A series of similar phenomena must be included here. I say to a hypnotized subject, X., "You are a rope-dancer, and are on the rope." He believes it, and I pretend to cut the rope, on which he falls down; but he falls so as not to hurt himself. This, of course, is the natural result of a perfectly normal, mechanical, nearly unconscious process which is always going on in us. We always use our hands to shield ourselves when we fall. This habitual mechanism works on in hypnosis regardless of any suggestion. Hysterical paralytics - and drunkards, too, at times - for this reason seldom hurt themselves when they fall. Hack Tuke told a subject he was dead; the man invariably fell, but without hurting himself.

Forel once had two dormice under observation during their winter sleep. He took one of them and put it at the top of a fir-tree, and as soon as the sole of the sleeping animal's paw touched a thin branch of the tree a reflex action was set up, and the claws grappled the branch just as they would have done instinctively in waking life. Forel then let the dormouse hang by one foot, and the animal gradually fell fast asleep again. The muscles of the foot by which it was hanging slowly relaxed; its paw extended slowly until it was only hanging on by the extremity nearest the attachment of the claws. Forel thought that the dormouse must fall. Instead of that, a kind of instinctive shock seemed to flash through its nervous system, and another paw seized the nearest underlying branch, so that the animal only took one step downwards. The whole scene then commenced over again. Once more the animal fell asleep and its paw lost its grip, and once more another paw stretched out and grasped a lower-lying bough. The dormouse thus gradually descended the tree until it reached the foot, where its cage was, in which it remained asleep. Forel repeated the experiment several times with both animals, and the result was always the same.

Neither of the animals ever fell.

I have cited Forel's observations in detail because they show that reflex action and automatism persist during hibernation. From this it is perfectly evident how wrong it would be to assume fraud because a hypnotic performs automatic movements.

I must again direct attention to those sense-delusions in which, as I have already demonstrated, a dim consciousness of the true situation persists. In this way situations are created which arouse the suspicion of fraud - as, for example, in the case mentioned on page 145, where a subject fought with a suggested jenemy, one of the spectators, but took pains not to hit him.

Further, a complicated suggestion may be misunderstood or only partially retained, in which case it will be carried out imperfectly. As memory is the first condition for the success of a suggestion, it follows that the more highly cultivated a person's memory is, the more likely will he be (ceteris paribus) to carry out a suggestion. If a post-hypnotic suggestion is imperfectly remembered it will be imperfectly carried out, for hypnosis does not produce supernatural results. Obvious as this must appear, I have yet heard the existence of hypnosis doubted because such mistakes have been made. To a man whom I have hypnotized in the presence of A., B., C, and D., I make the post-hypnotic suggestion that when A. speaks he is to say "Ha!" when B. speaks, "He!" when C. speaks, "Hi!" and when D. speaks, "Ho!" As the command is only given once the task is not an easy one, and it is not surprising that the subject is confused and makes the wrong exclamation to each person. To the class of imperfectly realized suggestions a case of Joire's also belongs. He suggested to a person that the name Marie was written on a piece of paper.

When the paper was turned upside down he seemed to see the letters backwards - eiraM. One would, however, have expected not only the word to appear backward, but the letters upside down also. Obviously, neither hallucination nor illusion was sufficiently developed in the subject to permit of this. And we must remember that these things depend on strength of memory, and on the strength with which sense-delusions make themselves manifest.

There are, moreover, certain transitional forms of hypnosis which suggest fraud, but unjustifiably. A subject will go through every movement I command him to make. I tell him to eat an imaginary beefsteak, and he goes through all the motions of eating a steak just as if one were before him. I tell him to drive the dog away, and he kicks as though to do so; but when I ask him where the dog has gone, he replies that there was not any dog there. So, too, when I ask him how the steak tasted, he says he has not had one. To the outsider these things suggest fraud, but in reality we are dealing with a case of hypnosis of the first group (cf. p. 59). The subject had to move as told, but there was no sense-delusion. We may form a correct judgment of these states in two ways: (1) by following the experiment; (2) by examining the subject's memory after hypnosis. From what subjects have told me, I think that sense-delusion must be excluded. The careful observation of subjects points to this. The movements were not of that rapid and immediate nature associated with hallucination; they were much more the outcome of compulsion. Even the facial expression of a subject is no criterion of simulation.

When a subject says, "There is not any steak there," or shakes his head, it is enough to prove that any movement is the result of suggestion. But these very contradictions seem to confirm the outsider's suspicion of fraud.

In other cases the subject is so passive that he makes no opposition to any suggestion made by the experimenter". Should the latter suggest a hallucination, such as the presence of a tiger, the subject, when questioned, declares that one is there, but he does not run away, show fear, or behave as though the animal was really present. In this case there is neither hallucination nor any act corresponding thereto, only an affirmative answer, and the subject subsequently remembers this fact. Still, outsiders often confuse passive hypnosis with simulation.