536. It is to hypnotism in the first place that we may look for an increased power of analysis of these intercurrent streams, these irregularly superposed strata of our psychical being. In the meantime, this power of inhibiting almost any fraction of our habitual consciousness at pleasure gives for the first time to the ordinary man - if only he be a suggestible subject - a power of concentration, of choice in the exercise of faculty, such as up till now only the most powerful spirits - a Newton or an Archimedes - have been able to exert.

The man who sits down in his study to write or read, - in perfect safety and intent on his work, - continues nevertheless to be involuntarily and inevitably armed with all that alertness to external sights and sounds, and all that sensibility to pain, which protected his lowly ancestors at different stages of even pre-human development. It is much as though he were forced to carry about with him all the external defences which his forefathers have invented for their defence; - to sit at his writing-table clad in chain-mail and a respirator, and grasping an umbrella and a boomerang. Let him learn, if he can, inwardly as well as outwardly, to get rid of all that, to keep at his command only the half of his faculties which for his purpose is worth more than the whole. Dissociation and choice; - dissociation between elements which have always hitherto seemed inextricably knit; - choice between faculties which till now we have had to use all together or not at all; - such is the promise, such is the incipient performance of hypnotic plasticity in its aspect of inhibitive suggestion.

537. I come now to the division of hypnotic achievement with which I next proposed to deal, namely, the dynantogenic results of hypnotic suggestion. Intensified vitality, heightened faculty, concentrated attention, strengthened will; such are the fittest descriptive phrases which we can find for these phenomena - phrases which all of them imply some obscure operation in a realm beyond our view. Nay, more, the realisation of these phrases presently shows us that even the effects which we have for convenience' sake classed as inhibitive are in reality dynamogenic. Inhibition is not disability, and the active, purposive restraint which the word connotes implies first that effective command of attention - that sway over the hidden springs of thought and emotion - which we shall now be tracing on a larger scale, and with different purposes, in its dynamogenic aspect.

Yet the practical convenience of our arrangement is hereby only the more plainly seen. What has thus far been written is well fitted to clear the way for what is to follow. While we dealt with inhibitions our subject was clearly defined; we knew what phenomena of life we desired to check; we could measure the success attained in each several direction. But now that we launch out upon the dynamogenic power of hypnotic suggestion, in whatsoever direction it may lie, we are embarking on an inquiry to which no term can be foreseen. We know, of course, that the physical energy manifested in the organism can never overpass its physical sources of supply in warmth and nutriment. But this is a test so rough as to be practically useless here. Within these broad limits the metabolism in the organism - the kind of energy into which food and warmth are transformed - may vary indefinitely in character and in intensity. And as for a psychical energy informing each one of us, - if such exist apart from the physical, - we have no reason whatever for supposing that we are here moving in a closed circuit, or manipulating a constant sum.

In default of any more comprehensive purview of the phenomena before us, it will be convenient to return again to the mere practical or educational standpoint; - to consider what it is which we are wont subjectively to regard as a heightening or concentration of power. We can roughly define the directions in which, as we say, we strengthen the faculties of the young. Perception, imagination, attention, character, - these we endeavour to train. We try to teach our children (1) to get from their external sensory organs all the healthful pleasure and knowledge that they can; (2) and to develop their central sensory organs, or inner world of imagination, into sane and helpful fertility; (3) and to direct their intellectual energy whithersoever they may desire, keeping hold by memory on previous acts of attention; (4) and, finally, to convert knowledge and imagination into wisdom and virtue by the exercise of enlightened will. This road is long and hard; but we shall find that at every point there is already some beginning of aid from hypnotic suggestion; some hint of a short cut which may some day take us far on our way.

538. I will begin, then, with what seems the most external and measurable of these different influences - the influence, namely, of suggestion upon man's perceptive faculties; - its power to educate his external organs of sense.

This wide subject is almost untouched as yet; and there is no direction in which one could be more confident of interesting results from further experiment.

The exposition falls naturally into three parts, as suggestion effects one or other of the three following objects: -

(1) Restoration of ordinary senses from some deficient condition.

(2) Vivification of ordinary senses; - hyperęsthesise.

(3) Development of new senses; - heteręsthesise.

(1) The first of these three headings seems at first sight to belong to therapeutics rather than to psychology. It is, however, indispensable as a preliminary to the other two heads; since by learning how and to what extent suggestion can repair defective senses we have the best chance of guessing at its modus operandi when it seems to excite the healthy senses to a point beyond their normal powers. I give in Appendices several cases bearing on this subject.

Two points may be mentioned here. Improvement of vision seems sometimes to result from relaxation of an involuntary ciliary spasm, which habitually over-corrects some defect of the lens (see 538 B). This is interesting, from the analogy thus shown in quite healthy persons to the fixed ideas, the subliminal errors and fancies characteristic of hysteria. The stratum of self whose business it is to correct the mechanical defect of the eye has in these instances done so amiss, and cannot set itself right. The corrected form of vision is as defective as the form of vision which it replaced. But if the state of trance be induced, or if it occur spontaneously, it sometimes happens that the error is suddenly righted; the patient lays aside spectacles; and since we must assume that the original defect of mechanism remains, it seems that that defect is now perfectly instead of imperfectly met (see 416). This shows a subliminal adjusting power operating during trance more intelligently than the supraliminal intelligence had been able to operate during waking life.

Another point of interest lies in the effect of increased attention, as stimulated by suggestion, upon the power of hearing. The two cases of Loué and another, quoted in 538 A, are among the most significant that I know. If Lout's susceptibility to self-suggestion could be reached by patients generally, there might be, with no miracle at all, a removal of perhaps half the annoyance which deafness inflicts on mankind.