Part 3 (2/2)

The pendulum of thought has swung back a long way from the point whither it was urged by David Hume. Hegel remarks: 'The facts, it might seem, first of all call for verification. But such verification would be superfluous to those on whose account it was called for, since they facilitate the inquiry for themselves by declaring the narratives, infinitely numerous though they be, and accredited by the education and character of the witnesses, to be mere deception and imposture. Their _a priori_ conceptions are so rooted that no testimony can avail against them, and they have even denied what they have seen with their own eyes,'

and reported under their own hands, like Sir David Brewster. Hegel, it will be observed, takes the facts as given, and works them into his general theory of the Sensitive Soul (_fuhlende Seele_). He does not try to establish the facts; but to establish, or at least to examine them, is the first business of Psychical Research. Theorising comes later.

The years which have pa.s.sed between the date of Hegel's 'Philosophy of Mind' and our own time have witnessed the long dispute over the existence, the nature, and the causes of the hypnotic condition, and over the reality and limitations of the phenomena. Thus the Academy of Medicine in Paris appointed a Committee to examine the subject in 1825. The Report on 'Animal Magnetism,' as it was then styled, was presented in 1831. The Academy lacked the courage to publish it, for the Report was favourable even to certain of the still disputed phenomena. At that time, in accordance with a survival of the theory of Mesmer, the agent in hypnotic cases was believed to be a kind of efflux of a cosmic fluid from the 'magnetiser' to the patient. There was 'a magnetic connection.'

Though no distinction between mesmerism and hypnotism is taken in popular language, 'mesmerism' is a word implying this theory of 'magnetic' or other unknown personal influence. 'Hypnotism,' as will presently be seen, implies no such theory. The Academy's Report (1831) attested the development, under 'magnetism,' of 'new faculties,' such as clairvoyance and intuition, also the production of 'great changes in the physical economy,' such as insensibility, and sudden increase of strength. The Report declared it to be 'demonstrated' that sleep could be produced 'without suggestion,' as we say now, though the term was not then in use.

'Sleep has been produced in circ.u.mstances in which the persons could not see or were ignorant of the means employed to produce it.'

The Academy did its best to suppress this Report, which attests the phenomena that Hegel accepted, phenomena still disputed. Six years later (1837), a Committee reported against the pretensions of a certain Berna, a 'magnetiser.' No person acted on both Committees, and this Report was accepted. Later, a number of people tried to read a letter in a box, and failed. 'This,' says Mr. Vincent, 'settled the question with regard to clairvoyance;' though it might be more logical to say that it settled the pretensions of the compet.i.tors on that occasion. The Academy now decided that, because certain persons did not satisfy the expectations raised by their preliminary advertis.e.m.e.nts, therefore the question of magnetism was definitely closed.

We have often to regret that scientific eminence is not always accompanied by scientific logic. Where science neglects a subject, charlatans and dupes take it up. In England 'animal magnetism' had been abandoned to this cla.s.s of enthusiasts, till Thackeray's friend, Dr. Elliotson, devoted himself to the topic. He was persecuted as doctors know how to persecute; but in 1841, Braid, of Manchester, discovered that the so-called 'magnetic sleep' could be produced without any 'magnetism,' He made his patients stare fixedly at an object, and encouraged them to expect to go to sleep.

He called his method 'Hypnotism,' a term which begs no question. Seeming to cease to be mysterious, hypnotism became all but respectable, and was being used in surgical operations, till it was superseded by chloroform.

In England, the study has been, and remains, rather _suspect_, while on The Continent hypnotism is used both for healing purposes and in the inquiries of experimental psychology. Wide differences of opinion still exist, as to the nature of the hypnotic sleep, as to its physiological concomitants, and as to the limits of the faculties exercised in or out of the slumber. It is not even absolutely certain that the exercise of the stranger faculties--for instance, that the production of anaesthesia and rigidity--are the results merely of 'suggestion' and expectancy. A hypnotised patient is told that the middle finger of his left hand will become rigid and incapable of sensation. This occurs, and is explained by 'suggestion,' though _how_ 'suggestion' produces the astonis.h.i.+ng effect is another problem. The late Mr. Gurney, however, made a number of experiments in which no suggestion was p.r.o.nounced, nor did the patients know which of their fingers was to become rigid and incapable of pain. The patient's hands were thrust through a screen; on the other side of which the hypnotist made pa.s.ses above the finger which was to become rigid. The lookers-on selected the finger, and the insensibility was tested by a strong electric current. The effect was also produced _without_ pa.s.ses, the operator merely pointing at the selected finger, and 'willing' the result. If he did not 'will' it, nothing occurred, nor did anything occur if he willed without pointing. The proximity of the operator's hand produced no effect if he did not 'will,' nor was his 'willing' successful if he did not bring his hand near that of the patient. Other people's hands, similarly situated, produced no effect.

Experiments in transferring taste, as of salt, sugar, cayenne pepper, from operator to subject, were also successful. Drs. Janet and Gibert also produced sleep in a woman at a distance, by 'willing' it, at hours which were selected by a system of drawing lots.[17] These facts, of course, rather point to an element of truth in the old mesmeric hypothesis of some specific influence in the operator. They cannot very well be explained by suggestion and expectancy. But these facts and facts of clairvoyance and thought-transference will be rejected as superst.i.tious delusions by people who have not met them in their own experience. This need not prevent us from examining them, because _all_ the facts, including those now universally accepted by Continental and scarcely impeached by British science, have been noisily rejected again and again on Hume's principles.

The rarer facts, as Mr. Gurney remarks, 'still go through the hollow form of taking place.' Here is an example of the mode in which these phenomena are treated by popular science. Mr. Vincent says that 'clairvoyance and phrenology were Elliotson's constant stock in trade.' (Phrenology was also Braid's stock in trade.) 'It is a matter of congratulation to have been so soon delivered from what Dr. Lloyd Tuckey has well called ”a ma.s.s of superinc.u.mbent rubbish.”'[18] Clairvoyance is part of a ma.s.s of rubbish, on page 57. On page 67, Mr. Vincent says: 'There are many interesting questions, such as telepathy, thought-reading, clairvoyance, upon which it would be perhaps rash to give any decided opinion.... All these strange psychical conditions present problems of great interest,'

and are only omitted because 'they have not a sufficient bearing on the normal states of hypnosis....' Thus what was 'rubbish' in one page 'presents problems of great interest' ten pages later, and, after offering a decided opinion that clairvoyance is rubbish, Mr. Vincent thinks it rash to give any decided opinion. It is rather rash to give a decided opinion, and then to say that it is rash to do so.[19]

This brief sketch shows that science is confronted by certain facts, which, in his time, Hume dismissed as incredible miracles, beneath the contempt of the wise and learned. We also see that the stranger and rarer phenomena which Hegel accepted as facts, and interwove with his general philosophy, are still matters of dispute. Admitted by some men of science, they are doubted by others; by others, again, are denied, while most of the journalists and authors of cheap primers, who inspire popular tradition, regard the phenomena as frauds or fables of superst.i.tion. But it is plain that these phenomena, like the more ordinary facts of hypnotism, _may_ finally be admitted by science. The scientific world laughed, not so long ago, at Ogham inscriptions, meteorites, and at palaeolithic weapons as impostures, or freaks of nature. Now n.o.body has any doubt on these matters, and clairvoyance, thought-transference, and telepathy may, not inconceivably, be as fortunate in the long run as meteorites, or as the more usual phenomena of hypnotism.

It is only Lord Kelvin who now maintains, or lately maintained, that in hypnotism there is nothing at all but fraud and malobservation. In years to come it may be that only some similar belated voice will cry that in thought-transference there is nothing but malobservation and fraud. At present the serious attention and careful experiment needed for the establishment of the facts are more common among French than among English men of science. When published, these experiments, if they contain any affirmative instances, are denounced as 'superst.i.tious,' or criticized after what we must charitably deem to be a very hasty glance, by the guides of popular opinion. Examples of this method will be later quoted.

Meanwhile the disputes as to these alleged facts are noticed here, because of their supposed relation to the Origin of Religion.

[Footnote 1: See Mr. Myers's paper on the 'Ancient Oracles,' in _Cla.s.sical Essays_, and the author's 'Ancient Spiritualism,' in _c.o.c.k Lane and Common Sense_.]

[Footnote 2: The italics here are those of Mr. Alfred Russell Wallace, in his _Miracles and Modern Science_. Mr. Huxley, in his exposure of Hume's fallacies (in his Life of Hume), did not examine the Jansenist 'miracles'

which Hume was criticising.]

[Footnote 3: Moll, _Hypnotism_, p. 357.]

[Footnote 4: _Animal Magnetism_, p. 355.]

[Footnote 5: A translation of his work was published in the _New Review_, January 1693.]

[Footnote 6: _La Verite des Miracles_, Cologne, 1747, Septiemo Demonstration.]

[Footnote 7: See Dr. Russell Reynolds's paper in _British Medical Journal_, November 1869.]

[Footnote 8: James, _Principles of Psychology_, ii. 612. Charcot, op. cit.]

[Footnote 9: I do not need to be told that Dr. Maudsley denied the fact in 1886. I am prepared with the evidence, if it is asked for by some savant who happens not to know it.]

[Footnote 10: I am not responsible, of course, for the scientific validity of Dr. Charcot's theory of healing 'by idea.' My point merely is that certain experts of no slight experience or mean reputation do now admit, as important certainties within their personal knowledge, exactly the phenomena which Hume asks the wise and learned to laugh at, indeed, but never to investigate.]

[Footnote 11: Pp. 353-356.]

<script>