Popular Superstitions, and the Truths Contained Therein / With an Account of Mesmerism

by Herbert Mayo

He comes at last, and, with a little pin,

Bores through his castle wall—and farewell king!”

To return to our argument, Are the sentiments and higher faculties of the mind suspended during sleep? Certainly not, if dreaming be a part of natural sleep, as I hold it to be. For there are some who dream always; others, who say they seldom dream; others, who disavow dreaming at all. But the simplest view of these three cases is to suppose that in sleep all persons always dream, but that all do not remember their dreams. This imputed forgetfulness is not surprising, considering the importance of the attention to memory, and that in sleep the attention is suspended. Ordinary dreams present one remarkable feature; nothing in them appears wonderful. We meet and converse with friends long dead; the improbability of the event never crosses our minds. One sees a horse galloping by, and calls after it as one’s friend—Mr. so-and-so. We fly with agreeable facility, and explain to an admiring circle how we manage it. Every absurdity passes unchallenged. The attention is off duty. It is important to remark that there is nothing in common dreams to interfere with the purpose of sleep, which is repose. The cares and interests of our waking life never recur to us; or, if they do, are not recognised as our own. The faculties are not really energizing; their seeming exercise is sport; they are unharnessed, and are gambolling and rolling in idle relaxation. That is their refreshment.

The attention alone slumbers; or, through some slight organic change, it is unlinked from the other faculties, and they are put out of gear. This is the basis of sleep. The faculties are all in their places; but the attention is off duty; itself asleep, or indolently keeping watch of time alone.

In contrast with this picture of the sleeping and waking states, of the alternation of which our mental life consists, I have now to hold up to view another conception, resembling it, but different, vague, imposing, of gigantic proportions, the monstrous double of the first—like the mocking spectre of the Hartz, which yet is but your own shadow cast by the level sunbeams on the morning mist.

To answer to this conception, there is more than the ideal entity made up of the different forms of trance. For although trance may occur as a single sleep-like fit of moderate duration, yet it more frequently recurs—often periodically, dividing the night or day with common sleep or common waking; or it may be persistent for days and weeks—in which case, if it generally maintain one character, it is yet liable to have wakings of its own.

Then the first division of trance is into trance-sleep and trance-waking. In extreme cases it is easy to tell trance-sleep from common sleep, trance-waking from common waking; but there are varieties with less prominent features, in which it is difficult, at first, to say whether the patient is entranced at all.

There is, upon the whole, more alliance between sleep and trance, than between waking and trance. Or, in a large class of cases, the patient falls into trance when asleep. It is a cognate phenomenon to this that the common initiatory stage of trance is a trance-sleep.

Trance is of more frequent occurrence among the young than among the middle-aged or old people. It occurs more frequently among young women than among young men. In other words, the liability to trance is in proportion to delicacy of organization, and higher nervous susceptibility.

But what is trance? The question will be best answered by exhibiting its several phases. In the mean time, it may be laid down that the basis of trance is the supervention of the abnormal relation of the mind and nervous system. In almost all its forms it is easy to show that some of the mental functions are no longer located in their pristine organs. The most ordinary change is the departure of common sensation from the organ of touch. Next, sight leaves the organs of vision. To make up for these desertions, if the patient wake in trance, either the same senses reappear elsewhere, or some unaccountable mode of general perception manifests itself.