551 A. The following examples of post-hypnotic suggestions involving calculations are quoted from Gurney's paper, "Peculiarities of certain Post-Hypnotic States," in the Proceedings S.P.R., vol. iv. pp. 268-323 (1887). The paper treats generally of the mental state of the subject, as exhibited especially by means of automatic writing, while carrying out suggestions. Speaking of commands to be executed at a certain future time, Gurney says (p. 287): -

A distinction must first be made between cases where a date is named especially if the date be a marked one, such as January 1st, or the anniversary of the day of the command1 - and cases where simply a length of time is named, not immediately suggestive of a particular date, as in the direction to do such and such a thing "on the sixty-ninth day from this." In the former case the impression of the date might be immediately registered in the brain, in association with that of the order, and the mere arrival of the date might thus suffice to revive the order. But how is a length of time to be so registered? Its further end, till reckoned out by the aid of the calendar, is perfectly indefinite; and there is nothing in the mere arrival of the day calculated to revive the terms of the order - it carries no more sixty-ninthness about it than any other day.... Though "a day " may be a sufficiently familiar and definite unit to present a concrete character, it does not follow that this is the case with "sixty-nine days." And the organic conditions [suggested by Professor Beaunis2 as the means used for making the calculation], which are just what the measurement of established physiological periods ipso facto has, are just what the measurement of periods suddenly and arbitrarily fixed by human volition has not.

The vital processes will no more work out such a measurement as this than a schoolboy's digestion will work out a proposition of Euclid. However carried through, it is at least not a function of animal life. It issues in a perfectly needless act, not in an inevitable bodily state; and it depends, not on progressive changes in the stomach or the blood, but on a quite original course of cerebration, proceeding, we cannot doubt, in the higher tracts of the brain, having been initiated by an impression - that of the command - which had a distinct psychical side. Now looking at the brain-side alone, we should conclude, I think, that the passage of time must be registered, not by any general gradual change, but by a series of specific changes, corresponding probably to the days or units of measurement. We should conclude, that is, that cerebral events of the sort normally correlated with the ideas "sixty," "sixty-one," " sixty-two," etc, really take place; for how otherwise could the gulf be spanned with precision ? how would any other sort of change know when to stop, or associate some point that it had reached with the order given weeks before? Such a cerebral process alone would wholly differentiate the case from that of ordinary physiological time-reckoning. But if the specific brain-changes take place, does it not seem at least a reasonable surmise that their mental correlate may exist, though hidden from our view - that there may further be an actual watching of the course of time ? [Then] the " unknown faculty " would simply be a known faculty, working in a normal way, but below the surface of normal consciousness....

1 It is unfortunate that in some of the best known cases of commands à longue échéance, such dates have been selected; but the proof of the phenomenon does not depend on these cases.

2 Le Somnambulisme Provoqué, pp. 139-41.

[In some cases] the watching is of a wholly interior kind, and is not only forgotten afterwards, but is accompanied by no consciousness of which the normal waking subject can render any account; but which still, I believe, involves mental action of a sort.

Here are a couple of instances of this extremer kind. My "subject,"

W------s, was one day told that on the thirty-ninth day from then, at 9.30 p.m., he was to come and call on a gentleman resident in the house where I was lodging, with whom he had no acquaintance. He of course had no memory of this direction when awake. No reference was made to the command till March 19th, when he was suddenly asked, in the trance, how many days had elapsed since it was given. He instantly said sixteen, and added that there were twenty-three more to run, and that the day when he was due was Easter Monday.1 All these statements were correct. But the odd thing was that, on further questioning, he misdated both the day of the order and the day of fulfilment, calling the former March 1st and the latter April 12th, whereas they were respectively March 3rd and April nth. This makes it tolerably clear that he did not originally arrive at the date of fulfilment by immediate reckoning from the date of command, and then fix it in his mind simply as a date. (Easter Monday, when so near as twenty-three days, might be arrived at in a moment by remarking the day of the week.) Moreover, if he made March 1st his terminus a quo, he ought to have said eighteen instead of sixteen, and would probably have had to pause to reckon.