Hypnotism: Its History, Practice and Theory

 

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sensation may be evoked, and by that of an unsympathetic person a disagree-able one. In the case of local pains and certain other sensations, the touch of a sympathetic person may have a beneficial effect,—not that of an unsympathetic one. It thus becomes evident, that the very same physiological and psycho-logical stimuli, when applied by ourselves, may be very far from giving the results obtained by them when they originate with another person. The whole question still demands much elucidation, although endless physiological and psychological theories have been started for the purpose. That of Demonchy would attribute the sleep-inducing power that lies in the touch of a hand to a merely thermal influence. And yet this would most assuredly not suit all cases, the application of warm compresses, for instance, having very varying results. It is undeniable that purely physiological processes often play here a highly important part. This appears most clearly in sexual intercourse, in which the very same physiological stimulus and the very same psychological process produce quite different results, according to the degree in which they correspond to the feeling of the person employing them. Normal sexual intercourse, even at the supreme moment, never produces complete gratification in a homo-sexual man. And yet here the peripheral stimulus cannot be said to be at fault, but simply the fact that it does not correspond to the feeling in question.


OCCULTISM. 495

In this, as in other examples given of difference in the results brought about by similar physiological agencies, animal magnetism plays no part. We have in reality to deal here with innate tendencies and psychological processes, a detailed analysis of which certainly at present exceeds our powers. The assumption of the existence of animal magnetism is, however, utterly superfluous, and it furnishes no explanation at all of the phenomena under consideration, whether the reflex-closing of the eyelids, or the effect produced by the touch of the hand or persistent repetition of the same words.
It is surely a somewhat wrong-headed proceeding, if, in order to account for phenomena which are not quite clear to us, we drag in the agency of a perfectly hypothetical force, when we know the whole time that this force, even if its existence were proved, would be incapable of explaining the phenomena in question. Already some time ago, Lemoine, in his book, Du Sommeil, laid stress on the fact that the phenomena of magnetic somnambulia, clairvoyance, transposition of the senses, etc., cannot, even if we accept them, be explained by animal magnetism. The attempt, therefore, to make these phenomena, even if we admit

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