somnambulism, properly so called. 'The electro-biological' condition
may be regarded as simply a kind of reverie or abstraction artificially
produced. But Braid discovered that a more perfect control might be
obtained over 'subjects,' and a condition resembling that of the
sleepwalker artificially induced, by modifying the method of fixing the
attention. Instead of directing the subject's gaze upon a bright object
placed at a considerable distance from the eyes, so that no effect
was required to concentrate vision upon it, he placed a bright object
somewhat above and in front of the eyes at so short a distance that
the convergence of their axes upon it was accompanied with sufficient
effect to produce even a slight amount of pain. The condition to which
the 'subjects' of this new method were reduced was markedly different
from the ordinary 'electro-biological' state. Thus on one occasion, in
the presence of 800 persons, fourteen men were experimented upon. 'All
began the experiment at the same time; the former with their eyes fixed
upon a projecting cork, placed securely on their foreheads; the others
at their own will gazed steadily at certain points in the direction of
the audience. In the course of ten minutes the eyelids of these ten
persons had involuntarily closed. With some, consciousness remained;
others were in catalepsy, and entirely insensible to being stuck with
needles; and others on awakening knew absolutely nothing of what had
taken place during their sleep.' The other four simply passed into
the ordinary condition of electro-biologised 'subjects,' retaining
the recollection of all that happened to them while in the state of
artificial abstraction or reverie.
Dr. Carpenter, in that most interesting work of his, 'Mental
Physiology,' thus describes the state of hypnotism:--'The process is
of the same kind as that employed for the induction of the "biological"
state; the only difference lying in the _greater intensity_ of the
gaze, and in the more complete concentration of will upon the direction
of the eyes, which the nearer approximation of the object requires
for the maintenance of the convergence. In hypnotism, as in ordinary
somnambulism, no remembrance whatever is preserved in the waking state
of anything that may have occurred during its continuance; although the
previous train of thought may be taken up and continued uninterruptedly
on the next occasion that the hypnotism is induced. And when the mind
is not excited to activity by the stimulus of external impressions, the
hypnotised subject appears to be profoundly asleep; a state of complete
torpor, in fact, being usually the first result of the process, and
any subsequent manifestation of activity being procurable only by
the prompting of the operator. The hypnotised subject, too, rarely
opens his eyes; his bodily movements are usually slow; his mental
operations require a considerable time in their performance; and there
is altogether an appearance of heaviness about him, which contrasts
strongly with the comparatively wide-awake air of him who has not
passed beyond the ordinary "biological" state.'
We must note, however, in passing, that the condition of complete
hypnotism had been obtained in several instances by some of the
earlier experimenters in animal magnetism. One remarkable instance
was communicated to the surgical section of the French Academy on
April 16, 1829, by Jules Cloquet. Two meetings were entirely devoted
to its investigation. The following account presents all the chief
points of the case, surgical details being entirely omitted, however,
as not necessary for our present purpose:--A lady, aged sixty-four,
consulted M. Cloquet on April 8, 1829, on account of an ulcerated
cancer of the right breast which had continued, gradually growing
worse, during several years. M. Chapelain, the physician attending the
lady, had 'magnetised' her for some months, producing no remedial
effects, but only a very profound sleep or torpor, during which all
sensibility seemed to be annihilated, while the ideas retained all
their clearness. He proposed to M. Cloquet to operate upon her while
she was in this state of torpor, and, the latter, considering the
operation the only means of saving her life, consented. The two doctors
do not appear to have been troubled by any scruples as to their right
thus to conduct an operation to which, when in her normal condition,
the patient strenuously objected. It sufficed for them that when
they had put her to sleep artificially, she could be persuaded to
submit to it. On the appointed day M. Cloquet found the patient ready
'dressed and seated in an elbow-chair, in the attitude of a person
enjoying a quiet natural sleep.' In reality, however, she was in the
somnambulistic state, and talked calmly of the operation. During the
whole time that the operation lasted--from ten to twelve minutes--she
continued to converse quietly with M. Cloquet, 'and did not exhibit
the slightest sign of sensibility. There was no motion of the limbs
or of the features, no change in the respiration nor in the voice; no
motions even in the pulse. The patient continued in the same state
of automatic indifference and impassibility in which she had been
some minutes before the operation.' For forty-eight hours after this,
the patient remained in the somnambulistic state, showing no sign of
pain during the subsequent dressing of the wound. When awakened from
this prolonged sleep she had no recollection of what had passed in
the interval; 'but on being informed of the operation, and seeing her
children around her, she experienced a very lively emotion which the
"magnetiser" checked by immediately setting her asleep.' Certainly none
of the hypnotised 'subjects' of Mr. Braid's experiments showed more
complete abstraction from their normal condition than this lady; and
other cases cited in Bertrand's work, 'Le Magnetisme Animal en France'
(1826), are almost equally remarkable. As it does not appear that in
any of these cases Braid's method of producing hypnotism by causing
the eyes, or rather their optical axes, to be converged upon a point,
was adopted, we must conclude that this part of the method is not
absolutely essential to success. Indeed, the circumstance that in some
of Braid's public experiments numbers of the audience became hypnotised
without his knowledge, shows that the more susceptible 'subjects' do
not require to contemplate a point near and slightly above the eyes,
but may be put into the true hypnotic state by methods which, with the
less susceptible, produce only the electro-biological condition.
It will be well, however, to inquire somewhat carefully into this
point. My present object, I would note, is not merely to indicate the
remarkable nature of the phenomena of hypnotism, but to consider these
phenomena with direct reference to their probable cause. It may not be
possible to obtain a satisfactory explanation of them. But it is better
to view them as phenomena to be accounted for than merely as surprising
but utterly inexplicable circumstances.
Now we have fortunately the means of determining the effect of the
physical relations involved in these experiments, apart from those
which are chiefly due to imagination. For animals can be hypnotised,
and the conditions necessary for this effect to be fully produced have
been ascertained.
The most familiar experiment of this sort is sometimes known as
Kircher's. Let the feet of a hen be tied together (though this is not
necessary in all cases), and the hen placed on a level surface. Then if
the body of the hen is gently pressed down, the head extended with the
beak pointing downwards, touching the surface on which the hen stands,
and a chalk mark is drawn slowly along the surface, from the tip of the
beak in a line extending directly from the bird's eye, it is found that
the hen will remain for a considerable time perfectly still, though
left quite free to move. She is, in fact, hypnotised.
We have now to inquire what parts of the process just described are
effective in producing the hypnotic condition, or whether all are
essential to success in the experiment.
In the first place, the fastening of the feet may be dispensed
with. But it has its influence, and makes the experiment easier. An
explanation, or rather an illustration, of its effect is afforded by a
singular and interesting experiment devised by Lewissohn of Berlin:--If
a frog is placed on its back, it immediately, when the hand which had
held it is removed, turns over and escapes. But if the two fore-legs
are tied with a string, the frog, when placed on its back, breathes
heavily but is otherwise quite motionless, and does not make the least
attempt to escape, even when the experimenter tries to move it. 'It
is as though,' say Czermak, describing the experiment as performed
by himself, 'its small amount of reasoning power had been charmed
away, or else that it slept with open eyes. Now I press upon the
cutaneous nerves of the frog, while I loosen and remove the threads
on the fore-legs. Still the animal remains motionless upon its back,
in consequence of some remaining after-effect; at last, however, it
returns to itself, turns over, and quickly escapes.'
Thus far the idea suggested is that the animal is so affected by the
cutaneous pressure as to suppose itself tied and therefore unable
to move. In other words, this experiment suggests that imagination
acts on animals as on men, only in a different degree. I may cite
here a curious case which I once noticed and have never been able to
understand, though it seems to suggest the influence of imagination on
an animal one would hardly suspect of being at all under the influence
of any but purely physical influences. Hearing a noise as of a cat
leaping down from a pantry window which looked out on an enclosed yard,
I went directly into the yard, and there saw a strange cat running
off with a fish she had stolen. She was at the moment leaping on to
a bin, from the top of which, by another very easy leap, she could
get on to the wall enclosing the yard, and so escape. With the idea
rather of frightening her than of hurting her (does one missile out of
a hundred flung at cats ever hit them?) I threw at the thief a small
piece of wood which I had in my hand at the moment. It struck the
wall above her just as she was going to leap to the top of the wall,
and it fell, without touching her, between her and the wall. To my
surprise, she stood perfectly still, looking at the piece of wood; her
mouth, from which the fish had fallen, remaining open, and her whole
attitude expressing stupid wonder. I make no doubt I could have taken
her prisoner, or struck her heavily, if I had wished, for she made no
effort to escape, until, with a parlour broom which stood by, I pushed
her along the top of the bin towards the wall, when she seemed suddenly
to arouse herself, and leaping to the top of the wall she made off.
My wife witnessed the last scene of this curious little comedy. In
fact, it was chiefly, perhaps, because she pleaded for mercy on 'the
poor thing' that the soft end of the broom alone came into operation;
for, though not altogether agreeing with the Count of Rousillon that
anything can be endured before a cat, I did not at the moment regard
that particular cat with special favour.
The extension of the neck and depression of the head, in the experiment
with the hen, have no special significance, for Czermak has been able
to produce the same phenomena of hypnotism without them, and has failed
to produce the hypnotic effect on pigeons when attending to this point,
and in other respects proceeding as nearly as possible in the same
way as with hens. 'With the hens,' he says, 'I often hung a piece of
twine, or a small piece of wood, directly over their crests, so that
the end fell before their eyes. The hens not only remained perfectly
motionless, but closed their eyes, and slept with their heads sinking
until they came in contact with the table. Before falling asleep,
the hens' heads can be either pressed down or raised up, and they
will remain in this position as if they were pieces of wax. That is,
however, a symptom of a cataleptic condition, such as is seen in human
beings, under certain pathological conditions of the nervous system.'
On the other hand, repeated experiments convinced Czermak that the
pressure on the animal as it is held is of primary importance. It
is frequently the case, he says, that a hen, which for a minute has
been in a motionless state, caused by simply extending the neck and
depressing the head, awakes and flies away, but on being caught again
immediately, she can be placed once more in the condition of lethargy,
if we place the animal in a squatting position, and overcome with
gentle force the resistance of the muscles, by firmly placing the hand
upon its back. During the slow and measured suppression, one often
perceives an extremely remarkable position of the head and neck, which
are left entirely free. The head remains as if held by an invisible
hand in its proper place, the neck being stretched out of proportion,
while the body by degrees is pushed downwards. If the animal is thus
left entirely free, it remains for a minute or so in this peculiar
condition with wide-open staring eyes. 'Here,' as Czermak remarks,
'the actual circumstances are only the effect of the emotion which the
nerves of the skin excite, and the gentle force which overcomes the
animal's resistance. Certainly the creature a short time before had
been in a condition of immobility, and might have retained some special
inclination to fall back into the same, although the awakening, flight,
and recapture, together with the refreshment given to the nervous
system, are intermediate circumstances.' Similar experiments are best
made upon small birds. Now, it is well known to bird fanciers that
goldfinches, canary-birds, &c. can be made to remain motionless for
some time by simply holding them firmly for a moment and then letting
them go. 'Here, in my hand,' said Czermak, in his lecture, 'is a timid
bird, just brought from market. If I place it on its back, and hold its
head with my left hand, keeping it still for a few seconds, it will
lie perfectly motionless after I have removed my hands, as if charmed,
breathing heavily, and without making any attempt to change its
position or to fly away.' ('Two of the birds,' says the report, 'were
treated in this manner without effect; but the third, a siskin, fell
into a sleeping condition, and remained completely immovable on its
back, until pushed with a glass tube, when it awoke and flew actively
around the room.')
Also when a bird is in a sitting position, and the head is pressed
slightly back, the bird falls into a sleeping condition, even though
the eyes had been open. 'I have often noticed,' says Czermak, 'that the
birds under these circumstances close their eyes for a few minutes or
even a quarter of an hour, and are more or less fast asleep.'
Lastly, as to the chalk-line in Kircher's experiment. Czermak found,
as already said, that pigeons do not become motionless, as happens to
hens, if merely held firmly in the hand, and their heads and necks
pressed gently on the table. Nor can they be hypnotised like small
birds in the experiment last mentioned. 'That is,' he says, 'I held
them with a thumb placed on each side of the head, which I bent over
a little, while the other hand held the body gently pressed down upon
the table; but even this treatment, which has such an effect on little
birds, did not seem to succeed at first with the pigeons: almost always
they flew away as soon as I liberated them and entirely removed my
hands.' But he presently noticed that the short time during which the
pigeons remained quiet lengthened considerably when the finger only of
the hand which held the head was removed. Removing the hand holding
the body made no difference, but retaining the other hand near the
bird's head, the hand made all the difference in the world. Pursuing
the line of research thus indicated, Czermak found to his astonishment
that the fixing of the pigeon's look on the finger placed before its
eyes was the secret of the matter. In order to determine the question
still more clearly, he tried the experiment on a pigeon which he had
clasped firmly by the body in his left hand, but whose neck and head
were perfectly free. 'I held one finger of my right hand steadily
before the top of its beak,--and what did I see? The first pigeon with
which I made this attempt remained rigid and motionless, as if bound,
for several minutes, before the outstretched forefinger of my right
hand! Yes, I could take my left hand, with which I had held the bird,
and again touch the pigeon without waking it up; the animal remained in
the same position while I held my outstretched finger still pointing
towards the beak.' 'The lecturer,' says the report, 'demonstrated
this experiment in the most successful manner with a pigeon which was
brought to him.'
Yet it is to be noticed that among animals as among men, different
degrees of subjectivity exist. 'Individual inward relations,' says
Czermak, 'as well as outward conditions, must necessarily exercise some
disturbing influence, whether the animal will give itself up to the
requisite exertions of certain parts of its brain with more or less
inclination or otherwise. We often see, for example, that a pigeon
endeavours to escape from confinement by a quick turning of its head
from side to side. In following these singular and characteristic
movements of the head and neck, with the finger held before the bird,
one either gains his point, or else makes the pigeon so perplexed and
excited that it at last becomes quiet, so that, if it is held firmly
by the body and head, it can be forced gently down upon the table.
As Schopenhauer says of sleeping, "The brain must bite." I will also
mention here, by the way, that a tame parrot, which I have in my house,
can be placed in this sleepy condition by simply holding the finger
steadily before the top of its beak.'
I may cite here a singular illustration of the effect of perplexity
in the case of a creature in all other respects much more naturally
circumstanced than the hens, pigeons, and small birds of Czermak's
experiments. In the spring of 1859, when I was an undergraduate at
Cambridge, I and a friend of mine were in canoes on the part of the
Cam which flows through the College grounds. Here there are many ducks
and a few swans. It occurred to us, not, I fear, from any special
scientific spirit, but as a matter of curiosity, to inquire whether it
was possible to pass over a duck in a canoe. Of course on the approach
of either canoe a duck would try to get out of the way on one side or
the other; but on the course of the canoe being rapidly changed, the
duck would have to change his course. Then the canoe's course would
again be changed, so as to compel the duck to try the other side. The
canoe drawing all the time nearer, and her changes of course being made
very lightly and in quicker and quicker alternation as she approached,
the duck would generally get bewildered, and finally would allow the
canoe to pass over him, gently pressing him under water in its course.
The process, in fact, was a sort of mild keelhauling. The absolute
rigidity of body and the dull stupid stare with which some of the
ducks met their fate seems to me (_now_: I was not in 1859 familiar
with the phenomena of hypnotism) to suggest that the effect was to be
explained as Czermak explains the hypnotism of the pigeons on which he
experimented.
We shall be better able now to understand the phenomena of artificial
somnambulism in the case of human beings. If the circumstances observed
by Kircher, Czermak, Lewissohn, and others, suggest, as I think they
do, that animal hypnotism is a form of the phenomenon sometimes called
fascination, we may be led to regard the possibility of artificial
somnambulism in men as a survival of a property playing in all
probability an important and valuable part in the economy of animal
life. It is in this direction, at present, that the evidence seems to
tend.
The most remarkable circumstance about the completely hypnotised
subject is the seemingly complete control of the will of the 'subject'
and even of his opinions. Even the mere suggestions of the operator,
not expressed verbally or by signs, but by movements imparted to the
body of the subject, are at once responded to, as though, to use Dr.
Garth Wilkinson's expression, the _whole man_ were given to each
perception. Thus, 'if the hand be placed,' says Dr. Carpenter, 'upon
the top of the head, the somnambulist will frequently, of his own
accord, draw up his body to its fullest height, and throw his head
slightly back; his countenance then assumes an expression of the
most lofty pride, and his whole mind is obviously possessed by that
feeling. When the first action does not of itself call forth the rest,
it is sufficient for the operator to straighten the legs and spine,
and to throw the head somewhat back, to arouse that feeling and the
corresponding expression to its fullest intensity. During the most
complete domination of this emotion, let the head be bent forward,
and the body and limbs gently flexed; and the most profound humility
then instantaneously takes its place.' Of course in some cases we may
well believe that the expressions thus described by Dr. Carpenter have
been simulated by the subject. But there can be no reason to doubt
the reality of the operator's control in many cases. Dr. Carpenter
says that he has not only been an eye-witness of them on various
occasions, but that he places full reliance on the testimony of an
intelligent friend, who submitted himself to Mr. Braid's manipulations,
but retained sufficient self-consciousness and voluntary power to
endeavour to exercise some resistance to their influence at the time,
and subsequently to retrace his course of thought and feeling. 'This
gentleman declares,' says Dr. Carpenter, 'that, although accustomed
to the study of character and to self-observation, he could not
have conceived that the whole mental state should have undergone so
instantaneous and complete a metamorphosis, as he remembers it to
have done, when his head and body were bent forward in the attitude
of humility, after having been drawn to their full height in that of
self-esteem.'
A most graphic description of the phenomena of hypnotism is given by
Dr. Garth Wilkinson:--'The preliminary state is that of abstraction,
produced by fixed gaze upon some unexciting and empty thing (for
poverty of object engenders abstraction), and this abstraction is the
logical premiss of what follows. Abstraction tends to become more and
more abstract, narrower and narrower; it tends to unity and afterwards
to nullity. There, then, the patient is, at the summit of attention,
with no object left, a mere statue of attention, a listening, expectant
life; a perfectly undistracted faculty, dreaming of a lessening and
lessening mathematical point: the end of his mind sharpened away to
nothing. What happens? Any sensation that appeals is met by this
brilliant attention, and receives its diamond glare; being perceived
with a force of leisure of which our distracted life affords only the
rudiments. External influences are sensated, sympathised with, to an
extraordinary degree; harmonious music sways the body into graces the
most affecting; discords jars it, as though they would tear it limb
from limb. Cold and heat are perceived with similar exaltation; so
also smells and touches. In short, _the whole man appears to be given
to each perception_. The body trembles like down with the wafts of the
atmosphere; the world plays upon it as upon a spiritual instrument
finely attuned.'
This state, which may be called the natural hypnotic state, may be
artificially modified. 'The power of suggestion over the patient,' says
Dr. Garth Wilkinson, 'is excessive. If you say, "What animal is it?"
the patient will tell you it is a lamb, or a rabbit, or any other.
"Does he see it?" "Yes." "What animal is it _now_?" putting depth and
gloom into the tone of _now_, and thereby suggesting a difference.
"Oh!" with a shudder, "it is a wolf!" "What colour is it?" still
glooming the phrase. "Black." "What colour is it now?" giving the _now_
a cheerful air. "Oh! a beautiful blue!" (rather an unusual colour for a
wolf, I would suggest), spoken with the utmost delight (and no wonder!
especially if the hypnotic subject were a naturalist). And so you lead
the subject through any dreams you please, by variations of questions
and of inflections of the voice! and _he sees and feels all as real_.'