A strict alliance exists between trance and the whole family of spasms. Most of them are exclusively developed in connexion with it; all are liable to be combined with it; they are all capable of being excited by the same influences which produce trance; so they often occur vicariously, or alternate with trance. One kind is catalepsy; the body motionless, statue-like, but the tone of spasm maintained low, so that you may arrange the statue in what attitude you will, and it preserves it. A second is catochus, like the preceding, but with a higher power of spasm, so that the joints are rigidly fixed; and if you overcome one for a moment with superior strength, being let go, it flies back to where it was. A third, partial spasm of equal rigidity, arching the body forwards or backwards or laterally, or fixing one limb or more. The fourth, clonic spasm, for instance, the contortions and convulsive struggles of epilepsy. The fifth, an impulse to rapid and varied muscular actions, nearly equalling convulsions in violence, but combined so as to travesty ordinary voluntary motion; this is the dance of St. Veitz, which took its name from an epidemic outbreak in Germany in the thirteenth century, that was supposed to be cured by the interposition of the saint; then persons of all classes were seized in groups in public with a fury of kicking, shuffling, dancing together, till they dropt. Now, the same agency is manifested either in a violent rush, and disposition to climb with inconceivable agility and precision; or alternately to twist the features, roll the neck, and jerk and swing the limbs even to the extent of dislocating them.
The causes of trance are mostly mental. Trance appears to be contagious. Viewed medically, it is seldom directly dangerous. It is a product of over-excitability, which time blunts. The disposition to trance is seldom manifested beyond a few months, or, at most, two or three years. For epilepsy is not a form of trance; it is, however, a mixed mental and spasmodic seizure, much allied to trance. Those who suffer from its attacks are found to be among the most susceptible of induced trance.
But let me again ask, what then is trance?
Trance is a peculiar mental seizure, (totally distinct from insanity, with which again, however, it may be combined,) the patient taken with which appears profoundly absorbed or rapt, and as if lost more or less completely to surrounding objects or impressions, or at all events to the ordinary mode of perceiving them; he is likewise more or less entirely lost to his former recollections. The mental seizures may or may not occur simultaneously or alternately with spasmodic seizures of any and every character.
This definition of trance conveys, I am afraid, no very exact or distinct picture; but it is the definition of a genus, and a genus is necessarily an abstraction. However, it gives the features essential to all the forms of trance. A true general notion of trance can, indeed, only be realized by studying in detail each of the forms it includes. These are separated by the broadest colours. In the one extreme an entranced person appears dead, and no sign of life is recognisable in him; in the opposite, he appears to be much as usual, and perfectly impressible by any thing around him, so that it demands careful observation to establish that he is not simply awake.
Then trance presents no fewer than five specific forms, distinguished each from the other by clear characters, their essential identity being established by each at times passing into either of the others. The terms by which I propose to designate the five primary forms of trance are—Death-trance, Trance-coma, Initiatory Trance, Half-waking-trance, Waking-trance. The five, however, admit, as I have before said, of being arranged in two groups: the first three forms enumerated constituting varieties of trance-sleep; the two latter constituting varieties of waking-trance. The next letter will treat of the first group; the two following will treat of the two varieties of the second.
I have observed that the causes of trance are for the most part mental impressions; but it will be found that certain physical influences may produce the same results. The causes of trance, whether mental or physical, deserve again to be regarded in three lights. Either they have operated blindly and fortuitously, or they have been resorted to and used as agents to produce some vague and imperfectly understood result, or they have been skilfully and intelligently directed to bring out the exact phenomena which have followed. It is with trance supervening in the two former ways that I alone propose at present to deal; that is to say, with trance as it was imperfectly known as an agent in superstition, or as a rare and marvellous form of nervous disease. Of the third case of trance, as it may be artificially induced, I shall afterwards and finally speak.
LETTER VI.
Trance-Sleep—The phenomena of trance divided into those of trance-sleep, and those of trance-waking—Trance-sleep presents three forms; trance-waking two. The three forms of trance-sleep described: viz., death-trance, trance-coma, simple or initiatory trance.