The cases of Socrates and of Joan of Arc, on which I have just dwelt, might with almost equal fitness have been introduced at certain other points of my discussion. At first sight, at any rate, they appear rather like sensory than like motor automatisms,—like hallucinations of hearing rather than like the motor impulses which we are now about to study. Each case, however, approaches motor automatism in a special way.
In the case of Socrates the "sign" seems to have been not so much a definite voice as a sense of inhibition. In the case of Joan of Arc the voices were definite enough, but they were accompanied—as such voices sometimes are, but sometimes are not—with an overmastering impulse to act in obedience to them. These are, I may say, palmary cases of inhibition and of impulse: and inhibition and impulse are at the very root of motor phenomena.
They show moreover the furthest extent of the claim that can be made for the agency of the subliminal self, apart from any external influence,—apart from telepathy from the living, or possession by the departed. Each of those other hypotheses will claim its own group of cases; but we must not invoke them until the resources of subliminal wisdom are manifestly overtaxed.
These two famous cases, then, have launched us on our subject in the stress of a twofold difficulty in logical arrangement. We cannot always answer these primary questions, Is the subliminal impulse sensory or motor? is it originated in the automatist's own mind, or in some mind external to him?
In the first place, we must reflect that, if the subliminal self really possesses that profound power over the organism with which I have credited it, we may expect that its "messages" will sometimes express themselves in the form of deep organic modifications—of changes in the vaso-motor, the circulatory, the respiratory systems. Such phenomena are likely to be less noted or remembered as coincidental, from their very indefiniteness, as compared, for instance, with a phantasmal appearance; but we have, nevertheless, records of various telepathic cases of deep cœnesthetic disturbance, of a profound malaise which must, one would think, have involved some unusual condition of the viscera.[172]
In cases, too, where the telepathic impression has ultimately assumed a definite sensory form, some organic or emotional phenomena have been noted, being perhaps the first effects of the telepathic impact, whether from the living or from the dead.[173]
And here I may mention an experience of Lady de Vesci's, who described to me in conversation a feeling of malaise, defining itself into the urgent need of definite action—namely, the despatch of a telegram to a friend who was in fact then dying at the other side of the world.[174] Such an impulse had one only parallel in her experience, which also was telepathic in a similar way.
Similar sensory disturbances are sometimes reported in connection with an important form of motor automatism,—that of "dowsing" or discovering water by means of the movement of a rod held in the hands of the automatist,—already treated of in Appendix V. A.
A small group of cases may naturally be mentioned here. From two different points of view they stand for the most part at the entrance of our subject. I speak of motor inhibitions, prompted at first by subliminal memory, or by subliminal hyperæsthesia, but merging into telæsthesia or telepathy. Inhibitions—sudden arrests or incapacities of action—(more or less of the Socratic type)—form a simple, almost rudimentary, type of motor automatisms. And an inhibition—a sudden check on action of this kind—will be a natural way in which a strong but obscure impression will work itself out. Such an impression, for instance, is that of alarm, suggested by some vague sound or odour which is only subliminally perceived. And thus in this series of motor automatisms, just as in our series of dreams, or in our series of sensory automatisms, we find ourselves beginning with cases where the subliminal self merely shows some slight extension of memory or of sensory perception,—and thence pass insensibly to cases where no "cryptomnesia" will explain the facts known in the past, and no hyperæsthesia will explain the facts discerned in the present.
We may most of us have observed that if we perform any small action to which there are objections, which we have once known but which have altogether passed from our minds, we are apt to perform it in a hesitating, inefficient way.