In the same way, when once the subject is thoroughly hypnotised the operator can do nothing with him by willing or by wishing unless he express to him in words, or indicate to him by some other method capable of physically conveying to him a suggestion, what he wishes him to do or what the subject thinks the operator wishes him to do. Any physical excitation may in this hypnotic state excite physical changes, as I have shown, in his muscular or nervous system, which will in their turn give rise in the subject to mental emotion, to hallucinations, or to self-generated acts of the strangest kind. So largely is his restraining brain power put to sleep, and for the time abolished, so largely is his intelligent consciousness held in abeyance, that he becomes a marvellous machine, astonishingly, blindly, actively obedient to the wildest orders or the most bizarre suggestions. He can be made to believe himself a cat, a dog, a lion, a rat, and to act accordingly, so far as a human machine can act.

His intelligent consciousness of impressions conveyed by the nerves of common sensation or of special sense has been abolished; his skin maybe pierced with needles and he will not feel it; mustard or salt or assafoetida may be placed on his tongue, and he will either not taste them or mistake them for anything the operator pleases to name, and he will testify the most genuine and ludicrous dislike of or most intense disgust at the substance placed in his mouth. The operator can induce sentiments of anger, nay even of violent and destructive rage, ecstasy, affection or grief, at will, by verbal suggestions. He has, in fact under his hands a marvellous and God-created machine, abased and degraded by the abolition of intelligence and self-restraint.

The Condition Purely Subjective: Anyone or Anything can Hypnotise.

To produce these effects there is no cleverness wanted on the part of the hypnotiser, there is no special power in this matter resident in him; anyone can hypnotise and everyone can hypnotise if he is patient enough, and either scientifically intelligent or ignorantly fanatic. The marvel and the mystery is in the individual operated' upon. What is the precise nature of this complex and astonishing mechanism of body and mind which binds together in such singular complexity of relation, muscle and nerve, lower brain,, upper brain, nerves of special sense, body and viscera, no anatomist, however accomplished, no physiologist, however learned or acute, can explain. We have before us only the wonderful facts, and they are far more wonderful than any of the sham tricks of the clairvoyant, the mesmerist, or the magnetist who plays upon them and uses them for his purpose of imposture, self-deception, or of vain mystery-mongering.