It is especially in the somnambulistic state that the astonishing phenomena of suggestion are observed, that suggestibility is heightened to the greatest degree. The patient believes everything which his hypnotiser tells him, and does everything which the latter commands. Even results over which the will has normally no control—such as sneezing, secretion, reddening and growing pale, alterations of temperature and heartbeat, menstruation, action of the bowels, etc.,—may take place in consequence of the operator's firm assertions during the hypnotic trance, and the resulting conviction on the part of the subject that the effects will occur.

The subject, though not asleep, yet does not move or think, and can be so impressed through the sensory channels as to enter upon some definite train of ideas or movements. He lacks spontaneity, like a machine that cannot start itself, but can be set going by the operator.

Verbal suggestion is not always necessary. One need speak nothing, but, for example, by someone playing some tune the hypnotised subject will be influenced by it, and music will act by way of suggestion. Thus a reel will set them dancing with grace or little elegance, according to their natural capacity. They will assume the attitudes and gestures corresponding to the character of the music. A solemn strain will readily cause them to kneel and pray, or to join in the devotional music; and a warlike march will cause them to march about in soldier-like attitude.

Whatever suggestions are imparted to his subconscious mind, the subject accepts as facts from which he reasons. His subconscious mind is incapable of inductive reasoning, therefore he does not trouble himself whether the premiss is true or false; that is to say, he proceeds at once to deductive reasoning, and this, as a rule, perfectly, as his deductions are as logically correct from a false premiss as they are from a true one.

The subconscious mind accepts, without hesitation or doubt, every statement that is made to it, no matter how absurd, or incongruous, or contrary to the objective experience of the individual. The subconscious mind never classifies a series of known facts, and reasons from them up to general principles; but, given a general principle to start with, it will reason deductively from that down to all legitimate inferences, with a marvellous cogency and power. He takes the text from his operator; but he may amplify and develop it enormously as he acts it out.

Place a man of intelligence and cultivation in the somnambulic state, and give him a premiss—say, in the form of a statement of a general principle of philosophy—and no matter what may have been his opinions in his normal condition, he will unhesitatingly in obedience to the power of suggestion, assume the correctness of the proposition.

False and true suggestions alike are carried into • active effect. Thus, for instance, any character suggested to a hypnotised subject in this state will be instantaneously assumed, as far as it is physically possible to do so, and will be personated with marvellous fidelity to the original, just as far as the subject's knowledge of the original extends. If it is suggested to a subject that he is another personality—a peasant, a general, or an archbishop—he will readily take up the suggestion, and will speak and act the part with great accuracy. His own personality is for the moment completely obscured, while the suggestion of a fresh personality is readily taken up. If he is told the next second that he is the President of the United States, he will act the part with wonderful fidelity to life. If he is told that he is in the presence of angels, he will be profoundly moved to acts of devotion. If the presence of devils is suggested, his terror will be instant and painful to behold. If a subject is told that he is a dog, he will instantly accept the suggestion, and to the limit of physical possibility act the part suggested, and for each of these states his imagination, aided by memory which is continuous for the character, will suggest a suitable system of ideas and of actions.

An experiment frequently performed is to cause a grown-up woman to believe that she is still a child, when it is found that she speaks in a childish voice and even writes like a child, asks for her doll, and cries when she thinks someone is taking her doll away.

It is evident that in hypnotisation the ideo-reflex excitability is increased in the brain, so that any idea received is immediately transformed into an act, without the controlling portion of the brain, the higher centres, being able to prevent the transformation.

How. real a suggestion is to a hypnotised subject, and how the subsequent conclusions and actions are entirely their own, is shown by the following incident, which I witnessed. A lady, who was very fond of her children, was temporarily separated from them, and expressed in the hypnotic state a longing to see them. Hoping to- pacify her, it was suggested that her little boy and girl are awaiting her in an adjoining room. While the operator went to ask her sister, who was present in the room, the names of the children, and was contemplating what objects he should choose that might be suggested to represent them, the lady began to sob violently. After a second or two the operator succeeded in quieting her, and enquired the cause of her tears. The reply was, "My children do not love me, or else they would have come in at once." Although there were no children present, the operator suggested they were, and the hallucination was so perfect that she fondled them in turn, the extension of her arms being such as to leave enough space for a real child. She conversed with them, and even scolded the little girl for having soiled her frock and being untidy, and declaring that the maid—whose name she mentioned— "never looks after you properly when I am away." Now, none of this conversation arose from the brains of the operator or any of us who were present. It was entirely her own, presumably her usual accustomed way, and it continued until she was awakened, when she had no recollection of the incident, although her sister tried to remind her of it.

The subject may be rendered happy and gay, or sad and dejected, angry or pleased, liberal or stingy, proud or vain, pugnacious or pacific, bold or timid, hopeful or despondent, insolent or respectful. He may be made to sing, to shout, to laugh, to weep, to act, to dance, to shoot, to fish, to preach, to pray, to deliver an eloquent oration, or to excogitate a profound argument.

The expression during these delusions is also important. In all such experiments one will observe that the gestures and voice, the manner and expression, the whole physiognomical and natural language, are extremely perfect. The attitudes of pride, humility, anger, fear, kindness, pugnacity, devotion, or meditation, and all others, are, with peculiarities in each case, depending on the idiosyncrasy of the individual, beautiful studies for the artist.

The attitudes and gestures are equal to or surpassing the best efforts of the most accomplished actor, although the hypnotised subject may be a person of limited intellectual cultivation, and show no peculiar talent for mimicry in the waking state. Everyone knows how difficult it is to place oneself in a particular position so that the expression, the attitude and the actions should correspond to the idea. To represent such a situation as naturally as possible is the greatest art of the actor, but is very seldom altogether realised on the stage; but it is still more difficult to change the mood in a moment, and pass from one situation to another in a few seconds. The hypnotised subject, however, often does so easily.

The hypnotised subject, in personating suggested characters, is really not" acting a part" in the ordinary sense of the word. It is much more than acting, for the subject believes himself to be the actual personality suggested, just as the excellence of a real actor is proportionate in each case to his ability to forget his own personality, and to identify himself with that of the character which he seeks to portray. The subject will personate to perfection any suggested character with which he is familiar, and his success is accounted for by the fact that his own personality is completely submerged under the influence of suggestion, and he believes himself to be the actual person suggested.

The essential mental conditions of good acting are, therefore, present in perfection. It follows that in proportion to the subject's knowledge and intelligent appreciation of the salient characteristics of the suggested personality, will the rendition approach perfection.

Occasionally a character suggested may appear unreal to the subject, and in such a case he may be conscious of " playing a comedy," and have enough recollection when awakened to imagine that he has been shamming all the while. Yet if we hypnotise him again, he is again unable to resist the suggestions made, and performs them so faithfully that if he were shamming he must long since have found his true function in life upon the stage.

One of the most striking and important peculiarities of the subconscious mind, as distinguished from the conscious, consists in its prodigious memory. In all degrees of hypnotic sleep, the exaltation of the memory is one of the most pronounced of the attendant phenomena. I once asked a subject in the somnambulic state to sing something. She replied that she could not sing, for she had never learned to sing. I then asked her whether she would recite, but she said that although she used to recite, she had given it up for years, and had forgotten all she had learned. " Try and recollect something," I requested her, but in vain. "Well, tell me a piece you used to know." After some hesitation came the reply, Tennyson's "Maud." "Go on then, recite it!" "Oh, I don't know it!" "Yes, you do! You see, you are recollecting it now! It is coming back to you word for word." And the good lady recited the poem, until I stopped her, although she got no prompting from me, consciously or unconsciously, for I was ignorant of the words.

One of the remarkable effects of hypnotism is this recollection of circumstances and the revival of impressions long since past, the images of which had been completely lost to ordinary memory, and which are not recoverable in the ordinary state of the brain. All the sensations which we have ever experienced have left behind them traces in the brain so slight as to be intangible and imperceptible under ordinary circumstances ; but hypnotic suggestion, addressing itself to the subconscious mind, and the subconscious mind being the storehouse of memories, they can be recalled at the command of the operator.

Everything learned in normal life can be remembered in hypnosis, even when it has apparently been long forgotten. Benedikt relates, a case of an English officer in Africa who was hynotised by Hansen, and suddenly began to speak a strange language. This turned out to be Welsh, which he had learned as a child, but had forgotten.

Of course, false memories can be suggested, as when I say to a subject: "Of course, you remember we drove to Richmond yesterday!" and if at all plausible that we may have done so, the suggestion will take effect, and he will at once begin to relate all that he believe we did in Richmond. This is a retroactive positive hallucination, because the subject believes that he has experienced something that never really occurred. This not only happens in the hypnotic state, but in the waking state in some people, especially children with a lively imagination. The police-court reports frequently contain cases of false accusations against men, told to such perfection and with such plausible accuracy of detail, that only a very clever cross-examination can detect any flaws in the evidence.

Many persons not hypnotised yet perform actions, innocent and sometimes criminal, as if in a dream, of which they have no recollection afterwards. This is the case in epilepsy sometimes, and in hystero-epilepsy. By hypnotising such patients we can get at their subconscious state of mind in which they performed these actions, and can induce them to tell us all about the occurrence.

Hypnotised subjects are said to be capable of repeating everything like phonographs. Braid had an experience which attracted considerable attention at the time. One of his subjects, a young work-girl, who did not know the grammar of her own language and who had never been taught music, though she must have possessed the gift subconsciously, correctly accompanied Jenny Lind in several songs in different languages, and also in a long and difficult chromatic exercise which was specially improvised in order to test her.

The memory may he obliterated. Nothing is easier than to make subjects forget their own name and condition in life. It is one of the suggestions which most promptly succeed, even with quite fresh ones.

When I was a boy of fifteen, the Danish hypnotist, Hansen, was giving public performances daily, and I, together with other schoolboys, felt attracted by them, and volunteered as subjects one night. I recollect standing on the stage of the theatre, facing the footlights, when Hansen, while touching me with his finger on the centre of the forehead, suddenly exclaimed: "You have forgotten your name! You cannot tell me what it is! Try!" I did my best, but could not tell him. I tried again and again, but in vain. It was quite a relief to me when he suggested some name, like this: "It is John Brown, is it not?" when I replied: "Yes." I remember perfectly well that I did not believe him, but it was a relief to me not to have to think any more.

A subject may forget whole periods of his life at the suggestion of the hypnotiser.

Sense-delusions are common in hypnotism, either as hallucinations or illusions.

An illusion is the false interpretation of an existing external object, as, for instance, when a chair is taken for a lion, a broomstick for a beautiful woman, a noise in the street for an orchestral music, or when I ask a subject whether he would like to smoke and he accepts a lead-pencil in place of a cigarette and attempts to light it. That the illusion is real is evident by the fact that the subject will imagine he is drawing smoke from the pencil, which, of course, is not even alight, and will even cough, if smoking is usually irritating to his throat.

Or, let us take another example. A subject at my request is playing the piano. I then suggest I have another piano here, pointing to a table, and the subject sits down in front of the table, making the same movements as on the piano, in the belief that he is repeating the same piece. That piano is an illusion; but if I suggested a piano where there is nothing at all, it would be a hallucination. If, however, this player is asked, after a time, which piano he likes better, he has the sense to admit he prefers the other, namely, the real one. An empty glass may be offered to a subject, and he is told it contains hot whisky and water, and he is to take care not to burn his mouth. The endeavour to swallow the imaginary liquor is followed by catching of the breath and violent coughing.

A hallucination is the perception of an object where there is really nothing; as, for instance, when I say to a subject, "Sit down in this armchair," where there is really no chair at all, yet the hallucination is so perfect that he does put himself in exactly the same attitude as if he were sitting in a real chair, only if you ask him after a time, " Are you comfortable ?" he may reply, "Not particularly!" and ask for a chair more comfortable. It seems incredible that a hallucination should be so real that a person can assume an attitude so strained, but it is so.

Suggest to a person that a swarm of bees are buzzing about him, he will not only see and hear them, but he will go through violent antics to beat them off.

Or, tell a person that there are rats in the room, and the word will wake up a train of imagery in the patient's brain which is immediately projected outward in an expressive display of appropriate gestures of aversion and corresponding movements of avoidance.

The fear depicted on the face of a subject when he believes he is about to be attacked by a tiger is most impressive. But, I need hardly say, such suggestions —inspiring terror—should never be made.

Hallucinations of all the senses and delusions of every conceivable kind can be easily suggested to good subjects. The emotional effects are then often so lively, and the pantomimic display so expressive, that it is hard not to believe in a certain "psychic hyper-excitability" as one of the concomitants of the hypnotic condition.

Hallucinations have been shown by Binet and Fere to .be doubled by a prism or mirror, magnified by a lens, and in many other ways to behave optically like real objects.

In suggesting a hallucination, say that of a bird, the suggested approach of the object causes contraction of the pupil, and vice versa. At the same time, there is often convergence of the axis of the eyes, as if a real object were present.

Those who have witnessed public exhibitions of hypnotic performances will remember that hypnotised subjects will drink water, or even ink, for wine, will eat onions for pears. The showman will make them eat a potato for a peach, or drink a cup of vinegar for a glass of champagne. A subject will drink several glasses of wine by suggestion, will become red in the face, and then complain of his head. He may be thrown into a state of intoxication by being caused to drink a glass of water under the impression that it is brandy; or he may be restored to sobriety by the administration of brandy under the guise of an antidote to drunkenness. In these cases the expression of the face induced by the suggested perception corresponds so perfectly to it that a better effect would scarcely be produced if the real article were used. The operator gives them simple water to taste, telling them, at the same time, that it is some nauseating and bitter mixture, and they spit it out with grimaces of disgust when they attempt to drink it; when he tells them what he offers them is sweet and pleasant, though it is as bitter as wormwood, they smack their lips as if they had tasted something remarkably good. Their senses are dominated by the idea suggested, and they are very much in the position of an insane person who believes that he tastes poison in his food when he imagines that someone wishes to poison him.

Ammonia will smell like eau-de-Cologne, and a piece of cork may be taken by the subject for an onion, when he will smell it and his eyes will fill with tears.

Naturally, several organs can be influenced by suggestion at the same time. I tell someone, "Here is a rose!" at once he not only sees, but feels and smells the rose. I pretend to give another subject a dozen oysters; he eats them without it being necessary for me to say a word. The suggestion here affects sight, feeling and taste at the same time. In many cases, the muscular sense is influenced in a striking manner by such suggestions. I suggest to a subject an imaginary glass of wine he is to drink; he lifts the pretended glass to his lips, and leaves a space between hand and mouth as he would if he held a real glass. I am not obliged to define the delusion for each separate sense; the subject does that spontaneously for himself. The deception, if it is thorough, is clearly reflected in the subject's expression and gestures. No gourmand could wear a more delightful expression over some favourite dish than does a subject over a suggested delicacy.

When the delusion is positive the hypnotic believes he sees what does not exist; when it is negative he fails to recognise the presence of an object really placed before him. I have often made the post-hypnotic suggestion to a subject, that on waking he will not see me, although I shall remain in the room, and although he will see everybody else. The subject then can hear and feel me, but he fails to see me. When speaking to him I have observed his head and eyes turn in my direction, but it is as if I had a fairy helmet over me which hides me—he cannot see me. This is a negative hallucination of sight. Similarly, it may be suggested that the subject is deaf to certain words, but not to others.

Negative hallucinations depend upon the cooperation of various factors: firstly, dream-consciousness, which creates the tendency to negative sense-delusions; secondly, the subject's belief in everything the experimenter says which favours those delusions; thirdly, the mental state which results from this, and which may be regarded as analogous to diversion of the attention.

An entire cessation of the functions of any sense organ can be induced in the same way as a negative hallucination. "You can no longer hear, you are deaf!" or "You cannot see, you are blind!" these words suffice to deprive the hypnotic of the corresponding sense-perceptions. Not only does he cease to recognise any particular object, but the sense organ affected is insusceptible to anything. A command suffices to restore the functions.

It is certain that the blindness and deafness induced in this way are of a mental nature, for the corresponding organ of sense performs its functions, though the impressions do not reach the consciousness. In the same way, the sight of one eye can be suspended, though the other can see as usual.

Various physiological effects can be produced in the state of hypnosis. Thus lachrymal secretion can be excited either by suggesting emotional states or by a sense delusion, such as a pungent smell.

I have even seen a subject weep and shed tears on one side of the face, and laugh with the other. I do not think any conscious person has such separate control over each side of the face, or, at least, not so perfectly.

The pulse can be quickened or retarded, respiration slowed or accelerated, or temporarily arrested, and perspiration can be produced—all by suggestion. Even the temperature can be affected. Thus it has been observed that if a subject is told he is in high fever, his pulse will become rapid, his face flushed, and his temperature increased. Or a person is told that he is standing on ice. He feels cold at once. He trembles, his teeth chatter, he wraps himself in his coat. " Goose-skin" can be produced by the suggestion of a cold bath. Hunger and thirst can be created, and other functions increased or retarded, as will be described in the next chapter on "Post-Hypnotic Suggestion."

The mind can be so concentrated upon a physiological process as to stimulate that process to normal activity, so as to produce curative effects, and even to superabundant activity, so as to produce pathological effects, or disease. For instance, a blister can be caused on a sound and healthy skin by applying a postage stamp and suggesting that it is a fly-plaster; or, as Jendrassik and Krafft-Ebing have done to subjects in the hypnotic state, placing upon the healthy skin a key or a coin, with the suggestion that at a given time, say two hours after waking, a blister will appear at the spot where the key or coin had been placed, and of corresponding size -and shape. The key or coin is then removed and the patient awakens, having no conscious knowledge of the suggestion given; but at the appointed time the blister appears.

On the other hand, blisters and burns have been annulled by suggestion by Delboeuf and others.

Mere local redness of the skin is easily produced by suggestion, and can be seen to appear in a few minutes by watching the subject.

The production of reddening and bleeding of the skin in hypnotised subjects suggested by tracing lines or pressing objects thereupon, puts the accounts handed down to us of the stigmata of the cross appearing on the hands, feet, sides and forehead of certain mystics in a new light.