Page:Principles of Psychology (1890) v1.djvu/231

THE KELATIONS OF MINDS TO OTHER THINGS. 211 by suggesting to them in hypnotism the hallucination of a mustard-poultice of any special shape. "J'ai tout le temps pense a votre sinapisme," says the subject, when put back into trance after the suggestion has taken effect. A man N., . . . whom M. Janet operated on at long in- tervals, was betweenwhiles tampered with by another operator, and when put to sleep again by M. Janet, said he was * too far away to receive orders, being in Algiers.' The other operator, having suggested that hallucination, had forgotten to remove it before waking the subject from his trance, and the poor passive trance-personality had stuck for weeks in the stagnant dream. Leonie's sub-con- scious performances having been illustrated to a caller, by a ' pied de nez ' executed with her left hand in the course of conversation, when, a year later, she meets him again, up goes the same hand to her nose again, without Leonie's normal self suspecting the fact. All these facts, taken together, form unquestionably the beginning of an inquiry which is destined to throw a new light into the very abysses of our nature. It is for that reason that I have cited them at such length in this early chapter of the book. They prove one thing conclusively, namely, that we must never take a person's testimony, hoiv- ever sincere, that he has felt nothing, as proof positive that no feeling has been there. It may have been there as part of the consciousness of a * secondary personage,' of whose ex- periences the primary one whom we are consulting can naturally give no account. In hypnotic subjects (as we shall see in a later chapter) just as it is the easiest thing in the world to paralyze a movement or member by simple suggestion, so it is easy to produce what is called a system- atized anaesthesia by word of command. A systematized anaesthesia means an insensibility, not to any one element of things, but to some one concrete thing or class of things. The subject is made blind or deaf to a certain person in the room and to no one else, and thereupon denies that that per- son is present, or has spoken, etc. M. P. Janet's Lucie, blind to some of the numbered cards in her lap (p. 207 above), is a case in point. Now when the object is simple, like a red