[480] Emotion and Will, p. 352. But even Bain's own description belies his formula, for the idea appears as the 'moving' and the pleasure as the 'directing' force.
[481] P. 398.
[482] P. 354.
[483] P. 355.
[484] P. 390.
[485] Pp. 295-6.
[486] P. 121.
[487] Cf. also Bain's note to Jas. Mill's Analysis, vol. ii. p. 305.
[488] How much clearer Hume's head was than that of his disciples! "It has been proved beyond all controversy that even the passions commonly esteemed selfish carry the Mind beyond self directly to the object; that though the satisfaction of these passions gives us enjoyment, yet the prospect of this enjoyment is not the cause of the passions but, on the contrary, the passion is antecedent to the enjoyment, and without the former the latter could never possibly exist," etc. (Essay on the Different Species of Philosophy, § 1, note near the end.)
[489] In favor of the view in the text, one may consult H. Sidgwick, Methods of Ethics, book i. chap. iv; T. H. Green, Prolegomena to Ethics, bk. iii. chap. i. p. 179; Carpenter, Mental Physiol., chap vi; J. Martineau, Types of Ethical Theory, part ii, bk. i, chap. ii. i, and bk. ii, branch i. chap. i. i. § 3. Against it see Leslie Stephen, Science of Ethics, chap. ii. § ii; H. Spencer, Data of Ethics, §§ 9-15; D. G. Thompson, System of Psychology, part ix, and Mind, vi. 62. Also Bain, Senses and Intellect, 738-44; Emotions and Will, 436.
[490] This sentence is written from the author's own consciousness. But many persons say that where they disbelieve in the effects ensuing, as in the case of the table, they cannot will it. They "cannot exert a volition that a table should move." This personal difference may be partly verbal. Different people may attach different connotations to the word 'will.' But I incline to think that we differ psychologically as well. When one knows that he has no power, one's desire of a thing is called a _wish_ and not a will. The sense of impotence inhibits the volition. Only by abstracting from the thought of the impossibility am I able to imagine strongly the table sliding over the floor, to make the bodily 'effort' which I do, and to will it to come towards me. It may be that some people are unable to perform this abstraction, and that the image of the table stationary on the floor inhibits the contradictory image of its moving, which is the object to be willed.
[491] A normal palsy occurs during sleep. We will all sorts of motions in our dreams, but seldom perform any of them. In nightmare we become conscious of the non-performance, and make a muscular 'effort.' This seems then to occur in a restricted way, limiting itself to the occlusion of the glottis and producing the respiratory anxiety which wakes us up.
[492] Both resolves and beliefs have of course immediate motor consequences of a quasi-emotional sort, changes of breathing, of attitude, internal speech movements, etc.; but these movements are not the _objects_ resolved on or believed. The movements in common volition are the objects willed.
[493] This _volitional_ effort pure and simple must be carefully distinguished from the _muscular_ effort with which it is usually confounded. The latter consists of all those peripheral feelings to which a muscular 'exertion' may give rise. These feelings, whenever they are massive and the body is not 'fresh,' are rather disagreeable, especially when accompanied by stopped breath, congested head, bruised skin of fingers, toes, or shoulders, and strained joints. And it is only _as thus disagreeable_ that the mind must make its _volitional_ effort in stably representing their reality and consequently bringing it about. That they happen to be made real by muscular activity is a purely accidental circumstance. A soldier standing still to be fired at expects disagreeable sensations from his muscular passivity. The action of his will, in sustaining the expectation, is identical with that required for a painful muscular effort. What is hard for both _is facing an idea as real_.
Where much muscular effort is not needed or where the 'freshness' is very great, the volitional effort is not required to sustain the idea of movement, which comes then and stays in virtue of association's simpler laws. More commonly, however, muscular effort involves volitional effort as well. Exhausted with fatigue and wet and watching, the sailor on a wreck throws himself down to rest. But hardly are his limbs fairly relaxed, when the order 'To the pumps!' again sounds in his ears. Shall he, can he, obey it? Is it not better just to let his aching body lie, and let the ship go down if she will? So he lies on, till, with a desperate heave of the will, at last he staggers to his legs, and to his task again. Again, there are instances where the fiat demands great volitional effort though the muscular exertion be insignificant, e.g., the getting out of bed and bathing one's self on a cold morning.
[494] Cf. Aristotle's Nichomachæan Ethics, vii. 3; also a discussion of the doctrine of 'The Practical Syllogism' in Sir A. Grant's edition of this work, 2d ed. vol. i. p. 212 ff.
[495] The Duality of the Mind, pp. 141-2. Another case from the same book (p. 123): "A gentleman of respectable birth, excellent education, and ample fortune, engaged in one of the highest departments of trade,...and being induced to embark in one of the plausible speculations of the day...was utterly ruined. Like other men he could bear a sudden overwhelming reverse better than a long succession of petty misfortunes, and the way in which he conducted himself on the occasion met with unbounded admiration from his friends. He withdrew, however, into rigid seclusion, and being no longer able to exercise the generosity and indulge the benevolent feelings which had formed the happiness of his life, made himself a substitute for them by daydreams, gradually fell into a state of irritable despondency, from which he only gradually recovered with the loss of reason. He now fancied himself possessed of immense wealth, and gave without stint his imaginary riches. He has ever since been under gentle restraint, and leads a life not merely of happiness, but of bliss; converses rationally, reads the newspapers, where every tale of distress attracts his notice, and being furnished with an abundant supply of blank checks, he fills up one of them with a munificent sum, sends it off to the sufferer, and sits down to his dinner with a happy conviction that he has earned the right to a little indulgence in the pleasures of the table; and yet, on a serious conversation with one of his old friends, he is quite conscious of his real position, but the conviction is so exquisitely painful that _he will not let himself believe it_."
[496] 'Le Sentiment de l'Effort, et la Conscience de l'Action,' in Revue Philosophique, xxviii. 561.
[497] P. 577.
[498] They will be found indicated, in somewhat popular form, in a lecture on 'The Dilemma of Determinism,' published in the Unitarian Review (of Boston) for September 1884 (vol. xxii. p. 193).
[499] See Grundtatsachen des Seelenlebens, pp. 594-5; and compare the conclusion of our own chapter on Attention, Vol. I. pp. 448-454.
[500] Thus at least I interpret Prof. Lipps's words: "Wir wissen uns naturgemäss in jedem Streben umsomehr aktiv, je mehr unser _ganzes_ Ich bei dem Streben beheiligt ist," u. s. w. (p. 601).
[501] Such ejaculations as Mr. Spencer's: "Psychical changes either conform to law or they do not. If they do not, this work, in common with all works on the subject, is sheer nonsense: no science of Psychology is possible" (Principles of Psychology, i. 503),--are beneath criticism. Mr. Spencer's work, like all the other 'works on the subject,' treats of those general conditions of _possible_ conduct within which all our real decisions must fall no matter whether their effort be small or great. However closely psychical changes may conform to law, it is safe to say that individual histories and biographies will never be written in advance no matter how 'evolved' psychology may become.
[502] _Caricatures_ of the kind of supposition which free will demands abound in deterministic literature. The following passage from John Fiske's Cosmic Philosophy (pt. ii. chap. xvii) is an example: "If volitions arise without cause, it necessarily follows that we cannot infer from them the character of the antecedent states of feeling. If, therefore, a murder has been committed, we have _a priori_ no better reason for suspecting the worst enemy than the best friend of the murdered man. If we see a man jump from a fourth-story window, we must beware of too hastily inferring his insanity, since he may be merely exercising his free-will; the intense love of life implanted in the human breast being, as it seems, unconnected with attempts at suicide or at self-preservation. We can thus frame no theory of human actions whatever. The countless empirical maxims of every-day life, the embodiment as they are of the inherited and organized sagacity of many generations, become wholly incompetent to guide us; and nothing which any one may do ought ever to occasion surprise. The mother may strangle her first-born child, the miser may cast his long-treasured gold into the sea, the sculptor may break in pieces his lately-finished statue, in the presence of no other feelings than those which before led them to cherish, to hoard, and to create.
"To state these conclusions is to refute their premise. Probably no defender of the doctrine of free-will could be induced to accept them, even to save the theorem with which they are inseparably wrapped up. Yet the dilemma cannot be avoided. Volitions are either caused or they are not. If they are not caused, an inexorable logic brings us to the absurdities just mentioned. If they are caused, the free-will doctrine is annihilated...In truth, the immediate corollaries of the free-will doctrine are so shocking, not only to philosophy but to common-sense, that were not accurate thinking a somewhat rare phenomenon, it would be inexplicable how any credit should ever have been given to such a dogma. This is but one of the many instances in which by the force of words alone men have been held subject to chronic delusion...Attempting, as the free-will philosophers do, to destroy the science of history, they are compelled by an inexorable logic to pull down with it the cardinal principles of ethics, politics, and jurisprudence. Political economy, if rigidly dealt with on their theory, would fare little better; and psychology would become chaotic jargon...The denial of causation is the affirmation of chance, and 'between the theory of Chance and the theory of Law there can be no compromise, no reciprocity, no borrowing and lending.' To write history on any method furnished by the free-will doctrine would be utterly impossible."--All this comes from Mr. Fiske's not distinguishing between the possibles which really tempts man and those which tempt him not at all. Free-will, like psychology, deals with the former possibles exclusively.
[503] On the education of the Will from a pedagogic point of view, see an article by G. Stanley Hall in the Princeton Review for November 1882, and some bibliographic references there contained.
[504] See his Emotions and Will, 'The Will,' chap. i. I take the name of random movements from Sully, Outlines of Psychology, p. 593.
[505] This figure and the following ones are purely schematic, and must not be supposed to involve any theory about protoplasmatic and axis-cylinder processes. The latter, according to Golgi and others, emerge from the base of the cell, and each cell has but one. They alone form a nervous network. The reader will of course also understand that none of the hypothetical constructions which I make from now to the end of the chapter are proposed as definite accounts of what happens. All I aim at is to make it clear in some more or less symbolic fashion that the formation of new paths, the learning of habits, etc., is in _some_ mechanical way conceivable. Compare what was said in Vol. I. p. 81, note.
[506] The Nervous System and the Mind (1888), pp. 75-6.
[508] That is, the direction towards the motor cells.
[509] This brain-scheme seems oddly enough to give a certain basis of reality to those hideously fabulous performances of the Herbartian _Vorstellungen_. Herbart says that when one idea is inhibited by another it fuses with that other and thereafter helps it to ascend into consciousness. Inhibition is thus the basis of association in both schemes, for the 'draining' of which the text speaks is tantamount to an inhibition of the activity of the cells which are drained, which inhibition makes the inhibited revive the inhibiter on later occasions.
[510] See the luminous passage in Münsterberg: Die Willenshandlung, pp. 144-5.
[511] L. Lange's and Münsterberg's experiments with 'shortened' or 'muscular' reaction-time (see Vol. I. p. 432) show how potent a fact dynamically this anticipatory preparation of a whole set of possible drainage-channels is.
[512] Even as the proofs of these pages are passing through my hands, I receive Heft 2 of the Zeitschrift für Psychologie u. Physiologie der Sinnesorgane, in which the irrepressible young Münsterberg publishes experiments to show that there is no association between successive ideas, apart from intervening movements. As my explanations have assumed that an earlier excited _sensory_ cell drains a later one, his experiments and inferences would, if sound, upset all my hypotheses. I therefore can (at this late moment) only refer the reader to Herr M.'s article, hoping to review the subject again myself in another place.
CHAPTER XXVII.
HYPNOTISM.
MODES OF OPERATING, AND SUSCEPTIBILITY.
The 'hypnotic,' 'mesmeric,' or 'magnetic' trance _can be induced in various ways_, each operator having his pet method. The simplest one is to leave the subject seated by himself, telling him that if he close his eyes and relax his muscles and, as far as possible, think of vacancy, in a few minutes he will 'go off.' On returning in ten minutes you may find him effectually hypnotized. Braid used to make his subjects look at a bright button held near their forehead until their eyes spontaneously closed. The older mesmerists made 'passes' in a downward direction over the face and body, but without contact. Stroking the skin of the head, face, arms and hands, especially that of the region round the brows and eyes, will have the same effect. Staring into the eyes of the subject until the latter droop, making him listen to a watch's ticking; or simply making him close his eyes for a minute whilst you describe to him the feeling of falling into sleep, 'talk sleep' to him, are equally efficacious methods in the hands of some operators; whilst with trained subjects any method whatever from which they have been led by previous suggestion to expect results will be successful.[513] The touching of an object which they are told has been 'magnetized,' the drinking of 'magnetized' water, the reception of a letter ordering them to sleep, etc., are means which have been frequently employed. Recently M. Liégeois has hypnotized some of his subjects at a distance of 1 1/2 kilometres by giving them an intimation to that effect through a telephone. With some subjects, if you tell them in advance that at a certain hour of a certain day they will become entranced, the prophecy is fulfilled. Certain hysterical patients are immediately thrown into hypnotic catalepsy by any violent sensation, such as a blow on a gong or the flashing of an intense light in their eyes. Pressure on certain parts of the body (called _zones hypnogènes_ by M. Pitres) rapidly produces hypnotic sleep in some hysterics. These regions, which differ in different subjects, are oftenest found on the forehead and about the root of the thumbs. Finally, persons in ordinary sleep may be transferred into the hypnotic condition by verbal intimation or contact, performed so gently as not to wake them up.
* * * * * Some operators appear to be more successful than others in getting control of their subjects. I am informed that Mr. Gurney (who made valuable contributions to the theory of hypnotism) was never able himself to hypnotize, and had to use for his observations the subjects of others. On the other hand, Dr. Liébeault claims that he hypnotizes 92% of all comers, and Wetterstrand in Stockholm says that amongst 718 persons there proved to be only 18 whom he failed to influence. Some of this disparity is unquestionably due to differences in the personal 'authority' of the operator, for the prime condition of success is that the subject should confidently _expect_ to be entranced. Much also depends on the operator's tact in interpreting the physiognomy of his subjects, so as to give the right commands, and 'crowd it on' to the subject, at just the propitious moments. These conditions account for the fact that operators grow more successful the more they operate. Bernheim says that whoever does not hypnotize 80 per cent of the persons whom he tries has not yet learned to operate as he should. Whether certain operators have over and above this a peculiar 'magnetic power' is a question which I leave at present undecided.[514] Children under three or four, and insane persons, especially idiots, are unusually hard to hypnotize. This seems due to the impossibility of getting them to fix their attention continuously on the idea of the coming trance. All ages above infancy are probably equally hypnotizable, as are all races and both sexes. A certain amount of mental training, sufficient to aid concentration of the attention, seems a favorable condition, and so does a certain momentary indifference or passivity as to the result. Native strength or weakness of 'will' have absolutely nothing to do with the matter. Frequent trances enormously increase the susceptibility of a subject, and many who resist at first succumb after several trials. Dr. Moll says he has more than once succeeded after forty fruitless attempts. Some experts are of the opinion that every one is hypnotizable essentially, the only difficulty being the more habitual presence in some individuals of hindering mental preoccupations, which, however, may suddenly at some moment be removed.
* * * * * The trance may be dispelled instantaneously by saying in a rousing voice, 'All right, wake up!' or words of similar purport. At the Salpétrière they awaken subjects by blowing on their eyelids. Upward passes have an awakening effect; sprinkling cold water ditto. Anything will awaken a patient who expects to be awakened by that thing. Tell him that he will wake after counting five, and he will do so. Tell him to waken in five minutes, and he is very likely to do so punctually, even though he interrupt thereby some exciting histrionic performance which you may have suggested.--As Dr. Moll says, any theory which pretends to explain the physiology of the hypnotic state must keep account of the fact that so simple a thing as hearing the word 'wake!' will end it.
THEORIES ABOUT THE HYPNOTIC STATE.
_The intimate nature of the hypnotic condition,_ when once induced, can hardly be said to be understood. Without entering into details of controversy, one may say that three main opinions have been held concerning it, which we may call respectively the theories of 1. Animal magnetism; 2. of Neurosis; and finally of 3. Suggestion.
According to the _animal-magnetism theory_ there is a direct passage of force from the operator to the subject, whereby the latter becomes the former's puppet. This theory is nowadays given up as regards all the ordinary hypnotic phenomena, and is only held to by some persons as an explanation of a few effects exceptionally met with.
* * * * * According to the _neurosis-theory_, the hypnotic state is a peculiar pathological condition into which certain predisposed patients fall, and in which special physical agents have the power of provoking special symptoms, quite apart from the subjects mentally expecting the effect. Professor Charcot and his colleagues at the Salpétrière hospital admit that this condition is rarely found in typical form. They call it then _le grand hypnotisme_, and say that it accompanies the disease hystero-epilepsy. If a patient subject to this sort of hypnotism hear a sudden loud noise, or look at a bright light unexpectedly, she falls into the _cataleptic_ trance. Her limbs and body offer no resistance to movements communicated to them, but retain permanently the attitudes impressed. The eyes are staring, there is insensibility to pain, etc., etc. If the eyelids be forcibly closed, the cataleptic gives place to the _lethargic_ condition, characterized by apparent abolition of consciousness, and absolute muscular relaxation except where the muscles are kneaded or the tendons struck by the operator's hand, or certain nerve-trunks are pressed upon. Then the muscles in question, or those supplied by the same nerve-trunk enter into a more or less steadfast tonic contraction. Charcot calls this symptom by the name of neuro-muscular hyperexcitability. The lethargic state may be _primarily_ brought on by fixedly looking at anything, or by pressure on the closed eyeballs.
Friction on the top of the head will make the patient pass from either of the two preceding conditions into the _somnambulic_ state, in which she is alert, talkative, and susceptible to all the suggestions of the operator. The somnambulic state may also be induced primarily, by fixedly looking at a small object. In this state the accurately limited muscular contractions characteristic of lethargy do not follow upon the above-described manipulations, but instead of them there is a tendency to rigidity of entire regions of the body, which may upon occasion develop into general tetanus, and which is brought about by gently touching the skin or blowing upon it. M. Charcot calls this by the name of cutaneo-muscular hyperexcitability.
Many other symptoms, supposed by their observers to be independent of mental expectation, are described, of which I only will mention the more interesting. Opening the eyes of a patient in lethargy causes her to pass into catalepsy. If one eye only be opened, the corresponding half of the body becomes cataleptic, whilst the other half remains in lethargy. Similarly, rubbing one side of the head may result in a patient becoming hemilethargic or hemicataleptic and hemisomnambulic. The approach of a magnet (or certain metals) to the skin causes these half-states (and many others) to be transferred to the opposite sides. Automatic repetition of every sound heard ('_echolalia_') is said to be produced by pressure on the lower cervical vertebræ or on the epigastrium. _Aphasia_ is brought about by rubbing the head over the region of the speech-centre. Pressure behind the occiput determines _movements of imitation_. Heidenhain describes a number of curious automatic tendencies to movement, which are brought about by stroking various portions of the vertebral column. Certain other symptoms have been frequently noticed, such as a flushed face and cold hands, brilliant and congested eyes, dilated pupils. Dilated retinal vessels and spasm of the accommodation are also reported.
* * * * * _The theory of Suggestion_ denies that there is any special hypnotic _state_ worthy of the name of trance or neurosis. All the symptoms above described, as well as those to be described hereafter, are results of that mental susceptibility which we all to some degree possess, of yielding assent to outward suggestion, of affirming what we strongly conceive, and of acting in accordance with what we are made to expect. The bodily symptoms of the Salpétrière patients are all of them results of expectation and training. The first patients accidentally did certain things which their doctors thought typical and caused to be repeated. The subsequent subjects 'caught on' and followed the established tradition. In proof of this the fact is urged that the classical three stages and their grouped symptoms have _only_ been reported as spontaneously occurring, so far, at the Salpétrière, though they may be superinduced by deliberate suggestion, in patients anywhere found. The ocular symptoms, the flushed face, accelerated breathing, etc., are said not to be symptoms of the passage into the hypnotic state as such, but merely consequences of the strain on the eyes when the method of looking at a bright object is used. They are absent in the subjects at Nancy, where simple verbal suggestion is employed. The various reflex effects (aphasia, echolalia, imitation, etc.) are but habits induced by the influence of the operator, who unconsciously urges the subject into the direction in which he would prefer to have him go. The influence of the magnet, the opposite effects of upward and downward passes, etc., are similarly explained. Even that sleepy and inert condition, the advent of which seems to be the prime condition of farther symptoms being developed, is said to be merely due to the fact that the mind expects it to come; whilst its influence on the other symptoms is not physiological, so to speak, but psychical, its own easy realization by suggestion simply encouraging the subject to expect that ulterior suggestions will be realized with equal ease. The radical defenders of the suggestion-theory are thus led to deny the very existence of the hypnotic state, in the sense of a peculiar trance-like condition which deprives the patient of spontaneity and makes him passive to suggestion from without. The trance itself is only one of the suggestions, and many subjects in fact can be made to exhibit the other hypnotic phenomena without the preliminary induction of this one.
* * * * * The theory of suggestion may be said to be quite triumphant at the present day over the neurosis-theory as held at the Salpétrière, with its three states, and its definite symptoms supposed to be produced by physical agents apart from co-operation of the subject's mind. But it is one thing to say this, and it is quite another thing to say that there is no peculiar physiological condition whatever worthy of the name of hypnotic trance, no peculiar state of nervous equilibrium, 'hypotaxy,' 'dissociation,' or whatever you please to call it, during which the subject's susceptibility to outward suggestion is greater than at ordinary times. All the facts seem to prove that, until this trance-like state is assumed by the patient, suggestion produces very insignificant results, but that, when it is once assumed, there are no limits to suggestion's power. The state in question has many affinities with ordinary sleep. It is probable, in fact, that we all pass through it transiently whenever we fall asleep; and one might most naturally describe the usual relation of operator and subject by saying that the former keeps the latter suspended between waking and sleeping by talking to him enough to keep his slumber from growing profound, and yet not in such a way as to wake him up. A hynotized patient, _left to himself,_ will either fall sound asleep or wake up entirely. The difficulty in hypnotizing refractory persons is that of catching them at the right moment of transition and making it permanent. Fixing the eyes and relaxing the muscles of the body produce the hypnotic state just as they facilitate the advent of sleep. The first stages of ordinary sleep are characterized by a peculiar dispersed attitude of the attention. Images come before consciousness which are entirely incongruous with our ordinary beliefs and habits of thought. The latter either vanish altogether or withdraw, as it were, inertly into the background of the mind, and let the incongruous images reign alone. These images acquire, moreover, an exceptional vivacity; they become first 'hypnagogic hallucinations,' and then, as the sleep grows deeper, dreams. Now the 'mono-ideism,' or else the impotency and failure to 'rally' on the part of the background-ideas, which thus characterize somnolescence, are unquestionably the result of a special physiological change occurring in the brain at that time. Just so that similar mono-ideism, or dissociation of the reigning fancy from those other thoughts which might possibly act as its 'reductives,' which characterize the hypnotic consciousness, must equally be due to a special cerebral change. The term 'hypnotic trance,' which I employ, tells us nothing of what the change is, but it marks the fact that it exists, and is consequently a useful expression. The great vivacity of the hypnotic images (as gauged by their motor effects), the oblivion of them when normal life is resumed, the abrupt awakening, the recollection of them again in subsequent trances, the anæsthesia and hyperæsthesia which are so frequent, all point away from our simple waking credulity and 'suggestibility' as the type by which the phenomena are to be interpreted, and make us look rather towards sleep and dreaming, or towards those deeper alterations of the personality known as automatism, double consciousness, or 'second' personality for the true analogues of the hypnotic trance.[515] Even the best hypnotic subjects pass through life without any one suspecting them to possess such a remarkable susceptibility, until by deliberate experiment it is made manifest. The operator fixes their eyes or their attention a short time to develop the propitious phase, holds them in it by his talk, and _the state being there_, makes them the puppets of all his suggestions. But no ordinary suggestions of waking life ever took such control of their mind.
_The suggestion-theory may therefore be approved as correct, provided we grant the trance-state as its prerequisite._ The three states of Charcot, the strange reflexes of Heidenhain, and all the other bodily phenomena which have been called direct consequences of the trance-state itself, are not such. They are products of suggestion, the trance-state having no particular outward symptoms of its own; but without the trance-state there, those particular suggestions could never have been successfully made.[516] THE SYMPTOMS OF THE TRANCE.