Page:Mind (Old Series) Volume 9.djvu/509

THE PROBLEMS OF HYPNOTISM. 497 events that are passing ; by M. Maury to a mental paralysis brought about by an exhausting concentration of attention on those events, theories so weak and baseless that we cer- tainly need not grudge Despine the satisfaction of setting them off one against the other. So again, he has no difficulty in disposing of M. A. Lemoine's explanation that memory cannot survive the shock of the sudden change from the somnarnbulic to the natural state. A single instance, how- ever, will show that his own counter-positions are very little stronger. He adduces the extreme violence of the things which have been done or suffered in the trance-condition, and argues that since these things, though so impressive in their nature, are not remembered, they must have been done or suffered unconsciously. The reply is obvious that equally violent things are done and suffered in dreams (which Des- pine again and again distinguishes from the trance-condition by the presence to them of consciousness and the eyo), and are forgotten within a minute of waking. Equally obvious is it to notice that Despine's argument quietly begs the whole question ; for he is assuming for the abnormal state the same relation of consciousness to memory as exists in the normal state, forgetting that that identity of relation is pre- cisely what he has to prove. But there is a more radical objection to all these argu- ments for the unconsciousness of the ' subject ' from the fact that subsequent memory is absent the fact, namely, that it is frequently present. The primd facie indications of this subsequent memory, found in correct descriptions by the ' subject ' of what he has been doing, are too obvious for even Heidenhain to have overlooked them; and he brings them into harmony with his general theory by sup- posing that, when the abnormal inhibition of cortical func- tion is removed, the excitation remaining in the lower centres transmits a stimulus to the liberated sensorial ganglion-cells to be psychically represented as memory of the original exciting cause, which, when it actually operated, had no place in consciousness. He holds, however, that some distinct hint or impulse is necessary to bring up this residuary excitation to the requisite strength. Andformany of the simpler phenomena this seems a satisfactory hypo- thesis. Further, the outward indications of remembering, in a new hypnotic state, what occurred in a former one, and the apparent taking-up of an old track of ideas, or even of a connected discourse, at the point where it had been abandoned, have been brought by Despine within the scope of purely automatic brain-action the renewal of the hyp-