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144 HYPNOTISM.
muscles and nerves in the lethargic state are not induced by suggestion.
Of course, we shall occasionally come across cases in which any evidences of
consciousness are too obscure to be readily demonstrated, but that does not
justify the assumption of loss of consciousness. At all events, loss of consciousness
has nothing whatever to do with hypnosis.
But though we cannot speak of a loss of consciousness in hypnosis, we must,
however, often suppose an abnormal state of consciousness; for if some one believes
he sees things that are not present, or fails to see things that are present,
he is certainly in an abnormal state of consciousness. If a man forty years
old believes he is ten years old, or somebody else, his consciousness is certainly
abnormal. We find such phenomena continually among the second group of hypnotic
subjects, and we must consequently here suppose a material abnormality of consciousness.
But even in such cases we occasionally find a certain degree of consciousness.
For instance, many hypnotics have a distinct feeling that they are asleep, or
in an altered state (Richet, Pierre Janet)—a phenomenon of ordinary sleep,
for we are occasionally conscious in dreams that we are asleep and dreaming.
Many hypnotics of the second group have this consciousness of being asleep,
and when they are asked if they are asleep or awake, they give the right answer.
When, as sometimes happens, the awakening is incomplete, they also rightly say
that they are not quite awake. Many people have a feeling of deep hypnosis if
they are incapable of resisting certain suggested ideas. I say to X., "
You cannot lift your arm !" "Yes I can," he answers, and. experiment
shows that he is right. But the contrary sometimes happens; the subject often
knows exactly the minute when his power to resist"is at an end, when he
must obey. X. announces after a time that he is at this point: "Now the
hypnosis is deep enough," he says. I say to a person thirty years old,
whom I have often hypnotized, "Now you are a little child." The subject
replies, "It is not enough yet; you must wait a little." After a time,
when I ask, he says that he is now at the right point. In other cases a remarkable
amount of judgment is displayed in hypnosis. Many hypnotics, even those of the
second group who are open to sense-delusions, say that they know quite well
how suggestion works and that the influence exercised on
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