236. The case of Mollie Fancher, of which I quote (in 236 A) such brief and imperfect account as is accessible, might have been one of the most instructive of all, had it been observed and recorded with scientific accuracy - nay, even with the most ordinary diligence and care. It is true that at the remote date when Miss Fancher's phenomena were at their best an observer both willing and capable would have been as hard to find among professed savants as among professed spiritualists. And there is at least this good point in the case, that the probity of the whole group has always been held above suspicion. The indications of supernormal faculty, which occur throughout the story, were not, at any rate, invented as a self-advertisement. And the sudden changes of personality, with a childish character fitted to each, seem to stand midway between the transformations of Louis Vivé, - each of them frankly himself at a different epoch of life, - and the "pseudo-possessions" of imaginary spirits with which we shall in a later chapter have to deal.

237. The case of Anna Winsor, next to be cited, goes so far further in its suggestion of interference from without, that it presents to us, at any rate, a contrast and even conflict between positive insanity on the part of the organism generally with wise and watchful sanity on the part of a single limb, with which that organism professes to have no longer any concern.

Perhaps, indeed, the conception which this case suggests is not so much that of an external spirit intervening on the sufferer's behalf, as of her own spirit, coexisting in gentleness and wisdom alongside of all that wild organic excitement and decay. Of course I do not press so strange a notion; yet to myself, I must in fairness add, it is by no means ludicrous. Indeed, I think that all these sudden changes and recuperations should teach us our inability to say how deep even the severest isychical lesion goes - whether there may not at the worst be that within s which persists unmutilated and untarnished through all confusion of be flesh.

238. The case which I place last in this series, the "Watseka Vonder," must plainly be presented to the reader as a duplication of personality - a pseudo-possession, if you will - determined in a hysterical child by the suggestion of friends. Thus, I repeat, the story must for the present be offered and received. At a later stage, and when some other wronders have become to us more familiar - not less wonderful - than now, re may perhaps consider once more what further lessons this singular arrative may have to teach us.

239. We have now briefly surveyed a series of disintegrations of personality ranging from the most trifling idee fixe to actual alternations or permanent changes of the whole type of character. All these form a kind of continuous series, and illustrate the structure of the personality in concordant ways. There do exist, it must be added, other forms of modi-ied personality with which I shall not at present deal. Those are cases where some telepathic influence from outside has been at work, so that here is not merely dissociation of existing elements, but apparent intro-luction of a novel element. Such cases also pass through a long series, from small phenomena of motor automatism up to trance and so-called possession. But all this group I mention here merely in order to defer heir discussion to later chapters.

The brief review already made will suffice to indicate the complex and separable nature of the elements of human personality. Of course a far fuller list might have been given; many phenomena of actual insanity would need to be cited in any complete conspectus. But hysteria is in some ways a better dissecting agent than any other where delicate psychical dissociations are concerned. Just as the microscopist stains a particular; issue for observation, so does hysteria stain with definiteness, as it were, particular synergies - definite complexes of thought and action - more manifestly than any grosser lesion, any more profound or persistent injury could do. Hysterical mutism, for instance (the observation is Charcot's1), supplies almost the only cases where the faculty of vocal utterance is attacked in a quite isolated way. In aphasia dependent upon organic injury we generally find other word-memories attacked also, - elements of agraphy, of word-blindness, of word-deafness appear. In the hysteric the incapacity to speak may be the single symptom. So with anæsthesiæ; we find in hysteria a separation of sensibility to heat and to pain, possibly even 1 separate subsistence of electrical sensibility.

It is worth remarking here that it was during the hypnotic trance, which in delicacy of discriminating power resembles hysteria, that (so far as I can make out) the distinctness of the temperature-sense from the pain-sense was first observed. Esdaile, when removing tumours under mesmerism in Calcutta, noticed that patients, who were actually undergoing capital operations without a murmur, complained if a draught blew in upon them from an open window.

1 Revue de l'Hypnotisme, July 1889.

240. Nor is it only as a dissecting agent that hysteria can aid our research. There are in hysteria frequent acquisitions as well as losses of faculty. It is not unusual to find great hyperesthesia in certain special directions - of touch, hearing, perception of light, etc. - combined with hysterical loss of sensation of other kinds. This subject will be more conveniently treated along with the hyperæsthesia of the hypnotic trance. But I may note here that just such occasional quickenings of faculty were, in my view, almost certain to accompany that instability of psychical threshold which is the distinguishing characteristic of hysteria, since I hold that subliminal faculty habitually overpasses supraliminal. These also are a kind of capricious idées fixes; only the caprice in such cases raises what was previously submerged instead of exaggerating what was previously emergent.

And from this point it is that our inquiries must now take their fresh departure. We in this work are concerned with changes which are the converse of hysterical changes. We are looking for integrations in lieu of disintegrations; for intensifications of control, widenings of faculty, instead of relaxation, scattering, or decay.

241. Suppose, then, that in a case of instability of the psychical threshold, - ready permeability, if you will, of the psychical diaphragm separating the supraliminal from the subliminal self, - the elements of emergence tend to increase and the elements of submergence to diminish. Suppose that the permeability depends upon the force of the uprushes from below the diaphragm rather than on the tendency to sink downwards from above it. We shall then reach the point where the vague name of hysteria must give place to the vague name of genius. The uprushes from the subliminal self will now be the important feature; the down-draught from the supraliminal, if it still exists, will be trivial in comparison. The content of the uprush will be congruous with the train of voluntary thought; and the man of genius will be a man more capable than others of utilising for his waking purposes the subliminal region of his being.