FUETHER PROBLEMS OF HYPNOTISM. (l.) 217

has rarely been the case), it is inevitable that facts so startling, and so alien to scientific preconceptions, should depend for their acceptance almost entirely on contemporary evidence ; and this being so, the recent well-attested cases are of extreme importance. They have indeed an importance over and above that which attaches to them in their hyp- notic character. For they form a species in a general class of affections extending far beyond the limits of hypnotism, and embracing every sort of impression made by one person on another otherwise than through the recognised channels of sense. To such impressions the convenient term tele- pathy has been appropriated. And inasmuch as hypno- tism, being a physiological and in some respects a medical curiosity, has a specially good chance of attracting the notice of trained observers to its various phases, it would not be surprising if the phenomena of distant trance-induc- tion were the first branch of telepathy to win the confident and general adhesion of scientific men ; as indeed they might have done many years ago, but for their association with the wild theories and grotesque pretensions of ' mes- merists '. It is probable also that France will continue to be the principal scene of these interesting observations ; partly owing to a spirit of disengagedness and openness to new ideas, which seems specially to characterise the medical faculty of that country, but chiefly because the French temperament appears to be on the whole decidedly more susceptible than the English to hypnotic affections, just as Esdaile found the Hindoo to be ; and there being a larger percentage of good ' subjects ' to work with, it may naturally be expected that among them will be found the rarce aves on whom the demonstration of the more delicate hypnotic phenomena must depend. I can only describe the cases here in brief outline ; they are naturally far more impressive in their original form (Revue Philosophigue, for February and April, 1886). (1) The first case is from Prof. Pierre Janet, of Havre, who observed it in conjunction with Dr. Gibert, the leading physician of that town. The 'subject,' Mine. B., was an honest and simple peasant-woman, enjoying good health, though liable, from childhood, to fits of somnambulism. Dur- ing a stay at Havre, in the autumn of 1885, she proved easy to hypnotise, and at once showed in various ways a marked rapport with the person who had hypnotised her. For instance, while she was in the " deep state," in- sensible to all ordinary stimuli, the contact or proximity of the hypnotiser's hand would induce in her partial or general contractures, which a light touch from him could again remove no one else being able to produce either effect in the slightest degree. After about ten minutes of deep trance she would pass into the " alert " or somnambulic state, from which she could be wakened into the normal state by the operator, and by him alone. It