What does this mean? It means that the mental impression made upon him by the welcome and appetising spectacle has caused a secretion of saliva and of gastric juice; that is to say, the brain has, through the ideo-motor set of nerves, sent a message which has dilated the vessels around the salivary and gastric glands, increased the flow of blood through them, and quickened their secretion. Here we have, then, a purely subjective mental activity acting through a mechanism of which the boy is quite ignorant, and which he is unable to control, and producing that action on the vessels of dilatation or contraction which, as we have seen, is the essential condition of brain activity and the evolution of thought, and is related to the quickening or the abolition of consciousness, and to the activity or abeyance of function in the will-centres and upper convolutions of the brain, as in its other centres of localisation. Here, then, we have something like a clue to the phenomena - phenomena which, as I have pointed out, are similar and have much in common - of mesmeric sleep, of hypnotism, and of electro-biology. We have already, I hope, succeeded in eliminating from our minds the false theory - the theory, that is to say, experimentally proved to be false - that the will, or the gestures, or the magnetic or vital fluid of the operator are necessary for the abolition of the consciousness and the abeyance of the will of the subject.

We now see that ideas arising in the mind of the subject are sufficient to influence the circulation in the brain of the person operated on, and such variations of the blood-supply of the brain as are adequate to produce sleep in the natural state or artificial slumber, either by total deprivation, or by excessive increase or local aberration in the quantity or quality of blood. In a like manner it is possible to produce coma and prolonged insensibility by pressure of the thumbs on the carotid; or hallucinations, dreams, and visions by drugs, or by external stimulation of the nerves. Or again the consciousness may be only partially affected, and the person in whom sleep, coma or hallucination is produced, whether by physical means or by the influence of suggestion, may remain subject to the will of others and incapable of exercising his own volition.

Let me illustrate how easily the will may be abolished under the influence of imagination or of sudden impression, even in creatures the least imaginative and physically the most restless and active. Some very old experiments will suffice, though it is easy to modify them in new forms. I prefer the old, because the old story is one of ancient beginnings, of which we have now, however, the means of a more rational understanding. I take a cock, and I repeat on it what is known as the experimentum mirabile of Kircher. It is fresh from the barn-yard, and a very pugnacious animal. If I hold it, it struggles and screams; but I have only to place it quietly and firmly on a board, and draw a chalk line from its beak, which I have depressed, until it touches the board, and the bird remains firmly hypnotised. It is motionless, or, as people would say, fascinated; and it will remain in this position for an indefinite time. I take a rabbit and adjust it on its back in a little trough, which is only used to prevent it from falling over, and this animal also becomes rapidly hypnotised. The same thing can be done with a guinea-pig, a frog, or even with a young alligator.

The limbs are plastic, can be moved in any direction and will stay in the position in which they are placed.

The same thing can be done with a number of other animals, such as birds and cray-fish. Harting states that if this experiment be frequently repeated with a fowl, the bird will often become permanently paralysed in some of its limbs. If I take up the hypnotised rabbit, or lift the cock, they at once become active, and come out of their hypnotic into their natural state. Position and tactile impression are the means used in these experiments to produce hypnotism, and possibly also mental impression. Visual impression produces similar effects. Richet has with a lime-light produced similar effects to those which Charcot produces on his hypnotic, cataleptic, and hysterical patients. Horses are very susceptible to hypnotisa-tion by any one standing in front of them, so that they have to look at the operator fixedly. This practice was introduced into use in Austria by a cavalry officer, Balassa. It is called after him the Balassiren of horses, and according to Moll it has been introduced by law into Austria for the shoeing of horses in the army. Babbits, when they are introduced into the cage of a snake, fascinate themselves, as it is termed, by staring at it. The process is commonly spoken of as though it were an active proceeding on the part of the snake which fascinates the rabbits.

They are, in fact, self-fascinated, and, as I pointed out in the case of hypnotic patients, a mechanical means of impressing their senses suffices, and it is quite gratuitous to import the notion of any sort of vital force or living influence of fascination on the part either of the snake or of the wily platform performer.

I now come to consider the subsequent conditions of the individual who has submitted to any of the processes of hypnotisation or mesmerism. They are sufficiently various, striking, and interesting, though they have been much misunderstood, considerably exaggerated, and the medium of much imposture. The individual is reduced more or less perfectly to the state of a living automaton. The upper brain is more or less completely and more or less regularly bloodless, and its functions are in abeyance. The will is abolished, suspended, or enfeebled. Sleep has been induced while the thought has been in relation to the person carrying on the experiment, and the suggestions made by, or the directions given by him are carried out without the intervention of the will of the subject and more or less completely without his knowledge. He may often be placed in positions which, in his waking moments, his terror or his reason would prevent him from taking up or from maintaining. The suggestions of attack or of defence, of causes of terror or of delight, are at once adopted and he is as an instrument on the keys of which the operator can play his own tune.