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FUBTHEK PKOBLEMS OF HYPNOTISM. (ll.) 413 matter very different degrees of efficiency. The processes themselves, however, need to be carefully distinguished. They consist for the most part of passes over the upper part of the person, and of pressure on the globe of the eye, or between the eyes, or on the vertex. It is common for the hypnotiser to combine the passes and the pressures ; but the grounds of their efficacy are very different. The pressures seem undoubtedly to be mechanical in their action : they are applied to certain particular spots, and stimulate certain particular nervous foci, which presumably are intimately connected with the effect, and which physiologists therefore can label as ' hypnogenetic,' and then leave ; for physiology does not profess to do more than assign to special localities and special tissues their proper functions. But the virtue of passes cannot be accounted for in any such fashion ; for they touch no specialised springs in the organism. Yet passes were a mode of operation which physiologists found in possession of the field, identified, for many j^ears before they took up the subject, with * mesmerism ' and theories of occult influence; and which therefore they could not avoid recog- nising and attempting to explain in some other way. The attempt has not been fortunate. It has consisted simply in treating passes as one of the forms of ' monotonous stimula- tion,' and in assuming the power of monotonous stimulation to produce hypnotic trance as an ultimate fact. I am inclined to question both the ultimate fact 1 and its applica- tion. Out of many possible forms of monotonous stimula- tion, only two, seemingly quite arbitrarily selected, have ever seemed to have any hypnogenetic efficacy namely passes, a form which has very frequently been employed, and the ticking of a watch, a form which has comparatively rarely been employed. So far, then, from passes being explained by being called a form of monotonous stimulation, the burden of supporting the credit of monotonous stimula- tion, as a hypnogenetic agency, seems to fall almost entirely upon them. Yet an unprejudiced inspection of the ordinary procedure of passes will really make it seem absurd to find the peculiarity of their influence in the cause assigned for the simple reason that there is often next to no monotony, and next to no stimulation, about them. There seems in this matter to have been a confusion of things which are only superficially alike. Where contact is employed, as in gentle strokings and rubbings, the unaccus- 1 On this question see the remarks of Mr. Myers, Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research, pt. x. 145-8, with which I heartily concur.