state, it would be
necessary to give the instrument a deviation
of 18° (Berger). The activity of the sense of
sight is sometimes so great that the range of
sight may be doubled, as well as sharpness of
vision. The sense of smell may be developed
so that the subject is able to discover by its
aid the fragments of a visiting card which
had been given him to smell before it
was torn up (Taguet). The hearing is so
accute that a conversation carried on on the
floor below may be overheard (Azam).
These are interestingv but isolated facts.
We are still without any collective work
on the subject, of which it would be easy
to make regular study, with the methods of
investigation we have at our disposal. More
careful observations of the state of the
memory have been made, but this state
has only been studied as it has been found
during somnambulism, when it generally
displays the same hyper-excitability as the
 8
other organs of the senses (Binet and Fere,
pp. 134, 135).
Memory may, indeed, be rendered extra-
ordinarily vivid under hypnotism. A poem
read to a hypnotized person was repeated
by her correctly; awake she had forgotten it,
but on again being hypnotized she repeated
it. A patient recalled the exact menu of her
dinner a week ago, though awake she could
only remember those of a day or two ago.
Another gave correctly and without hesitation
the name of a doctor whom she had seen in
childhood, although in her waking condition
she, after some doubt, only recalled the fact
that he had been a physician in a children's
hospital.
Many of the purely physical results are
interesting in themselves, but, to the Theo-
sophist, less suggestive than those which pass
into the psychical realm. Contractures can be
caused, and be transferred from one side to
another, by a magnet. A limb can be rendered
rigid, or can be paralysed, and so on. An
extremely curious experiment is the tracing
of some words on the arm of a hypnotized
subject with a blunt probe; the doctor then
 9
issued the following order : " This afternoon, at
four o'clock, you will go to sleep, and blood will
then issue from your arm, on the lines which
I have now traced." The subject fell asleep
at the hour named, the letters then appeared
on his left arm, marked in relief, and of a
bright red colour, which contrasted with the
general paleness of the skin, and there were
even minute drops of blood in several places.
There was absolutely nothing to be seen on
the right and paralysed side (the patient was
affected with hemiplegia and hemianaesthesia).
Mabille subsequently heard the same patient,
in a spontaneous attack of hysteria, command
bis arm to bleed, and soon afterwards a
cutaneous haemorrhage just described was
displayed. These strange phenomena recall,
and also explain, the bleeding stigmata which
have been repeatedly observed in the subjects
of religious ecstasy, who have pictured to
themselves the passion of Christ. Charcot
and his pupils at the Salpetriere have often
produced the effect of burns upon the skin
of hypnotized subjects by means of suggestion.
The idea of the burn does not take effect
immediately, but after the lapse of some hours
 10

(Binet and Fere, pp. 198, 199). The bearing j

of these experiments on the supposed miracu. !
lous impressions of the sacred stigmata is
obvious, and offers one more of the many
illustrations that the best way to eradicate
superstition is not to deny the phenomena on
which it rests, many of which are real, but
to explain them, and to prove that they can
be produced by natural means.
Muscular contractions of the limbs produce
corresponding changes in the face, normally
expressive of the feelings suggested by the
artificially produced attitude. Richer states:
" A tragic attitude impresses sternness on the
face, and the brows contract. On the other
hand, if the two open hands are carried to
the mouth, as in the act of blowing a kiss,
a smile immediately appears on the lips. In
this case the reaction of gesture on physiog­
nomy is very remarkable and is produced with
great exactitude . . . One can thus infinitely
vary the attitudes. Ecstasy, prayer, humility,
sadness, defiance, anger, fear, can be repre­
sented. It is, indeed, startling to see how
invariably a simple change in the position of
the hands reacts on the features. If the open
 11

hand is stretched outwards, the facial expres­

sion is calm and benevolent, and changes to
a smile if the arm is raised and the tips
of the fingers brought to the mouth. But
without altering the attitude of the arms, it
suffices to close the subject's hands to see
the benevolence give place to severity, which
soon becomes anger if the clenching of the
fist is increased. This phenomena may be
unilateral. If the fist is clenched on one side
and carried forward as in menace, the cor­
responding brow only is contracted. So if
only one open hand is brought to the mouth,,
the smile will appear only on one side of
the face. The two different attitudes may
be simultaneously impressed on the two sides
of the body, and each half of the face will
reflect the corresponding expression " (p. 669).
It is possible that these muscular contrac­
tions may give rise to no corresponding
emotions, although it seems prima facie-
probable that where the emotions constantly
find expression in gestures the gestures should,
in their turn, arouse the emotions. Yet it
may be that the link is merely between
muscle and muscle, and that the continual
 12

•co-ordination results in a purely automatic

action. We will, therefore, pass to phenomena
in which the psyche is involved, and see what
strange tricks can be played with it by the
experimenter in hypnotism.
The lower senses of touch and taste and
smell can be played with at will. A hypno­
tized patient, told that a bird had placed
itself on her knee, stroked and caressed it
(Richer, p. 645). " If a hallucinatory object,
such as a lamp shade, is put into the
subject's hands, and he is told to press it, he
experiences a sensation of resistance and is
unable to bring his hands together" (Binet
and Fere, p. 213). Colocynth placed on the
tongue is not tasted, odours are not smelt
(Richer, p. 660). In the automatic state
contact with familiar objects brings up the
action constantly associated with them ; given
soap and water a patient will steadfastly wash
her hands; given a match she will strike it,
but is unconscious of pain if the flame
touches her; given a probing pin, she will
plunge it into her hand ; given a book, she
will begin to read it fluently and, when the
book is turned upside down, continue to read
 13

it aloud in the reversed position (Richer,,

pp. 693-696). This automatic stage can be
made to pass into the somnambulic, where the
will is dominated, but where intelligence
survives.
But it is when we come to the more
intellectual sense of vision that we meet the
most surprising phenomena. On a piece of.
white paper a white card was placed, and an
imaginary line was drawn round this card,
with a blunt pointer, without touching the
paper, the patient being told that the line was
being drawn. When she awoke she was
given the blank piece of paper, and she saw
on it the rectangle which had not been traced \
asked to fold the paper along the line she saw,
she folded it exactly so that it .was just
covered by the card when the latter was
placed on it (Richer, p. 723). A patient was
told that she saw a black circle; on waking
she looked about, rubbed her eyes, and on
being questioned complained that she saw a
black circle in whichever direction she turned
her eyes, and that it was extremely annoying
(ibid.). A portrait was said to exist, on a
piece of blank cardboard; when the card was
 14

reversed the portrait was reversed with it,

and it disappeared when the other side of the
cardboard was shown, although the changes of
position were made out of sight of the patient
(Binet and Fere, p. 224). Such a portrait is
visible to the patient through an opera glass,
and is magnified or diminished like a real
object. Again, a patient, Bar , was told
that Dr. Charcot was present, and although
he was not there she addressed him, told to
listen to the music she heard an imaginary
concert; told that a number of children were
present, she made the gestures of taking them
in her arms and kissing them, described the
colour of their hair and eyes; while another
patient complained that their play irritated
her, and that the noise they made was
intolerable.
More complex visions can be made to pass
before the eyes; suggest to a patient that
Paradise lies open before her, and she will
see angels, and saints, the Virgin, and so on,
the details of the vision varying with the
richness of imagination of the patient. Some­
times it is the devil whose presence is
suggested, and the most vivid fear and anger
 15

are expressed. Surely we have here the key

to the visions of ecstatic nuns ; the fixed gaze
at the crucifix with upward turned eyes is the
very position for self-hypnotization; the
matter of the visions is suggested by the
pressure of the dominant idea; while the
certitude of the patients as to the reality of
the visions would be complete.
Yet more curious are the phenomena
connected with the rendering of an object or a
person invisible by suggestion. Ten similar
cards were shown to a hypnotized subject, and
she was told that she could not see one of
them. When she was awakened that card
remained invisible; and similar results were
obtained with keys, thermometers, and other
objects (Richer, p. 729). To another was
said " You will not see M. X.", and on
waking M. X. was invisible to her. " We once
suggested to a hypnotic subject that she
would cease to see F , but would continue
to hear his voice. On awaking the subject
heard the voice of an invisible person, and
looked about the room to discover the cause of
this singular phenomenon, asking us about it
with some uneasiness. We said, jestingly,
 16
fF is dead, and it is his ghost which
speaks to you. 5 The subject is intelligent, and
in her normal state she would probably have
taken the jest at its true values; but she was
dominated by the suggestion of anaesthesia,
and readily adopted the explanation. When
F spoke again he said that he had
died the night before, and that his body
had been taken to the post-mortem room.
The subject clasped her hands with a
sad expression, and asked when he was
to be buried, as she wished to be present
at the religious service. c Poor young
man! she said; ' he was not a bad
5

man.' F , wishing to see how farther

credulity would go, uttered groans and
complained of the autopsy of his body which
was going on. The scene then became tragic,
for the emotion of the subject caused her to
fall backwards in an incipient attack of
hysteria, which we promptly arrested"
(Binet and Fere, pp. 312, 313). The most
suggestive experiment was one in which
F was rendered invisible ; ' the subject
was then awakened, and on enquiring
for F was told that he had left the
i V
 17
room. She was then told that she might
retire, and went towards the door against
which F had placed himself. Unable
to see him she came in contact with him,
and on a second experiment to reach the door,
became alarmed at the incomprehensible
resistance and refused to again go near it. A
hat was placed on his head, and " words can­
not express" the subject's surprise, since it
appeared to her that the hat was suspended in
the air. Her surprise was at its height
when F took off the hat and saluted her
with it several times; she saw the hat, with­
out any support, describing curves in the air.
F then put on a cloak, and she saw
the cloak moving and assuming the form of a
person. " It is," she said, " like a hollow
puppet." A number of other experiments
were tried with her, leaving no doubt that she
was completely unconscious of F 's pre­
sence (Binet and Fere, pp. 306-308).
In another class of experiments the subject's
personality was changed. " On one occasion
we told X that she had become M.F. ,
and after some resistance she accepted the
suggestion. On awaking she was unable to see
2
 18

M. F , who was present; she imitated his

manner, and made the gesture of putting both
her hands in the pockets of an imaginary hos­
pital apron. From time to time shejlwould put
her hand to her lip as if to smooth her mous­
tache, and looked about her with assurance.
But she said nothing. We asked her whether
she was acquainted with X . She hesitated
for a moment, and then replied, with a con­
temptuous shrug of the shoulders : 4 Oh yes,
a hysterical patient. What i do you think of
her? She is not too wise ' " (ibid., p. 215, 216).
Another patient personated in succession a
peasant woman, an actress, a general, an
archbishop, a nun, speaking appropriately in
each character (Richer, pp. 729, 730).
There is another class of phenomena which
opens up serious dangers of a practical nature.
A suggestion made to a hypnotized subject
may be carried out when the subject is awake,
either immediately, or days or months after­
wards, and this obedience is blind to conse­
quences and to every consideration of right or
wrong. We have a personality, not a machine,
but a personality which is the puppet of
another's will. Dr. Richer remarks: "In
 19
the latter state (cataleptic] the subject is an
automaton, without conscience or spontaneity,
only moving under the impulse of sensorial
stimuli coming from without. The stimulus
alone matters, and not the person who supplies
it. The personality of the operator is indif­
ferent. All the responses are of the nature of
reflex actions, without any participation of the
intellectual activity other than such as may be
necessary for their production. The somnam­
bulist, on the other hand, is no longer a
simple machine. He is the slave of the will
of another, the veritable subject of the operator.
His automatism consists in servitude and
obedience. But certain consciousness exists
other than that of the waking state. A new
personality is created, which may give rise to
those strange phenomena described under the
name of duplication of consciousness or of
personality. There is really a somnambulic
Ego, while there is no cataleptic Ego"
(p. 789). -
It is in this somnambulic stage that occur
the phenomena now to be considered. A
hypnotized subject is required to steal some
object; sometimes she resists, but insistance
 20

generally overcomes this resistance; only i n

a few cases has it been found impossible to
conquer it. On awaking, the patient watches
her opportunity and performs the theft. And
here comes in the curious fact, that the subject
shows cunning and intelligence in carrying
out the suggestion. One patient, told to steal
the handkerchief of a certain person, presently
feigned dizziness, and staggering against the
person stole the handkerchief. In another
case, the subject suddenly asked the owner of
the handkerchief what he had in his hand, and
stole it as he, in surprise, looked at his hand.
Another, told to poison X with a glass
of water, offered it with the remark that it
was a hot day. " If Z is armed with
a paper-knife and ordered to kill X she
says, 1 Why should I do it ? He has done
me no arm.' But if the experimenter insists,
this slight scruple may be overcome, and she
soon says: ' If it must be done I will do it.'
On awaking she regards X with a
perfidious smile, looks about her, and suddenly
strikes him with the supposed dagger." The
patient will find reasons to excuse her act;
one who had struck a man with a paste -board
 21

knife under suggestion was asked why she

killed him. " She looked at him fixedly for
a moment, and then replied with an expression
of ferocity, ' He was an old villain, and wished
to insult me"' (Binet and Fere, pp. 286-291).
Without further accumulating these pheno­
mena let us consider whether any, and if any,
what explanation is possible.
And first from the standpoint of Materialism.
It is possible to explain on a materialistic
hypothesis the muscular contractions and
co-ordinations, and the automatic actions suc­
ceeding contact with familiar articles. But
even in the automatic stage, explanation is
lacking of the fluent reading of a reversed
book by an uneducated person. It is, however,
in the phenomena of memory, of vision of the
non-existent, of inhibited vision, that materi­
alistic explanation seems to me to be im­
possible.
Memory is the faculty which receives the
impress of our experiences, and preserves
them; many of these impressions fade, and
we say we have forgotten. Yet it is clear
that these impressions may be revived. They
are, therefore, not destroyed, but they are so
 22
faint that they sink below the threshold of
consciousness, and so no longer form part of
its normal content. If thought be but a
*' mode of motion memory must be similarly
regarded; but it is not possible to conceive
that each impression of our past life, recorded
in consciousness, is still vibrating in some
group of brain cells, only so feebly that it
does not rise above the threshold. For these
same cells are continually being thrown into
new groupings for new vibrations, and these
cannot all co-exist, and the fainter ones be
capable of receiving fresh impulse which may
so intensify their motion as to again raise
them into consciousness. Now if these vibra­
tions = memory, if we have only matter in
motion, we know the law of dynamics suffi­
ciently well to say that if a body be set
vibrating, and new forces be successively
brought to act upon it and set up new
vibrations, there will not be in that body
the co-existence of each separate set of vib­
rations successively impressed upon it, but
it will vibrate in a way differing from each
single set, and compounded of all. So that
memory, as a mode of motion, would not
 23

give us a record of the past, but would

present us with a new story, the resultant
f of all those past vibrations, and this would
•J be ever changing, as fresh impressions,
\ causing new vibrations, came in to modify
) the resultant of the old. On the other hand,
let us suppose a conscious Ego, retaining
knowledge of all its past experiences, but
only able to impress such of them on the
organ of consciousness as the laws of the
material organism permit, the threshold of
consciousness dividing what it can thus
impress from what it cannot; that threshold
would vary with the material conditions of
the moment, rising and falling with the state
of the organism, and what we call memory
would be the content of the material consci­
ousness, bounded by the threshold at any
given instant. Now, under hypnotization an
extraordinary revival of the past occurs, and
impressions long since faded come out clear-
cut on the tablet of memory. Is it not a
possible hypothesis that the process of hyp­
notization causes a shifting of the threshold
of consciousness, and so brings into sight
what is always there but what is normally
 24

concealed ? The existence of the Ego is posited

by Theosophy, and it seems to me that the
phenomena of hypnotization require it.
How can the Materialist explain the vision
of non-existent things? We know what are
the mechanical conditions of vision in the
animal body; the rays reflected from the
object, the blows of the ethereal waves on the
retina, the vibrating nerve-cells, the optic
centre ; the perception belongs to the world
of mind. But in seeing the invisible we have
the perception, but with none of the steps that
normally lead up to it; the suggestion of the
hypnotizer awakens the perception, and the
mind creates its own object of sense to
respond to it. Again, it must be the per­
ceptive power, not the sense-channel,
which is paralysed when objects and persons
become invisible. Take the case of F
and his cloak; certain rays from the body
of F struck the retina of the patient,
but no perception followed; for the cloak to
be seen normally, rays from it must traverse
exactly the same line as those from his body,
impinge on the same retinal cells, throw into
vibration the same nervous cord, and so be
 25

perceived. If the inhibition were of the nerve-

elements, the rays from the cloak would
be stopped like those from the body round
which it was wrapped. The inhibition was-
not of nerve, but of mind ; the operator had
entered the subject world of the patient and
had laid his hand on the faculty, not on the
instrument. If perception be only the result
of the vibrating cells, how comes it then that
cells may vibrate and the result be absent?
that in two cases the vibration may be equally
set up, the same cells be in motion, and yet
that perception follows the one vibration and
not the other ? A still further complication
arises when the cloak is seen, though the
body is interposed between it and the organ
of vision. If perception result from cell-
vibration, how can perception arise when no-
cell-vibration is set up ?
But it seems that it is not only the percep­
tive faculty that the operator may bring
under his control : he may lay hold of the-
will and compel the patient to acts, and so-
become the master of his personality. A
terrible power, yet one that can no longer
be regarded as doubtful, and which recalls the
 26
old-world stories of " possession ", throwing
on them a new and lurid light. How many
of the tales of magic powers, which changed
people's characters and drove them in
obedience to the will of the " magician are
now explicable as hypnotic effects ? How
often may the " evil eye " have caused injury,
by deliberate suggestion, as Charcot thus
caused a burn ? I have often thought that
there must have been a basis of fact under­
lying the widespread belief in witchcraft;
and the possession of hypnotizing power, aided
by the exaggerations of fear and credulity,
would amply suffice to account for it. The
general belief in evil spirits would lead to the
ascription of the results to their agency, and
•the very ignorance of the nature of their own
power by the " magicians " would foster the
notion of supernatural interference.
The study of hypnotism drives us, if we
would remain within the realm of natural law,
of causation, into the belief that the mind is not
"the mere outcome of physical motion, however
closely the two may be here normally related.
That while the brain is " the organ of mind "
on this plane, it is literally the organ and not
 27

the mind; and that it is possible, so to speak,

to get behind the organ and seize upon the
f mind itself, dethroning the individuality and
assuming usurped control. On this hypothesis
the results of the experiments become intel­
ligible, and we can dimly trace the modus
operandi.
Theosophists may well utilize this new
. departure in science to gain a hearing for their
\ own luminous philosophy, for the Western
World cannot turn a deaf ear to the testimony
of its own experts, and the experiments of
those very experts force on the mind the
f impossibility of the mind and the will being
the mere result of molecular vibration. Once
carry a thoughtful Materialist so far, and he
will be bound to go farther, and thus the very
. triumph of Materialistic science shall lead to
the downfall of its philosophy.
 II 1

I—THE HISTORY

THE attention of the scientific world in France

and in Germany has long been directed to the
curious phenomena which are classed as
" hypnotic and for years past experiments
of the most searching character have been
carried on by experts, notably at the Sal-
petrtere and in Nancy. In Germany, Heiden-
hain, one of the most eminent pf German
physiologists, has, since 1880, been investiga­
ting these phenomena, attracted thereto by the
experiments of Carl Hansen, a Dane, the
gentleman who in October last founded a
Hypnotic Society in London, for the systematic
study and use of Hypnotism. The phenomena
are interesting, not only as being curious in
themselves, and as promising to place in the
hands of the physician a useful therapeutic
1 Contributed to The Universal Review, tor February. 1890.
 29

agent, but also for the light they throw on the

psychical constitution of man, and on those
subtle problems of life and mind which occupy
the attention of the accutest thinkers of our
time.
There can be no doubt, in the light of our
present knowledge, that many of the " mira­
culous " cures credited to prophet and saint
were the results of magnetic power ; that the
ecstasy of the saint is reproduced in the
hypnotic trance; that witches and wizards
may be rivalled by the mesmerizer. Much
that was obscure is now illuminated, and the
Salpetriere patient explains the sybil and the
seeress. We see prophecies, visions, posses­
sions, the evil eye, magic control, all reproduc­
ed under conditions which render possible
careful scrutiny and deliberate investigation.
The scope of hypnotism will, however, be
poorly understood if we confine ourselves to
the rigid experimentation of the French
doctors. Valuable as is their work, placing
hypnotism among the experimental sciences on
a basis that none can challenge, we shall only
understand its bearing by studying it from a
standpoint that renders visible a wider horizon,
 30

and enables us to see it in relation to its

historical evolution, as well as in its most
modern presentment.
The soothing and curative power that lies
in the human touch was known long ere the
resemblance of some of its properties to those
of the magnet gave rise to the name of Animal
Magnetism. Solon (B.C. 637-558) speaks of
the fury of disease being soothed by the gentle
stroking of the hand,1 and in China the origin
of the practice of curing diseases by the laying
on of hands is lost in antiquity. Celsus records
the fact that Asclepiades, the Greek " father
of physic", " practised light friction, as a
means of inducing sleep in phrensy and in­
sanity ; and, what is more remarkable, he says
that by too much friction there was a danger
of inducing lethargy." 2 The Chaldean priests,
the Parsls, the Hindus, and other civilized
people of antiquity, also practised cure by
touch. There can be little doubt that this
custom is alluded to in 2 Kings v, 11, where
Naaman is represented as saying that he
1 Apud Stobaeum. Translated in Stanley's History of Philosophy,
1666.
* Somnolism and Psychism. By J. W. Haddock, M.D., 1851, p. 7.
 31

thought the Jewish prophet would " strike his

band over the place and recover the leper."
The Egyptian sculptures show figures in
magnetic positions, and the habit of taking
to the sick cloths impregnated with the
magnetism of a holy person is often met
with in antiquity, and is spoken of in
Acts xix, 12. The cures wrought by Vespasian
at Alexandria, as recorded by Suetonius and
Tacitus, were obviously magnetic, and the
idea of the curative properties of the
"King's touch " was but an inheritance
from the time when the priestly functions
attached to the royal office carried with them
this healing power.
Nor was this use of human magnetism for
the cure of diseases the only kind of
magnetic phenomenon known to the ancients.
Hippocrates, Aristotle, Galen, and other
classical authors mention somnambulism, a
state which may supervene naturally or be
artificially induced, and is, in either case, a
phenomenon now included under " hypnotism".
Nor can there be much doubt as to the nature
of the utterances of the sacred virgins in
pagan temples. Of these Dr. Haddock says :
 32

" From what is known of the practices, the

long vigils and fastings, and the peculiar
attitudes and manners of the sybils, there can
be little doubt that by various means, kept
secret from the multitude, a condition similar,
if not identical with the higher mesmeric,
or psychic state, as it is proposed to call it,
was induced ; and that the sybils and utterers
of oracles were, at times, really clairvoyant
and in a state of trance. Saint Justin said
* that . the sybils spoke many great things
with justice and with truth, and that when
the instinct which animated them ceased to
exist, they lost the recollection of all they had
declaredIt will be seen in the sequel that
this is so strikingly in accordance with the
mesmeric sleep or trance as to leave scarcely
a doubt of its identity with it." 1
It is not definitely known when the pro­
perties of magnetized iron and steel were
first discovered, the Chinese claiming to be
the first to use the compass, but it is certain
that the use of the magnet for curative pur­
poses can point to a respectable antiquity.
Paracelsus (A.D. 1493-1541) seems to have been
1 ibid., pp. 6, 7.
 33
the first, among Westerns at least, to ascribe
magnetism to the human body, and to suggest
the use of this human magnetism for the
cure of disease; in his time magnets must
have been used for this purpose, as we can
judge not only from his expression of " human
magnetism but also from a work by Cardan,
dated 1584, in which " there is an account of
an experiment in anaesthesia, produced by the
magnet," and it is stated that " it was then
customary to magnetise rings, which were
worn round the neck or the arm, in order to
cure nervous diseases." 1
Pomponatius (A. D. 1462-1525) had already
pointed to the fact, which he speaks of as
generally acknowledged, that some persons
are " gifted with the faculty of curing certain
diseases, in virtue of an emanation from them­
selves which by theN power of the will and
the imagination they are able to direct to the
sick."1 "When those who are endowed
with this faculty," says Pomponatius, " operate
by employing the force of the imagination and

1 Animal Magnetism. By Binet and Fere. English Tran-

ilation, 1888, p. 2.
1 Human Matnetism. By W. Newnham, 1845, pp. 149, 150.

3
 34

the will, this force affects their blood and

their spirits, which produce the intended
effects, by means of an evaporation thrown
outwards." 1 He considers that health may be
communicated to a sick person, as disease
may be communicated to a healthy one ; and he
alleges that matter, the elements themselves,
can be made subject to man by this magnetic
force. In 1621 the celebrated Van Helmont
(A. D. 1577-1644) published in Paris a re­
markable work on The Magnetic Cure of
Wounds, in which he defended magnetism
as a curative agent, as against a Jesuit,
Father Robert, who had maintained that
certain cures were the work of the devil.
" Magnetism ", he writes, " is a universal
agent; there is nothing new in it but the
name; and it is a paradox only to those
who are disposed to ridicule everything, and
who ascribe to the influence of Satan all those
phenomena which they cannot explain." He
defines magnetism as " that occult influence
which bodies exert over each other at a
distance, whether by attraction or by
1 Quoted in Isis Revelata. by J. C. Colquhoun. 1836.
vol i, p. 152.
 35
epulsion," and considers that it acts through
fluid, the Magnale Magnum, an ethereal
pirit which penetrates all bodies, and in
the human frame is found in the blood,
and is directed by the will. Man can so
se it as to affect objects at a distance,
and the strength of his impulsion depends on

the energy and concentration of his volition.

"This magical power lies dormant in man."
So thoroughly convinced was Van Helmont of
the reality of the magnetic force, that when
the plague was raging at Brussels, he went
thither to tend the sick. 1 Many other authors
wrote on the same lines during the seven­
teenth century, as Sir Kenelm Digby, in
1660, William Maxwell, 1679, and Robert
Fludd. A remarkable quotation from a work
published in 1673 by Sebastian Wirdig, is
given by Mr. Colquhoun : " Totus mundus
constat et positus est in magnetismo ; omnes
sublunarium vicissitudines fiunt per magne-
tismum; vita conservatur magnetismo; interit-
us omnium rerurm fiunt per magnetismum."'
In 1889, Dr. Buck writes, in words that are
1 See his Revelata, vol i, pp. 154-161.
ibid., p.. 150.
 36

wellnigh an echo of the seventeenth century

philosopher: "We thus discern an under-
lying substance everywhere diffused, 0f
great tenuity, permeating all things as the
common basis of matter and force. This
substance, with its characteristic polarizing
tendency, and its universal diffusibility, out­
wardly displayed in atoms of elements,
and in all objective phenomenal nature, is
magnetism."1
One of the most remarkable of the practical
magnetizers of the seventeenth century was an
Irish gentleman, named Valentine Greatrakes,
who published an autobiographical sketch in
1666. Among his patients were the philoso­
pher Cudworth and the astronomer Flamsteed,
while Robert Boyle, President of the Royal
Society, bears witness to the reality of his
cures. Dr. George Rust, Bishop of Derry,
writes as follows on what he himself saw, and
his testimony is confirmed by members of the
Royal Society, physicians, and others, who
carefully examined into the alleged facts :
" I was three weeks together with him at my
Lord Conway's, and saw him, I think, lay his
1 A Study of M a n . By J. D. Buck, M.D.. 1889, p. 31.
 37

ands upon a thousand persons ; and really

there is something in it more than ordinary ;
hut I am convinced it is not miraculous. I
have seen pains strangely fly before his hands,
till he hath chased them out of the body—
dimness cleared and deafness cured by his.
touch; twenty persons, at several times, in
fits of the falling sickness, were in two or
three minutes brought to themselves, so as to
tell where their pain was; and then he hath
pursued it till he hath drawn it out at some
extreme part; running sores of the king's
evil dried up, and kernels brought to a sup­
puration by his hand; grievous sores of many
months' date in a few days healed; obstruc­
tions and stoppings removed ; cancerous knots
in the breast dissolved, etc."
The Bishop says further that the cures
often took some time, and that patients often
relapsed, while with others he could do noth­
ing. His method was placing his hand on the
affected part and stroking lightly from above
downwards. The Royal Society considered
that there was " a sanative influence in Mr.
Greatrakes's body", and in a book which
contains an article on the cures by Robert
 38
Boyle, is a remarkable cure of leprosy by
" stroaking " by Greatrakes. 1
In the eighteenth century John Joseph
Gassner (born 1727) performed a number of
cures, chiefly among patients suffering from
epilepsy and other nervous complaints; a
full account may be read in the German
Archiv fur den Thierschen Magnetismus , pub-
lished at Leipzig.
From this rough sketch it will be seen that
when the man was born who was destined to
give his name to this little-understood natural
force, its existence had long been known, and
it had been largely utilized. Anthony Mesmer
(1734-1815) was born, some say at Weiler, in
Germany, some at Mersburg, in Switzerland,
and while still young went to Vienna to study
medicine. He did not take his doctor's degree
until 1766, when he chose for his subject
"The influence of the Planets on the Human
Body ", following Paracelsus in the theory that
the planets influenced the human body
through a subtle magnetic fluid. A Jesuit
professor of Astronomy at Vienna, named
1 Isis Revelata, Vol. 1. pp. 203 to 207. See also Newnham's
Human Magnetism, pp. 150. 151, and Somnohsm and Psych,sm,
pp. 8,9.
 39

Hehl, drew his attention to the loadstone as a

curative agent, and Mesmer and Hehl together
performed a number of experiments with
magnetized steel plates. Some jealousy arose
between them, apparently from Mesmer
having discovered that " magnetic passes",
movements of the hand from above down­
wards, much increased the value of the steel
plates; what is certain is that Mesmer and
Hehl fell out, and that Mesmer's proceedings
so roused against him the Medical Faculty of
Vienna that he was obliged to leave that city.
He visited various towns, performing many
cures in the hospitals and elsewhere, and
after a varied experience came to the conclu­
sion that the human body could produce effects
similar to those produced by the magnet, and
that " animal magnetism " was a powerful
curative agent. About this time a man named
Perkins, in England, patented for the cure of
disease some " metallic tractors", which
appear to have resembled the steel plates of
Mesmer and Hehl; Perkins, however, did
not grasp the luminous idea of Mesmer, that
the curative power lay in the human body,
and his discovery was discredited when
 40

Drs. Haygarth and Falconer produced with

wooden tractors results similar to those pro-
duced by his metallic ones \ Mesmer, who had
hold of the right principle, proceeded with his
cures, and in 1778 arrived in Paris, whither
his fame had proceeded him. He published in
1779 a pamphlet, in which he laid down his
theory of animal magnetism, claiming that
his " system would furnish fresh knowledge of
the nature of fire and light, as well as of the
theory of attraction, of flux and reflux, of the
magnet and electricity." " This principle
can cure nervous diseases directly and others
indirectly. By its aid the physician is en­
lightened as to the use of drugs ; he perfects
their action, provokes and directs at his will
salutary crises, so as to completely master
them." He summarized his theory in
twenty-seven propositions, many of which
are recognized as true to-day, however
startling they may have appeared to be to the
science of the eighteenth century. The human
body, he alleged, showed polarity—a fruitful
idea, destined to have great results and
animal magnetism could be communicated
1 Somnolism and Psychism, pp. 9, 10.
 41
to living and non-living agents, and operate
from afar. Mesmer's first convert was
Dr. D'Eslon, but doctors for the most part
were bitterly hostile, and the Medical Faculty
of Paris suspended Dr. D'Eslon and denounced
Mesmer and all his works, finally, in 1784,
prohibiting the practice of animal magnetism
by doctors under penalty of expulsion.
Despite this official excommunication,
Mesmer had the bad taste to continue per­
forming cures, and Paris, palpitating with new
ideas, intoxicated with new liberty, went well-
nigh mad over him. Fashionable society
thronged his consulting room and fought for
admission at his doors. Unfortunately
Mesmer was not strong enough to master his
own popularity, and lent himself to follies
which brought discredit on his really great
powers. Clad in purple silk, he wandered
through the crowd of patients, amid soft
music, in carefully subdued light, touching
one with a metallic rod, another with the
hand, provoking and controlling passionate
excitement. The patients were seated round
a baquety or trough, the contents of which
set up a magnetic current; they were
 42

mostly dilettante, hysterical, credulous men

and women of the court, in search of some
new excitement. What wonder that with
such a crowd, dominated by the handsome
presence and undoubtedly strong magnetic
powers of the marvellous doctor, with the
expectation of the wonderful ensuring its own
realization, with the hysterical contagion to
which a crowd is always liable, what wonder
that convulsive crises were provoked, and
scandalous scenes enacted ?
- Outside Paris, numerous " Harmonic Soci­
eties " were established, the members of
which magnetized the sick poor gratuitously,
and communicated to each other the note­
worthy facts which occurred within their
experience. 1 At last it was felt that it was
necessary to institute a careful inquiry into
the whole subject, and Louis XVI, in 1784,
issued a mandate to the Medical Faculty of
Paris, desiring them to appoint commissioners
and draw up a report. Two Commissions

* See his Revelata, Vol. i. pp. 238, 239. In this learned work is
given a very full account of Meamer, and the reader who desires
to investigate the whole question of Animal Magnetism can find
no more useful treatise, as it is crowded with references to the
literature of the subject in ancient and modern times.
 43

were appointed, one of members of the

Academy of Sciences, including such men as
Franklin, Bailly, Lavoisier, and Guillotin;
the other of members of the Society of
Physicians, among whom De Jussieu was the
most famous. These Commissions reported
against Mesmer, considering that his cures
were due to the imagination of the patients,
and that his system was injurious to morality.
Attention was drawn in a special report to the
details of the system. " The magnetiser
generally keeps the patient's knees enclosed
within his own " the hand is laid on the
hypochondriac region" and other sensitive
parts of the body, and thus crises were provoked
of a hysterical nature, detrimental to moral
dignity and self-control. " Imagination, imi­
tation, touches, such are the real causes of the
effects attributed to animal magnetism. The
methods of magnetism being dangerous, it
follows that all public treatment in which
magnetic practices are used must, in the long
run, have the most lamentable results ". Bui
among these eminent men one of the most
eminent dissented from the report presented
by his Commission, and, while combating
 44

the theory of magnetism, refused to refer to

imagination all the strange phenomena he had
watched with the trained observation of the
naturalist. Of this dissident, De Jussieu,
Dr. Paul Richer says :
" A faithful and accurate observer, he had
noted facts that had escaped the attention of
the commissioners, or that they had voluntarily
neglected. These facts are not beyond
criticism, and moreover they are insufficient
as the foundation of a theory, be it what it •
may. But it is not the less true that De
Jussieu is the one savant who suspected that
among all the phenomena, more or less strange
and incoherent, then put to the debit and
•credit of animal magnetism, there were some
in which the unknown was lying hidden,
worthy of profound examination, and meriting
.something better than disdain or a simple
non-acceptance." 1
The insight of De Jussieu was to be
justified by the future. It may be noted also
that Cuvier (1769 to 1832), who was in 1800
appointed Professor of Natural Philosophy in

» La Nouvelle Revue, August, 1882. " Magnetisms Animal

•et Hypnotisme." Par Paul Richer.
 45

the College de France, later endorsed De

Jussieu rather than his colleagues. In the
second volume of his Anatomie Comparee
he writes:
" I must confess that it is very difficult to
distinguish the effect of the imagination of the
patient from the physical effect produced by
the operator. The effects, however, which'
are produced upon persons already insensible
before the commencement of the operation,
those which take place in others after the
operation has deprived them of sensibility,
and those which are manifested by animals,
do not permit us to doubt that the proximity
of two animated bodies, in certain positions
and with certain motions, has a real effect,
independently of all participation of the
imagination of one of them. It seems
sufficiently evident, too, that these effects
are owing to some sort of communication
which is established between their nervous
systems."1
The belief in Animal Magnetism, which
was now spoken of as Mesmerism, was not,
however, to be crushed out by the unfavourable
1 Quoted in /sis Revelata, Vol. i, p. 74.
 46

reports of the Commissions. As Mr. Colquhoun

well says, the facts " almost daily disclos­
ed were much too numerous, too unambi­
guous, and too firmly established, to be
overthrown even by the united force of learn­
ing, prejudice, ingenuity, ridicule, invective,
and persecution." In Germany, Lavater, i n
1787, drew to it the attention of the medical
world, and it has since steadily flourished there,
and has given birth to a widespread scientific
literature. In France, despite the Revolution,
its study proceeded, although Mesmer left the
country, 1 and three distinct schools of magnet­
ism were established : that of Mesmer, pro­
ceeding by touches, friction, and pressure, the
use of the baquet, of magnetized water and
plates applied to the stomach; a treatment
provocative of violent convulsions and crises;
that of Barbarin, which disregarded physical
means and relied on the will of the operator;
and the most celebrated of all, that of the
Marquis Chastenet de Puysegur, a pupil of
Mesmer, who took for his motto " Croyez et
veuillez", and used magnetic passes without
1 Mesmer died in 1815, at Mersburg, on the Lake ot Constance,

deeply beloved o£ the poor, to whose treatment he consecrated

his powers in his later years.
 47

intact. De Puysegur practised chiefly on

ie peasants of his vicinity, and worked a
irge number of cures, full accounts of which
may be read in his published works. 1 It is to
)e Puysegur that we owe the first description
the magnetic trance, or lucid somnambulism,
a discovery since so fruitful in results. A
iung peasant, named Victor, was suffering
:om an affection of the chest, and was magnet­
ised by De Puysegur, who thus describes
|he case:
"What was my surprise to see, in seven
linutes, this man fall into a tranquil sleep in
iy arms, without convulsions or pains! I
istened the crisis, a proceeding that caused
some giddiness; he spoke aloud on matters of
business. When it seemed to me that his
loughts must affect him unpleasantly, I
topped them, and sought to inspire merrier
les; this did not require much effort, and he
scame quite content, fancying that he was
:awing for a prize, dancing at a fete, etc. . . .

'In the third edition, 1820, of his " Memoires pour servir a
• histoire et a l'etablissement du Magnetisme Animal , I hnd
DO less than eight works advertised as from his pen. Ihe
["Memoires" has for stamp a heartsease, surrounded by rays
»nd ringed with the words, " Thought moves matter .
 48

I encouraged these ideas in him, and thus

obliged him to move actively in his chair,
as though dancing to a tune which, by
singing it mentally, I made him repeat out
loud."1
De Puysegur tells us of a peasant, "the
most stupid man in the countrysidewho
taught him methods of magnetizing when in
the " clairvoyant " state, and relates how his
patient, in the magnetic state, " was no longer
stupid, scarce able to stumble through a sen­
tence, but becomes a being I can hardly des-
cribe, to whom I need not speak, for he
understands and answers me if I merely
think in his presence." 2 This lucid somnam­
bulic state, as it has since been termed,
attracted general attention, and the popularity
of De Puysegur rivalled that of Mesmer.
" Gradually doctor after doctor in France
experimented in Animal Magnetism, or Mes­
merism, with varying results. In 1820, in
consequence of the investigations of a young
medical man, Dr. A. Bertrand, the hospitals
were opened for experiments, and the student
1 Memoires, pp. 21, 22.

' ibid., pp. 27-29. The student will find a large number of
instructive cases in this work.
 49

may read Baron Du Potet's large collection of

his personal experiences. He relates some
remarkable cures wrought by himself; but
the " unreliability " of the little-understood
natural agent in different hands, and the pre­
judice of the medical profession, barred the
way to its general adoption. 1 Experiments
successfully performed by one person on one
day, failed at the hands of another person on
the next day, and, the conditions of success
not yet being understood, the failure seemed
inexplicable and discouragement supervened.
It was forgotten that, in the investigation of
every newly-discovered natural force, similar
successes and failures occurred ; and it was
as rash to denounce Animal Magnetism as
unreliable because beginners blundered, as to
deny that electricity could be produced by
.friction because a machine working in a
moisture-laden atmosphere threw off no
sparks. •
In 1825, however, Animal Magnetism had
progressed so much that it again applied-in
Paris for scientific imprimatur, and after
1 Manuel de VEtudiant Ma&netiseur. Par Baron Du Potet,
Quatridme Edition, Paris, 1868.
4
 50

five years of patient investigation a Commis.

sion, named by the Academy of Medicine
reported strongly in its favour, and declared
that " the Academy should encourage research
into Animal Magnetism, as a very curious
branch of psychology and natural history. 1
But the reading of this report, presented by
M. Husson, raised a storm; one doctor
declared that the Acdemy was being enter-
tained with miracles, and another, that if the
alleged facts were true they would destroy
half our physiological knowledge; so that*
finally, the report was shelved. In 1837,
another Commission, composed almost entirely
of the opponents of magnetism, was appointed,
and another report issued, this time, as was
expected, in hostility ; this report was adopted
by the Academy, and was clinched by the offer
of a prize of 3,000 francs by M. Burdin, to any­
one who could read without using the eyes and
in darkness. M. Pigeaire, a doctor of Montpelier,
submitted his daughter, who was able to read
with her eyes bandaged, when in the magnetic
trance ; a commission was thereupon appointed
to examine this child, who had her eyes
1 Nouvelle Revue, loc. cit., p. 593.
 51

covered with cotton-wool, and then carefully

bandaged; the judges appear to have been
harsh, and to have distressed the sensitive,
who was accustomed to use the tips of her
fingers for reading, as do many somnambulists,
and after much discussion the prize remained
unawarded. M. Pigeaire then offered a prize of
30,000 francs to anyone, not in the magnetic
trance, who could read, wearing his daughter's
bandage, and this prize also remained unwon.
It may be remarked that the tips of the
lingers, the pit of the stomach, and the centre
of the crown of the head, are used by som­
nambulists for reading; a book placed in
contact with one of these parts of the body
is fluently read.
So for as France was concerned, Animal
Magnetism now remained under a cloud,
but in England it made great progress.
Dr. Abercrombie, Dr. Haddock, Dr. Elliott,
and many others, investigated it, and in most
cases practised it, and with remarkable suc­
cess. But the founder of the modern school
of " hypnotism " was Dr. Braid, a Manchester
surgeon, who seeing some experiments per­
formed by Lafontaine, a Swiss mesmerist, in
 52

1841, and believing him to be fraudulent, set

himself to work to discover the supposed
imposition. He, however, came to the con­
clusion that the incapcity of the mesmerised
patient to open his eyes was a real incapacity,
and he began to experiment upon his friends,
with the view of producing a similar pheno­
menon. He found that this closing of the
eyes could be brought about by a fixed gaze
at an object placed slightly above the eyes, so
that a convergent strabismus was induced.
When the hypnotic state was thus obtained,
he found that the patient could be readily
influenced, and that, by placing him in given
attitudes, the emotions normally expressed
by these attitudes could be produced in him
at will. He further discovered that the senses
often become abnormally acute under hyp­
notism, and that hallucinations could be
imposed on the subject by " suggestion," i.e.,
that a direction to see something on awaking
was followed by a hallucination when the
subject came out of the trance condition.
Since the time of Braid, the whole question
has been studied in the most strictly scientific
spirit, experiments have been performed under
 53
rigid test conditions, and hypnotism is no
longer an alien in the scientific world, but
an accepted denizen, well worthy of careful
attention. The world-famous experiments of
Charcot and his colleagues at the Salpetri&re,
and those of Liebault at Nancy, have for ever
rendered impossible the recurrence of the
follies of 1784 and 1837. The revival of the
study in France was due to the experiments
of Azam, a Bordeaux surgeon, in 1850,
and various works on it appeared up to
the year 1866, when Liebault published the
results of his investigations. In 1878, the
Salpetriere school first attracted public notice,
and from that time forward scepticism has
been replaced by study in the scientific
world.
In the Salpetriere every source of modern
science has been utilized to shut out the
possibility of fraud, and those who doubt
the results, startled by their amazing charac­
ter, will do well to study Dr. Paul Richer's
monumental work, Etudes Cliniques sur la
Grande HystSrie, ou Hystero-Epilepsie. It
has been found by numerous experiments
that the tracings obtained by attaching a
tambour to the arm and a pneumatograph to
the chest of a subject thrown into the
cataleptic state are wholly different from those
obtained from a subject in the normal condi­
tion ; for instance, while a strong man may
simulate some forced position, and the eye
of the observer may be unable to distinguish
any difference between his attitude and that
of a cataleptic patient placed in a similar
attitude, yet the strain in his case will be
made evident by the tracings obtained from
him, which are wholly different from those
obtained from the other. Thus the tracing of
the respiration of a person • in hypnotic
catalepsy showed smoothly-rounded curves,
while the tambour on the limb gave an
absolutely straight line; on the other hand,
the respiratory tracing from a man who
imitated the attitude showed sudden dives and
jerks, becoming sharper and sharper as the
moments passed, and the tracing from the
extended limb, at first fairly straight, showed
muscular tremors increasing in violence as
the strain was prolonged. By these rigid
tests was fraud excluded, and the certainty of
the abnormal state established.
 55
|
There are many ways in which the
subject can be thrown into the magnetic
trance, such as holding the hands and
gazing fixedly into the eyes, making down­
ward passes over the face and trunk,
placing the thumb on the forehead while
the fingers rest lightly on the crown of
the head, etc. At the Salpetriere, the
operators, dealing with hysterical patients,
have generally thrown the subject into the
rigid cataleptic state first, by a sudden noise,
as a blow on a gong, the flash of the electric
light, or other sudden sense-stimulus ; a slower
way is a continued slight stimulus, as looking
upwards at a dark or bright object—as in
Braid's experiments. The subject may be
made to pass from this cataleptic into the
lethargic state by further stimulus, and from
this into the " hypnotic or lucid somnam­
bulic, by light friction of the scalp. The true
hypnotic lethargy is distinguished from
catalepsy once more by respiratory tracings,
those obtained from a subject passing from
lethargy into catalepsy showing the change in
the most unmistakable way, while a further
check has been secured by making tracings
 56

of the circulatory changes (by the use

of the plethysmograph and air-sphymo-
graph), which are as marked as those of
the respiration. 1

II—THE FACTS

As long ago as 1636 Daniel Schwenter

hypnotized a cock by tying its legs together,
and placing its beak at the end of a chalk line
drawn along the ground, an experiment still
frequently repeated with success ; the tying of
the legs is quite unnecessary, as the animal
remains motionless if the beak be held on the
line for a few moments. Experiments on
animals are satisfactory in so far as the
possibility of fraud is here excluded, but of
course only physical phenomena can be
obtained from them. One word of warning is
advisable, however, to any who embark on
this line of investigation, especially if they
practise on the domestic cat or any of the
canine race. There is a moment, just before
1 See on these tracings Binet and Fere 's work quoted before,
pp. 120, 134, where a number of these tracings are given . and
for greater detail. P. Richer 's Etudes, pp 337-355 and
pp. 757-768.
 57

success, when the animal isjroused to rage—

probably by terror—and will spring at the
operator. Any start or blenching then means
failure, and an ugly bite or scratch may be the
result.
The facts of Animal Magnetism, for
purposes of study, may be conveniently
classed under three heads: 1. Its use as a
therapeutic agent. 2. The exaltation under it of
the physical senses and mental capacities. 3.
The control of the subject by the operator.
1. Its use as a therapeutic agent.—The
cures worked by Greatrakes, Mesmer, Du
Potet, and other mesmerizers have already
been alluded to, and during the present century
a vast number of cures have been affected.
Dr. Haddock records a case of blindness cured
by him. A little girl of seven began to
exhibit symptoms of cerebral affection, with
partial paralysis, and eventually became total­
ly blind ; the child was brought to him, and
by him submitted to a clairvoyante, who attri­
buted the blindness to the state of the roots of
the optic nerve and the disordered condition of
the nervous system. The child was mesmer­
ized everyday, and at the end of three weeks
 58

began to perceive light, improving gradually

until she was able to read large print. This
occurred at the close of the summer of 1849,
and at the end of 1850 the child had regained
her sight, but was somewhat short-sighted. 1
A famous case is that of Harriet Martineau,
who has left a record of her own experience;
she describes herself as reduced to the last
state of weakness, " a life passed between my
bed and the sofa." All that medical skill
could do was done, and she was continually
dependent on opiates. She then put herself
under mesmeric treatment, and " at the end
of four months I was, as far as my own
feelings could be any warrant, quite well."
She describes her steady convalescence,
u improved composure of nerve and spirits ",

and the help she found mesmerism to be in

breaking off the use of opiates." 2 Dr. Inglis,
of Halifax, cured a girl, eleven years old, of
epileptic fits, by daily inducing mesmeric
sleep, 8 a form of sleep that is accompanied
with marked recuperation of the bodily

1 Somnolism and Psychism, pp. 159, 160.

* Quoted in Newnham's Human Magnetism, pp. 421-427.

3 ibid., pp. 139, 140.
 59

energies. Perhaps the most remarkable use

of magnetism, under this head, is its employ­
ment as an anaesthetic. One of the most
famous operations performed on a mes­
merized patient is the removal of the breast
of an elderly French lady, Madame Plantin,
for cancer, in 1829. Madame Plantin's phy­
sician, Dr. Chapelain, was in the habit of
mesmerizing her, and he found that she would
placidly discuss the advisability of the proposed
amputation when she was in the mesmeric
trance, but shrank from it, when awake, with
*' the most intense anguish and apprehension."
M. Jules Cloquet, an eminent surgeon of
Paris, was chosen as operator, and found his
patient in the mesmeric trance on his
arrival. " She spoke calmly of the intended
operation; removed her own dress to expose
her bosom to the surgeon's knife ; and during
the operation, which lasted about a quarter of
an hour, she conversed freely with the
surgeon, and the physician, who was seated
by her, supporting the arm on the diseased
side, without exhibiting the slightest pain or
consciousness of what was going on." She
was kept under mesmerism for two days, and
 60

the wound began to heal in a healthy manner;

but the patient died fourteen days later from
another disease. 1 In 1851 Broca and Follin
mesmerized a woman to make an incision in an
abscess, and Guerineau, of Poitiers, amputated
the thigh of a hypnotized patient. 2 It is obvious
that this use of hypnotism might prove most
serviceable in cases in which chloroform
cannot be employed without danger to life.
Carl Hansen has used mesmerism for the
cure of nervous diseases of all sorts, for
destroying by suggestion rooted ideas amount­
ing to mania, for calming the insane in fits of
fury, etc., etc. In India, where climatic
influences are most favourable to the produc­
tion of mesmeric phenomena, and among the
sensitive Hindus, Colonel Olcott has cured
diseases literally by the hundred, paralysis,
blindness, deafness, dumbness, rheumatism,
and so on. The use of clairvoyance in the
diagnosis and cure of disease will be mention­
ed further on.
2. The exaltation of the physical senses and
mental capacities.—This class of cases is full
%
1 Somnolism and Hypnotism, pp. 45, 46.
3 Animal Magnetism, by Binet and Fere, p. 77.
 61

of instruction for the psychologist, for here, if

anywhere, he can study mental phenomena
apart from normal conditions, though if he
insists on invariably connecting states of con­
sciousness with cell-vibrations, he will find
himself in parlous difficulties.
The quickening of the senses and of the
mental capacities belongs to the lucid somnam­
bulic condition, not to that of lethargy. Binet
and Fere say:
" The state of the senses in hypnotic subjects
ranges from anaesthesia to hyperaesthesia.
During lethargy all the senses are suspended,
with the occasional exception of the sense of
hearing, which is sometimes retained, as it is
in natural sleep. During catalepsy, the special
|senses are partially awake; the muscular
sense, in particular, retains all its activity.
Finally, in somnambulism the senses are not
merely awake, but quickened to an extra­
ordinary degree. Subjects feel the cold
produced by breathing from the mouth at a
distance of several yards (Braid). Weber's
compasses, applied to the skin, produce a two­
fold sensation, with a deviation of 3 degrees, in
regions where, during the waking state, it
 62

would be necessary to give the instrument a

deviation of 18 degrees (Berger). The activity
of the senses of sight is sometimes so great
that the range of sight may be doubled, as well
as the sharpness of vision. The sense of
smell may be developed so that the subject is
able to discover by its aid the fragments
of a visiting card which had been given to
him to smell before it was torn up
(Taguet). The hearing is so acute that a con­
versation carried on the floor below may be
overheard."1
Many of the extraordinary phenomena of
clairvoyance appear to be directly related to
this abnormal sensibility, the bounds of time
and space being ultimately completely cast
aside. A girl of seventeen, named Jane
Rider, was very carefully observed by her
medical attendant, Dr. Belden ; he found amid
many other curious facts—that she could read
and write with two wads of cotton-wool over
her eyes, coming down to the middle of the
cheek, in close contact with the nose, and
closely bound with a large black handkerchief;
thus blinded, she on one occasion wrote the
1 Animal Magnetism, pp. 134-135.
 63

words Stiff Billy, and then correctly dotted

the i in each word; wrote Springfield under
them, leaving out the /, and went back and
put the missing letter in the right place. 1
Schelling, the German philosopher, relates a
case he observed, in which a clairvoyante
began to cry, and said that the death of a
member of the family had taken place at a
distance of 150 leagues. She added that the
letter announcing the death was on its way.
On awaking, she remembered nothing and was
quite bright and cheerful, but when again
hypnotized she again wept over the death. A
week later, Schelling found her crying, with a
letter beside her on the table, announcing the
death, and on asking whether she had previ­
ously heard of his illness, she answered that
she had heard no such news of him, and that
the intelligence was quite unexpected. 2 Similar
stories, vouched by names of the highest
character, may be found by the dozen in books
dealing with these phenomena, so there is
nothing unjustifiable in the statement of
Schopenhauer : " Who at this day doubts the
1 /sis Revelata, vol. i, p. 377.

' ibid., vol. i, pp. 89, 92.

 64

facts of animal magnetism and its clairvoyance,

is not to be called sceptical, but ignorant." 1
A use of clairvoyance that has been too much
neglected is its employment for the diagnosis
of obscure forms of disease. The Madame
Plantin alluded to above had a daughter,
Madame Lagandre, who was a clairvoyante,
and who visited her mother shortly before her
death ; she described the state of the right
Jung and heart, the stomach and liver, des­
cribing the right lung as being shrivelled up,
compressed, and no longer breathing, and
saying that there was water in the cavity of
the heart. A post-mortem examination was
conducted on Madame Plantin's body in the
presence of Dr. Drousart, M. Moreau—secretary
to the surgical section of the Royal Academy
of Medicine, Paris—and Dr. Chapelain, by
MM. Cloquet and Pailloux. The state of the
organs was found to exactly bear out the
somnambule's description. 2 Dr. Haddock's
somnambule, Emma, constantly diagnosed
diseases for him, and indicated appropriate
1 Versuchtuber Geisterschen.
i See fsis Revelata, vol. ii. pp. 87-89 ; and The Philosophy of
Mysticism. Du Prel. vol. i . P- 2 3 6 « A full account i s given
Dr. Haddock in Somnolism and Psychism, pp.
 65

remedies, which were applied with great

success.1 Here, again, a mass of evidence
is available for all who desire to further
study the subject. Dr. Sprengel, Dr. Brandis,
Dr. Georget, and other physicians equally
eminent, have advocated the employment
of somnambulists for the diagnosis of
disease.
Passing from the senses to the more intel­
lectual faculties, we find that the memory
becomes, to an extraordinary degree, reten­
tive under hypnotism: a poem was read
over to a hypnotized subject and she was
awakened; she could not remember it, but on
being again hypnotized she repeated it correct­
ly. At the Salpetriere a hypnotized subject
gave the menu of dinners she had eaten a
week previously. A hypnotized girl, in
Charcot's room, was asked the name of a
man who entered the room, and at once
answered, " M. Parrot". She was awakened
nd again questioned, but said she did not know
im; at last, after looking at him for a long
ime, she said that she thought he was a
physician at the Enfants assists (as was the
l Somnolism and Psychism. Chap. 7.
5
 66

fact). It appeared that she had been at the

Refuge when she was two years old, but had
naturally forgotten the physician : hypnotized,
her memory promptly recalled even his name.1
Similarly, the general mental capacity is
quickened. The girl before mentioned, Jane
Rider, blindfolded carefully, was asked to learn
backgammon ; she consented, knowing nothing
of the game, learned it rapidly, and won the
sixth game from an experienced player;
awakened, she was asked to play, but said she
had never seen the game, and she could not
even set the men.2 Dr. Abercrombie gives
a long account of a girl, whom he describes
-as " when awake, a dull, awkward girl, very
slow *in receiving any kind of instruction,
though much care was bestowed upon her " ;
but, when in the somnambulic condition, " she
often descanted with the utmost fluency and
correctness on a variety of topics, both political
and religious, the news of the day, the histori­
cal parts of Scripture, public characters, and
particularly the characters of members of the
family and their visitors. In these discussions
1 Binet and Fere, pp. 136-137.
1 [sis Revelata, vol. i» pp..381-382.
 67

she showed the most wonderful discrimination,

often combined with sarcasm, and astonishing
powers of mimicry. Her language through
the whole was fluent and correct, and her
illustrations often forcible and even eloquent.
She was fond of illustrating her subjects by
what she called a fable, • and in these her
imagery was both appropriate and elegant." 1
Such facts as these, which might be multi­
plied a hundredfold, should surely give pause
to the Materialist, who will have thought
to be nothing more than the result of the vibra­
tion of brain-cells ; and if it be objected that,
numerous as they are, these cases are yet
exceptional and abnormal, we may fitly reply
with Herschell: " The perfect observer will
have his eyes, as it were, opened that they
may be struck at once with any occurrence
which, according to received theories, ought
not to happen, for these are the facts which
serve as clues to new discoveries." 2
3. The control of the subject by the opera-
tor.—Here we come to the very heart of our
l" On the Intellectual Powers pp. 296 et seq. Quoted in /sis
Revelata.
'"Preliminary Discourse on the Study;of Natural .-Philo­
sophy." Sec. 127.
 68

question: to the most marvellous facts, the

most serious dangers, and the phenomena
most luminous for psychological discovery.
This control of the hypnotized person by
the hypnotizer is absolute, complete; as
Dr. Richer says, " The somnambulist . . . is no
longer a simple machine. He is the slave of
the will of another, the veritable subject of the
operator. His automatism consists in servi­
tude and obedience." 1
Take first the senses. These can be so
deceived as to sensate when there is no object
of sensation, to remain passive when stimuli
are applied. The patient is plunged in the
hypnotic trance ; he is told that he will see or
not see, feel or not feel, a certain thing ; he is
then awakened, but the " suggestion" con­
tinues to dominate his intelligence, and, appar­
ently acting freely, he blindly obeys. A
hypnotized patient was told that a bird was on
her knee, and on awaking she stroked and
caressed it; 2 another was told that he had a
lamp-shade placed between his hands, and on
awaking he pressed his hands against the
1 Etudes Cliniques, p. 789.
1 ibid., p. 645.
 69

imaginary object, and could not bring them

together; 1 a card was placed on a sheet of
white paper, and an imaginary line drawn
round the card on the paper with a blunt
pointer, the pointer not quite touching the
paper; when the subject awoke, the blank
paper was given to her, and she saw the rect­
angle which had not been traced on it, and,
on request, she folded the paper along the lines
she saw, folding it to the exact size of the card. 2
The reality of the hallucination is strikingly
shown by an experiment in which the subject
was told that there was a portrait on a piece
of blank cardboard ; when she awoke she saw
the portrait, when the cardboard was turned
round the portrait was reversed, and when
the other side of the cardboard was shown
nothing was seen, although these changes of
position were made out of sight of the patient/
Even more strange is it that such an imagin­
ary portrait is seen magnified or diminished if
looked at by the subject through an opera-glass.
A patient was told that Dr. Charcot was

4 Binat and Fere, p. 213.

5 Etudes Cliniques, p. 723.
4 Binet and Fere, p. 224.
 70

present when he was absent, and on awaking

she addressed him ; while another, told that
she could not see Dr. F., was unable to see
him though in the room ; she was given per­
mission to leave the room, and Dr. F., placed
himself in front of the door ; she came in con­
tact with him without seeing him, and after
making a second attempt to reach the door
became alarmed at a resistance in the air she
could not understand, and refused to make
any further effort; a hat placed on his head
was seen by her as suspended in the air, and
a cloak he put on moved about " like a hollow
puppet." 1 I have myself been rendered invisi­
ble in this way, with the quaintest of results.
Another class of experiments is the forma­
tion of hallucinatory complex visions. A
patient was told that Paradise was before her,
and she described the Virgin Mary, the saints
and angels, it being noticed that the details of
the vision in such cases varied with the belief
and fancy of the subject.2 Another was made
to see the devil; " she drew herself up, anger
in her face, in a superb pose of wrath and
1 ibid., pp. 306-308.
1 Etudes Cliniques, pp. 669 and 790.
 71
defiance. At the end of a few moments she
uttered a piercing cry, and fled to the other
end of the room."1 Another, described as a
"very respectable woman, the mother of a
family and very pious ", was made to assume
in turns the characters of a peasant, an actress
—a very free-spoken one—a general, and a
priest. We have here the explanation of
many of the visions of nuns and others in a
highly excited nervous condition ; the upward-
turned and fixed gaze is the very one used
by Braid for self-hypnotization, and the
dominant idea would take the place of the
suggestion.
Absolute physical lesion can be caused by
suggestion. Charcot and his assistants have
produced the physical effects of a burn by
suggesting to a hypnotized patient that she has
burned herself; a doctor traced some words
with a blunt probe on the arm of a hypnotized
subject, and told him that at four o'clock blood
would come out on the lines traced ; at the
time named the words appeared in red, with
minute spots of blood. Surely we have here
the explanation of the appearance of the
1 ibid., p. 699, note.
 1
72

" sacred stigmata " on ecstatic men and women

meditating long on the passion of Christ.
Just as the body can be affected and the
sense deceived, so can the inner sanctuary of
the mind be invaded, and the will of the
operator take the place of the paralysed
volition of the subject. Then comes the
possibility of suggesting action, action that
may be either criminal or salutary. At the
Salpetriere and elsewhere suggestion of crime
has been made and carried out after the subject
has awaked ; thus, told to poison one of the
doctors with a glass containing water, the
subject, after awaking, took the glass to him
and offered him the water, with the remark
that it was a hot day. Others have been
made to stab one of the doctors present, to
steal, etc. 1 Considerable cunning is evinced in
the way in which the suggestion is carried out
so that the person under control becomes a
criminal of an especially dangerous type; the
more so that the hypnotizer can at will
destroy all memory alike of the suggestion and
of the act. So serious to society has this new
peril been considered, that both in Russia and
1 Binet and Fere, pp. 286-291.
 73

in Germany a law has been passed forbidding

the practice of hypnotism by any but duly-
authorized persons—a law which it is absolutely
impossible to enforce.
On the other hand, suggestion may be
used for the most beneficial purposes. At
Nancy, Dr. Liebault and his colleagues have
used it to promote moral action and to check
criminal propensities; and, lately, the
Rev. Mr. Tooth, of Croydon, has cured
by suggestion confirmed dipsomaniacs. He
suggests to them, while in the hypnotic trance,
that drink is unpleasant to them, that it is
nauseous and will make them sick ; and in
the waking state it has this effect upon them,
so that they shrink from it with loathing.
Truly there is here a mighty power for weal
or woe, according as it is used by pure or
corrupt hands.

I l l — T H E EXPLANATION

To the great majority of people the above

facts are inexplicable, and it is noteworthy that
the French experimenters offer no explanation
of the facts they record. The explanation
 74

which I suggest, as a Theosophist, will be only

a possible hypothesis for most of my readers,
and will be promptly rejected by such of these
as are Materialists.
We must now distinguish between Magnet­
ism and Hypnotism, which, though closely
allied by the phenomena they produce, are yet
distinct in the agency employed. Animal
Magnetism is, in its nature, nearly related to-
Mineral Magnetism, and is visible to the
sensitive as light, as is the latter. Baron
Reichenbach's famous researches proved that
persons in a hyperaesthetic state could, when
placed in a perfectly dark room, see a magnet
by the luminosity surrounding it, a luminosity
specially marked at the poles.1 He found also-
that a similar luminosity is visible from the
human hands, " brushes" being perceptible
coming from the points • of the fingers.
This observation has been frequently
repeated with clairvoyants, and the name
of odyle, or odic force, has been given to
this human magnetism. The reality of this
current from the body was curiously shown
1 " Physico-Physiological Researches in the Dynamicsi of
Magnetism, etc.. in their Relations to Vita^ F o r c e . ' T r a n s i a t e 4
from the German by John Ashburner, M.D., Ed., IBM.
 75

by the behaviour of a cat with Emma, Dr. Had­

dock's sensitive; the cat jumped on Emma's
lap when she had been mesmerized, and she
began to stroke its head with her right hand.
"The cat instantly began to evince signs of
fear or pain, and .to cry in a peculiar half-
piteous, half-savage tone." The experiment
was repeated with other cats and kittens, but
some difficulty was experienced, " as the
animals always became savage, and endeavour­
ed to bite." When Emma was " away
i.e., in the lucid somnambulic state, the left
hand similarly affected the cat, showing that
the currents in the body were reversed. 1
No sign of any such current, or of the
physical action of one human organism on
another, has been observed in connection
with hypnotism; a certain stimulus applied
to the nerves seems to set up a bodily condition
which is peculiarly sensitive to either internal
or external stimuli; in the latter case the will
of the operator comes in as the active agent*
There is little doubt that the ganglionic, or
sympathetic, nervous system plays a great
part in somnambulic phenomena, appearing.
1 Somnolism and Psychism, pp. 109-111.
 76

indeed to act as the brain of the Sleep-Con­

sciousness. In an account given in the Lancet1
•of an Italian woman who suffered from cata­
lepsy, it is stated that the patient heard nothing
by the ear, but " the lowest whisper, directed
on the hollow of the hand, or sole of the foot,
on the pit of the stomach, or along the traject
of the sympathetic nerve", was perfectly
heard. Mr. Colquhoun remarks" in many
oases of catalepsy and somnambulism the
usual organs of the senses have been found to
be entirely dormant, and the seat of general
sensibility transferred from the brain to the
region of this ganglion, or cerebrum ah-
dominale" 2 Du Prel remarks:
" Now, as waking conciousness proceeds
parallel with corresponding changes of the
senses and brain, so the transcendental psy­
chological functions seem to be parallel with
•corresponding changes in the ganglionic
system, whose central seat, the solar plexus,
was already called by the ancients the seat of
the belly. With a somnambule of the physi­
cian Petitin, the pit of the stomach protruded
I Vol. xxiii, pp. 663 et seq.
I I s i s R e v e l a t a , vol. ii, p. 1^3.
 77
like a ball. Bertrand's somnambule said,
j pointing to her stomach, she had something
there which spoke, and of which she could
enquire . . . A somnambule with Werner
more particularly described the dualism of
brain and solar plexus, as it reveals itself on
the transition to somnambulism. Before her
senses were suppressed, but while she was
already gravitating towards somnambulism,
she said : ' Where ami?' I am not at home
in the head. There is a strange struggle
between the pit of the stomach and the head;
both would prevail, both see and feel. That
cannot be : it is a tearing asunder. It is as if
I must send down the head into the stomach
if I would see anything. The pit of the
stomach pains me if I think above; and yet
down there it is not clear enough. I must
wonder, and that with the head, over the new
disposition of the stomach." 1
It is held by many, and I think rightly, that
the cerebrum is one pole of the human magnet,
and the plexus Solaris the other, although
Reichenbach—from insufficient data, - as it
seems to me—contended that this axis is only
1 Philosophy of Mysticism, vol. i, pp. 170-171.
 78

secondary, and that the primary axis is

transverse.
If we now examine the human conscious­
ness, we shall find it broadly divided into two,
the Sleeping and the Waking; all mesmeric,
clairvoyant, hypnotic phenomena belong to the
former, and the more complete the quiescence
imposed on the bodily functions, the more vivid
and intense are the activities of the " Sleep-
Consciousness One other point of grave
significance should be noted: the hypnotized
person on awaking knows nothing, save
rarely, of what happened in the hypnotic
trance ; but " when he is asleep his memory
embraces all the facts of his sleep, of his
waking state, and of previous hypnotic sleeps. 1
This Sleep-Consciousness, as seen at work in
the somnambulic state, has a memory to
which the waking memory is forgetfulness,
can see in defiance of space and material
obstruction, is keenly intellectual where the
.waking brain is dull, is to the Waking-Con­
sciousness as a giant beside a dwarf. What
is it, this luminous Eidolon which shines out
the more brightly as the bodily frame is
1 Binet and Fere, p. 135.
 79

unconscious ? I answer : it is the Inner Self,

the true Individuality, the higher Ego, which
dwells in the body as the flame in the lamp,
sending into the outer world such shafts of
its radiance as can pierce its covering.
This Consciousness of man is able to
impress his physical brain and so become
the Waking-Consciousness, just so far as
physical conditions admit; what the Germans
call the psycho-physical threshold divides, as
it were, this Consciousness into two, not
really dividing the Consciousness, but dividing
off the amount it can impress on the physical
organism from that which the physical or­
ganism is incapable of receiving. Of all that
is below this threshold, the physical organism
remains unconscious. The contents of the
Waking-Consciousness are, then, only part of
the contents of the Total Consciousness, and,
indeed, a comparatively small part thereof.
Now this threshold is variable, and varies
with the physical condition ; and the more
sensitive the nervous system, the more
outward stimuli are removed • or the senses
dulled to their reception, the more does this
threshold sink, unveiling the contents of
 80

the Total, the Real Consciousness. So far as

the second class of phenomena is concerned,
the exaltation of the senses and of the
mental capacities, this hypothesis, worked
out, will be found to be thoroughly explana­
tory. Once realize that the physical organs of
sense are, as has been well said, barriers
between the inner senses, the perceptive
faculties of the Inner Self, and the objective
world, that they are organs, not faculties, and
it will be seen how their paralysis may make
way for the inner senses to function.
The third class of phenomena, the control
of the individual by the operator, turns once
more, as to the hallucinations, on this
movability of the threshold of sensation.
Let us conceive of existence as one vast
line, which has spirit or force for one
end and grossest matter for the other end,
all phenomena, " material " and immate­
rial ", ranging between these, not differing
in essence, but in degree of condensa­
tion—so that condensed force would present
itself as matter, rarefied matter as force.
Let us consider, next, that the universe,
to us, exists as conceived, our conception
*

81

depending on the impression made by it

on us through our senses. It will at
once be seen that a thing will present itself to
us as matter or as force according as it can or
cannot affect our senses; that which affects
the senses directly will be recognized as
matter; that which is only apprehended by
the mind through its effects will be recognized
as force. Whether the mental presentment of
a thing is material or immaterial will depend,
then, on our sensibility and not on the thing
itself, and the variation of our threshold of
sensibility will transfer a thing from the
matter-world to the force-world, and vice
versa.1 Thus to our normal senses the
attraction between the magnet and all iron
within the magnetic field is invisible and we
speak of the force of attraction : to the sensi­
tive, or the somnambulist this force is visible
as light. The senses condition the nature of
the perception. Then, to abnormally sharpened
senses, a thought may become a material
object, force-vibrations becoming visible, i.e.,
appearing as matter. But if this be so, the

'See the admirable argument on this_ subject in Du Prel s

Philosophy of Mysticism, Vol. ii, pp. 130-135.
•
 82

" hallucination " of the somnambulist, who

sees a bird or a lamp-shade at the suggestion of
the hypnotizer, results from her threshold of
sensibility being so shifted that the normally
immaterial thought becomes to her material.
This hypothesis does not explain the
paralysis of vision as to objects, or parts of
objects, which is one of the most startling of
hypnotic phenomena. For elucidation of this
I am somewhat at a loss. Patanjali speaks of
the possibility of disconnecting " that property
of Satwa which exhibits itself as luminous-
ness " from the organ of sight of the spectator;1
and the ancient Hindus held that there was
this connection, so to speak, between the seer
and the object seen. That an object can be
made to disappear, I know, having seen it done
and having been made myself to disappear;
for the explanation, I am still groping.2
The control of acts is easier to understand,
for here one can see that the Ego of the
hypnotized person may, as it were, be thrust
aside and the Ego of the hypnotizer take its
place, using the brain and limbs of the subject
1 Yo^a Aphorisms, Ed. 1889, p. 31.

* Vide p. 24, ante; and Invisible Helpers. PP. 25, 26. Ed.
 83

as its tool. Be this as it may, the recognition

of this true Ego, this Inner Self, acting in and
through the body, but its master, not its
product, offers, at least, a hopeful path to the
solution of the abstruse problems that face us.
That psychology should become in the West,
as it is in the East, an experimental science,
must be the wish of every patient searcher
after Truth.

Printed by A. K. 8itarama Shastri, at the Vaaanta Press,

Adyar, Madras.