4. To make up for this, some of the powers of the mind acquire
concentration and temporary increase of force, and occasionally new
powers of apprehension appear to be developed.
5. Spasms of the muscles, generally tonic or maintained spasms, but
sometimes, having the character of convulsive struggles, are
occasionally manifested in trance. And they may bear either of two
relations to it. They may occur simultaneously with trance-waking or
alternately with it, and occupying the patient's frame in the intervals
of trance.
In the ordinary course of things, trance-sleep precedes trance-waking,
and follows it. So that some have described trance-waking as waking in
trance. Trance-sleep may come on during ordinary sleep, or during
ordinary waking. By use the introductory and terminal states of
trance-sleep become abridged; and sometimes, if either exist, it is so
brief, that the transition to and from trance-waking out of and into
ordinary waking, _appears_ immediate.
Now to illustrate the phenomena of trance half-waking, by describing
somnambulism.
A curious fate somnambulism has had. When other forms of trance have
been exalted into mystical phenomena and figure in history, somnambulism
has had no superstitious altars raised to her--has had no
fear-worship--has at the highest been promoted to figure in an opera. Of
a quiet and homely nature, she has moved about the house, not like a
visiting demon, but as a maid of all work. To the public, the phenomenon
has presented no more interest than a soap-bubble or the fall of an
apple.
Somnambulism is a form of half-waking trance which usually comes on
during the night, and in ordinary sleep. When it occurs in the daytime,
the attack of trance is still ordinarily preceded by a short period of
common sleep.
The somnambulist then, half waking in trance, is disposed to rise and
move about. Sometimes his object seems a mere excursion, and then it is
remarked that he shows a disposition to ascend heights. So he climbs,
perhaps, to the roof of the house, and makes his way along it with
agility and certainty: sometimes he is observed, where the tiles are
loose, to try if they are secure before he advances. Generally these
feats are performed in safety. But occasionally, a somnambulist has
missed his footing, fallen, and perished. His greatest danger is from
ill-judged attempts to wake and warn him of his perilous situation.
Luckily, it is not easy to wake him. He then returns, goes to bed,
sleeps, and the next morning has no recollection of what he has done. In
other cases, the somnambulist, on rising from his bed, betakes himself
to his customary occupations, either to some handiwork, or to
composition, or what not.
These three points are easily verifiable respecting his condition. He is
in a dream, which he, as it were, acts after his thoughts; occasionally
he remembers on the following day some of the incidents of the night
before, as part of a dream.
But his common sensibility to ordinary impressions is suspended: he does
not feel; his eyes are either shut, or open and fixed; he does not see;
he does not observe light, and works as well with as without it; he has
not taste or smell: the loudest noise makes no impression on him.
In the mean time, to accomplish the feats he performs, the most accurate
_perception_ of sensible objects is required. Of what nature is that of
which he so marvellously evinces the possession? You may adopt the
simple hypothesis,--that the mind, being disengaged from its ordinary
relations to the senses, does without them, and perceives things
directly. Or you may suppose, if you prefer it, that the mind still
employs sensation, using only impressions that in ordinary waking are
not consciously attended to, for its more wonderful feats; and otherwise
common sensation, which, however generally suspended, may be awakened by
the dreaming attention to its objects.
The following case of somnambulism, in which the seizure supervened, in
a girl affected with St Vitus's dance, and combined itself with that
disorder, is given by Lord Monboddo:--
The patient, about sixteen years of age, used to be commonly taken in
the morning a few hours after rising. The approach of the seizure was
announced by a sense of weight in the head, a drowsiness which quickly
terminated in sleep, in which her eyes were fast shut. She described a
feeling beginning in the feet, creeping like a gradual chill higher and
higher, till it reached the heart, when consciousness or recollection
left her. Being in this state, she sprang from her seat about the room,
over tables and chairs, with the astonishing agility belonging to St
Vitus's dance. Then, if she succeeded in getting out of the house, she
ran at a pace with which her elder brother could hardly keep up, to a
particular spot in the neighbourhood, taking the directest but the
roughest path. If she could not manage otherwise, she got over the
garden-wall with surprising rapidity and precision of movement. Her eyes
were all the time fast closed. The impulse to visit this spot she was
often conscious of during the approach of the paroxysm, and, afterwards,
she sometimes thought she had dreamed of going thither. Towards the
termination of her indisposition, she dreamed that the water of a
neighbouring spring would do her good, and she drank much of it. One
time they tried to cheat her by giving her water from another spring,
but she immediately detected the difference. Towards the end, she
foretold that she would have three paroxysms more, and then be well--and
so it proved.
The following case is from a communication by M. Pigatti, published in
the July Number of the _Journal Encyclopedique_ of the year 1762. The
subject was a servant of the name of Negretti, in the household of the
Marquis Sale.
In the evening, Negretti would seat himself in a chair in the anteroom,
when he commonly fell asleep, and would sleep quietly for a quarter of
an hour. He then righted himself in his chair, so as to sit up. [This
was the moment of transition from ordinary sleep into trance.] Then he
sat some time without motion, as if he saw something. Then he rose and
walked about the room. On one occasion, he drew out his snuff-box and
would have taken a pinch, but there was little in it; whereupon he
walked up to an empty chair, and addressing by name a cavalier whom he
supposed to be sitting in it, asked him for a pinch. One of those who
were watching the scene, here held towards him an open box, from which
he took snuff. Afterwards he fell into the posture of a person who
listens; he seemed to think that he heard an order, and thereupon
hastened with a wax-candle in his hand, to a spot where a light usually
stood. As soon as he imagined that he had lit the candle, he walked with
it in the proper manner, through the _salle_, down the steps, turning
and waiting from time to time, as if he had been lighting some one down.
Arrived at the door, he placed himself sideways, so as to let the
imaginary persons pass, and he bowed as he let them out. He then
extinguished the light, returned up the stairs, and sat himself down
again in his place, to play the same farce over again once or twice the
same evening. When in this condition, he would lay the tablecloth, place
the chairs, which he sometimes brought from a distant room, and opening
and shutting the doors as he went, with exactness; would take decanters
from the _beauffet_, fill them with water at the spring, put them on a
waiter, and so on. All the objects _that were concerned in these
operations_, he distinguished where they were before him with the same
precision and certainty as if he had been in the full use of his senses.
Otherwise he seemed to observe nothing--so, on one occasion, in passing
a table, he upset a waiter with two decanters upon it, which fell and
broke, without exciting his attention. The dominant idea had entire
possession of him. He would prepare a salad with correctness, and sit
down and eat it. Then, if they changed it, the trick passed without his
notice. In this manner he would go on eating cabbage, or even pieces of
cake, seemingly without observing the difference. The taste he enjoyed
was imaginary; the sense was shut. On another occasion, when he asked
for wine, they gave him water, which he drank for wine, and remarked
that his stomach felt the better for it. On a fellow-servant touching
his legs with a stick, the idea arose in his mind that it was a dog, and
he scolded to drive it away; but the servant continuing his game,
Negretti took a whip to beat the dog. The servant drew off when Negretti
began whistling and coaxing to get the dog near him; so they threw a
muff against his legs, which he belaboured soundly.
M. Pigatti watched these proceedings with great attention, and convinced
himself by many trials that Negretti did not use his senses. The
suspension of taste was shown by his not distinguishing between salad
and cake. He did not hear the loudest sound, when it lay out of the
circle of his dreaming ideas. If a light was held close to his eyes,
near enough to singe his eyebrows, he did not appear to be aware of it.
He seemed to feel nothing when they inserted a feather into his
nostrils. The ordinary sensibility of his organs seemed withdrawn.
Altogether, the most interesting case of somnambulism on record, is that
of a young ecclesiastic, the narrative of which, from the immediate
communication of an Archbishop of Bordeaux, is given under the head of
somnambulism in the French Encyclopaedia.
This young ecclesiastic, when the archbishop was at the same seminary,
used to rise every night, and write out either sermons or pieces of
music. To study his condition, the archbishop betook himself several
nights consecutively to the chamber of the young man, where he made the
following observations.
The young man used to rise, to take paper, and to write. Before he wrote
music, he would take a stick and rule the lines with it. He wrote the
notes, together with the words corresponding with them, with perfect
correctness. Or, when he had written the words too wide, he altered
them. The notes that were to be black, he filled in after he had written
the whole. After completing a sermon, he read it aloud from beginning to
end. If any passage displeased him, he erased it, and wrote the amended
passage correctly over the other; on one occasion he had to substitute
the word "_adorable_" for "_divin_;" but he did not omit to alter the
preceding "_ce_" into "_cet_," by adding the letter "_t_" with exact
precision to the word first written. To ascertain whether he used his
eyes, the archbishop interposed a sheet of pasteboard between the
writing and his face. He took not the least notice, but went on writing
as before. The limitation of his perceptions to what he was thinking
about was very curious. A bit of aniseed cake, that he had sought for,
he eat approvingly; but when, on another occasion, a piece of the same
cake was put in his month, he spit it out without observation. The
following instance of the dependance of his perceptions upon, or rather
their subordination to, his preconceived ideas is truly wonderful. It is
to be observed that he always knew when his pen had ink in it.
Likewise, if they adroitly changed his papers, when he was writing, he
knew it, if the sheet substituted was of a different size from the
former, and he appeared embarrassed in that case. But if the fresh sheet
of paper, which was substituted for that written on, was exactly of the
same size with the former, he appeared not to be aware of the change.
And he would continue to read off his composition from the blank sheet
of paper, as fluently as when the manuscript itself lay before him; nay,
more, he would continue his corrections, and introduce the amended
passage, writing it upon exactly the place on the blank sheet which it
would have occupied on the written page.
The form of trance which has been thus exemplified may be therefore well
called half-waking, inasmuch as the performer, whatever his powers of
perception may be in respect to the object he is thinking of, is
nevertheless lost in dream, and blind and deaf to every thing without
its scope.
The following case may serve as a suitable transition to instances of
full-waking in trance. The subject of it alternated evidently between
that state and half-waking. Or she, could be at once roused from the
latter into the former by the conversation of her friends. The case is
recorded in the Acta Vratisl. ann. 1722, Feb. class iv., art. 2.
A girl seventeen years of age was used to fall into a kind of sleep in
the afternoon, in which it was supposed, from her expression of
countenance and her gestures, that she was engaged in dreams which
interested her. After some days, she began to speak when in this state.
Then, if those present addressed remarks to her, she replied very
sensibly; but then fell back into her dream-discourse, which turned
principally upon religious and moral topics, and was directed to warn
her friends how a female should live, Christianly, well-governed, and so
as to incur no reproach. When she sang, which often happened, she heard
herself accompanied by an imaginary violin or piano, and would take up
and continue the accompaniment upon an instrument herself. She sewed,
did knitting, and the like. But on the other hand, she imagined on one
occasion that she wrote a letter upon a napkin, which she folded with
the intention of sending it to the post. Upon waking, she had not the
least recollection of her dreams, or of what she had been doing. After a
few months she recovered.
I come now to the exemplification of full-waking in trance, as it is
very perfectly manifested in the cases which have been termed double
consciousness. These are in their principle very simple; but it is not
easy in a few words to convey a distinct idea of the condition of the
patient. The case consists of a series of fits of trance, in which the
step from ordinary waking to full trance-waking is sudden and immediate,
or nearly so, and either was so originally, or through use has become
so. Generally for some hours on each day, occasionally for days
together, the patient continues in the state of trance; then suddenly
reverts to that of ordinary waking. In the perfectest instances of
double consciousness, there is nothing in the bearing or behaviour of
the entranced person which would lead a stranger to suppose her (for it
is an affection far commoner in young women than in boys or men) to be
other than ordinarily awaked. But her friends observe that she does
every thing with more spirit and better--sings better, plays better, has
more readiness, moves even more gracefully, than in her natural state.
She has an innocent boldness and disregard of little conventionalisms,
which imparts a peculiar charm to her behaviour. In the mean time, she
has two complete existences separate and apart, which alternate but
never mingle. On the day of her first fit, her life split into a double
series of thoughts and recollections. She remembers in her ordinary
state nothing of her trance existence. In her trances, she remembers
nothing of the intervening hours of ordinary waking. Her recollections
of what she had experienced or learned before the fits began is
singularly capricious, differing extraordinarily in its extent in
different cases. In general, the positive recollection of prior events
is annulled; but her prior affections and habits either remain, and her
general acquirements, or they are quickly by association rekindled or
brought into the circle of her trance ideas. Generally she names all her
friends anew; often her tone of voice is a little altered; sometimes she
introduces with particular combinations of letters some odd inflection,
which she maintains rigorously and cannot unlearn.
Keeping before him this conception, the reader will comprehend the
following sketch of a case of double consciousness, communicated by Dr
George Barlow. To one reading them without preparation, the details,
which are very graphic and instructive, would appear mere confusion:--
"This young lady has two states of existence. During the time that the
fit is on her, which varies from a few hours to three days, she is
occasionally merry and in spirits; occasionally she appears in pain and
rolls about in uneasiness; but in general she seems so much herself,
that a stranger entering the room would not remark any thing
extraordinary; she amuses herself with reading or working, sometimes
plays on the piano and better than at other times, knows every body, and
converses rationally, and makes very accurate observations on what she
has seen and read. The fit leaves her suddenly, and she then forgets
every thing that has passed during it, and imagines that she has been
asleep, and sometimes that she has dreamed of any circumstance that has
made a vivid impression upon her. During one of these fits she was
reading Miss Edgeworth's tales, and had in the morning been reading a
part of one of them to her mother, when she went for a few minutes to
the window, and suddenly exclaimed, 'Mamma, I am quite well, my headach
is gone.' Returning to the table, she took up the open volume, which she
had been reading five minutes before, and said, 'What book is this?' she
turned over the leaves, looked at the frontispiece, and replaced it on
the table. Seven or eight hours afterwards, when the fit returned, she
asked for the book, went on at the very paragraph where she had left
off, and remembered every circumstance of the narrative. And so it
always is; as she reads one set of books during one state, and another
during the other. She seems to be conscious of her state; for she said
one day, 'Mamma, this is a novel, but I may safely read it; it will not
hurt my morals, for, when I am well, I shall not remember a word of
it.'"
This state of double consciousness forms the basis of the psychical
phenomena observed in the extraordinary cases which have been
occasionally described under the general name of catalepsy. The accounts
of the most interesting of these that I have met with, were given by M.
Petatin in 1787; M. Delpet, 1807; Dr Despine, 1829. The wonderful powers
of perception evinced by the patients when in this state of
trance-waking would exceed belief, but for the respectable names of the
observers, and the internal evidence of good faith and accuracy in the
narratives themselves. The patients did not see with their eyes nor hear
with their ears. But they heard at the pit of the stomach, and perceived
the approach of persons when at some distance from their residence, and
read the thoughts of those around.
I am, my dear Archy, no wonder-monger; so I am not tempted to make a
parade to you of these extraordinary phenomena. Nor in truth do they
interest me further than as they concur with the numerous other facts I
have brought forward to show, and positively prove, that under certain
conditions the mind enters into new relations, spiritual and material. I
will, however, in conclusion, give you the outline of a case of the sort
which occurred a few years ago in England, and the details of which were
communicated to me by the late Mr Bulteel. He had himself repeatedly
seen the patient, and had scrupulously verified what I now narrate to
you:--
The patient was towards twenty years of age. Her condition was the state
of double consciousness, _thus_ aggravated, that when she was not in the
trance, she suffered from spasmodic contraction of the limbs. In her
alternate state of trance-waking, she was composed and apparently well;
but the expression of her countenance was slightly altered, and there
was some peculiarity in her mode of speaking. She would mispronounce
certain letters, or introduce consonants into words upon a regular
system; and to each of her friends she had given a new name, which she
only employed in her trance. As usual, she knew nothing in either state
of what passed in the other. Then in her trance she exhibited three
marvellous powers: she could read by the touch alone: if she pressed her
hand against the whole surface of a written or printed page, she
acquired a perfect knowledge of its contents, not of the substance only,
but of the words, and would criticise the type or the handwriting. A
line of a folded note pressed against the back of her neck, she read
equally well: she called this sense-feeling. Contact was necessary for
it. Her sense of smell was at the same time singularly acute; when out
riding one day, she said, "There is a violet," and cantered her horse
fifty yards to where it grew. Persons whom she knew she could tell were
approaching the house, when yet at some distance. When persons were
playing chess at a table _behind her_, and intentionally made impossible
moves, she would smile, and ask them why they did it.
Cases of this description are no doubt of rare occurrence. Yet not a
year passes in London without something transpiring of the existence of
one or more of them in the huge metropolis. Medical men view them with
unpardonable indifference. Thus one doctor told me of a lady, whom he
had been attending with other physicians, who, it appeared, always
announced that they were coming some minutes before they drove to her
door. It was very odd, he thought, and there was an end of it.
"M. l'Abbe," said Voltaire to a visitor, who gave him a commonplace
account of some remarkable scenes, "do you know in what respect you
differ from Don Quixote?"--"No," said the Abbe, not half liking the look
of the question. "Why, M. l'Abbe, Don Quixote took the inns on the road
for castles, but you have taken castles for inns."
Adieu, dear Archy.--Yours, &c.
MAC DAVUS.