These six are the leading phenomena which are produced by the manipulations which I have described. But not all are found in the same subject. One might almost say that no two subjects hypnotize in exactly the same way, or, if that be deemed an exaggeration,.as it doubtless is, one certainly may say that the variations which are found are too extensive to be accounted for by any one principle. Hence I do not think it well to attempt a definition of "hypnosis." I do not think there is any one combination of these phenomena which is sufficiently common to be entitled "hypnosis" or "the hypnotic state." It is better to speak of such states simply as "hypnotic."

Those phenomena are by no means isolated in rerum natura. Each of them is found in other contexts, but the attempt to enumerate all of those contexts would carry me far beyond the limits of this paper. I can only sketch briefly their next of kin.

Of these one of the nearest, as the very name "hypnotic" implies, is sleep. Normal sleep is usually produced, not by concentration of attention, though that favors its onset and is often resorted to when sleep is slow in coming, but by the simple withdrawal of the stimuli of sense. And although not all the phenomena of hypnotic states are characteristic of sleep, all are at least Occasionally found in it. Yet it is not quite exact to say that hypnotic states are forms of sleep, unless one would call an unfinished building a kind of house. They are rather cases in which the processes which normally end in sleep have been arrested; the subject is only partly asleep. This is the reason why hypnotic states are so unstable, always tending to resolve themselves into either sleep or waking life. They are essentially transition states artificially prolonged.

Another group of near relatives to hypnotic states is to be found in "trance" and "ecstacy." Trance is characterized (1) by a suspension of the ordinary sense commerce between the world of ideas and the world of things; (2) by great activity of the idea-trains themselves. Ecstacy is a trance-state in which there is an overflow of pleasurable consciousness, sometimes so great as practically to submerge all articulate thinking. But the precise relation which these states sustain to the hypnotic is difficult to determine. They are of relatively infrequent occurrence and have never been sufficiently studied.

The -nearest analogue to the hypnotic states is undoubtedly to, be. found in hysteria. Here we find all the above-described phenomena, occurring, not temporarily and in response to manipulation especially designed to produce them, but spontaneously, often persisting for months and years, and in the greatest variety and profusion. Many writers, with Charcot at their head, go so far as to regard the hypnotic states as merely forms of hysteria, while many others, led by the professors of the school of Nancy, repudiate the charge, with much needless bitterness, as a slur upon the mental and physical health of the subject. The truth} as often, lies between the two extremes. The phenomena and, perhaps, in part the causes of hypnotic states, are identical with some of those of hysteria, but this no more makes the hypnotic subject an hysteric than a bruised foot makes a man a cripple, or a dose of whiskey makes him a lunatic. Hysteria is a relatively permanent entity, produced by relatively permanent causes, while hypnotic states are transitory groups of phenomena produced and ended at will.

But, one may retort, if the foot 13 bruised often enough and badly enough the man will become a cripple indeed, and if he drinks enough whiskey often enough he may become a lunatic, - does the analogy hold? That is a question of fact upon which the authorities differ.* If a so-called hypnotic state were to become permanent, or were to tend to recur of itself, it would undoubtedly be a form of hysteria, but the weight of evidence, in my opinion, goes to show that repeated hypnotizing does not tend to fix the hypnotic state upon the subject, - that it has in fact no injurious effects whatever. Still, the question should be regarded as open.

All these diverse phenomena are capable of being brought under one conception. All can be expressed in terms of the rela-tion between the self and the various sensations, ideas, motor powers and powers of control which we usually ascribe to the self. The hypnotic paralysis is not a true paralysis. The motor machinery remains intact, but for the time being the self is deprived of its power of control over the muscles. Hypnotic anaesthesias are not true anaesthesias. Of them, as of hysterical anaesthesias, it is possible to prove that the lost sensations still in some sense exist, although cut off from and unknown to the hypnotized self. Whether the arrest of thinking is to be interpreted in like manner as a mere separation of thought from self, or is to be regarded as an actual abolition of thought, is more dubious, but in many cases the evidence for the first conception is very strong. The loss of the power of initiation is a phenomenon peculiarly characteristic of these states, and goes hand in hand with suggestibility. The two together constitute a "weakening" of the self Losses of memory are to be interpreted as are losses of sensation, - the memories still exist in some sense and can be revived.

Gains, whether in memory, sensation or power of motion, are only to be looked for, as a rule, when the normal consciousness exhibits corresponding losses. Every normal consciousness has forgotten much, while relatively few ordinary consciousnesses, - and they, of course, are not normal, - are defective in sensory or motor powers, hence gains in memory are more common than gains in sensation and motion. But there are cases in which the gain exhibited in the hypnotic state cannot be interpreted as the repairing of some earlier loss, but really represents an increase in power above the normal.

* From long experience and close observation, I am thoroughly convinced that hypnosis within itself is absolutely harmless. If any harmful effects should occur the same power that produced them could immediately correct them. - Editor.

The phenomenon of rapport is nothing more than the fact that impressions proceeding from the hypnotizer are exempt from the destructive process which cuts the self off from the impresr sions of the outer world, - they are never lost. Suggestibility is of two types. In the first the elements lost by the subject can be directly controlled by the hypnotizer. In the second the resisting power of the self is so far weakened that it passively accepts and executes nearly all the hypnotizer's commands. In post-hypnotic suggestion certain phenomena of the hypnotic state persist into waking life, and the question as to the existence and nature of sub-conscious states, which is really connected, as I have shown, with all forms of hypnotic losses, is forced more clearly upon the student.

Thus these changes in the relation of the self to the various • activities of consciousness may be summed up somewhat as follows: In the normal state, the self is conscious of various sensations and ideas of which, in the abnormal state, it is not conscious, although their continued existence can, in some sense, be sometimes proved and may always be suspected, and, occasionally, in the abnormal state the self gains new ideas or increases in sensitiveness which are not found in the normal. In the normal state the self possesses a control over the muscles, a power of initiation and a power of resistance to external commands which it loses in the abnormal. Clearly then the solution of these problems turns upon the answers to such questions as these: What is the self? What are these "activities" of which the self is "conscious?" Are the "activities" themselves conscious states and is the self's "becoming conscious of, them" nothing more than the blending of two streams of consciousness? If so they are still conscious when separated from the self.

Or are they mere brain processes, beseeming "conscious" only when in some way affecting self-consciousness? What is the nature of this "weakening of the self" of which I have so often had occasion to speak? Is the self a spiritual being, finding but imperfect expression through the activities of the brain with which it is united, and are hypnosis, hysteria and so on various complex disorganizations of those activities, impairing that union and rendering that expression yet more imperfect? Or is the human personality a species of layer cake, with one self on top and one or more other selves beneath, and are these abnormal states due to a partial or total destruction of the upper self, thus allowing one or more of the lower selves to come to view? Or is the self nothing more than a co-ordinate system of activities, its control over any given one of them nothing more than the sum of the controls exerted over that one by all the others, and are these abnormal states due to a partial or total disruption of the system, by which the various elements are set free to pursue their more or less ungoverned ways, or to fall under the sway of the hypnotizer?

These and their like are the questions which must be answered before we can frame a theory of the hypnotic state, and the answers to them will be found, not in the wild dreams of half-educated and wholly visionary theorists, nor yet in the arbitrary assumptions of a soi disant "science," but in the observations and experiments of many generations of patient, plodding students.