Thus, a friend of Dr. Noble's had a female servant whom he had frequently thrown into the hypnotic state, trying a variety of experiments, many of which Dr. Noble had witnessed. Dr. Noble was at length told that his friend had succeeded in magnetising her from another room and without her knowledge, with some other stories even more marvellous, circumstantially related by eye-witnesses, 'amongst others by the medical attendant of the family, a most respectable and intelligent friend' of Dr. Noble's own. As he remained unsatisfied, Dr. Noble was invited to come and judge for himself, proposing whatever test he pleased. 'Now had we visited the house,' he says, 'we should have felt dissatisfied with any result,' knowing 'that the presence of a visitor or the occurrence of anything unusual was sure to excite expectation of some mesmeric process.' 'We therefore proposed,' he proceeds, 'that the experiment should be carried on at our own residence; and it was made under the following circumstances:—The gentleman early one evening wrote a note as if on business, directing it to ourselves. He thereupon summoned the female servant (the mesmeric subject), requesting her to convey the note to its destination, and to wait for an answer. The gentleman himself, in her hearing, ordered a cab, stating that if anyone called he was going to a place named, but was expected to return by a certain hour. Whilst the female servant was dressing for her errand, the master placed himself in the vehicle and rapidly arrived at our dwelling. In about ten minutes after the note arrived, the gentleman in the meantime being secreted in an adjoining apartment, we requested the young woman who had been shown into our study, to take a seat whilst we wrote the answer; at the same time placing the chair with its back to the door leading into the next room which was left ajar. It had been agreed that after the admission of the girl into the place where we were, the magnetiser, approaching the door in silence on the other side, should commence operations. There, then, was the patient or "subject" placed within two feet of her magnetiser, a door only intervening, and that but partially closed; but she, all the while, perfectly free from all idea of what was going on. We were careful to avoid any unnecessary conversation with the girl, or even to look towards her, lest we should raise some suspicion in her own mind. We wrote our letter (as if in answer) for nearly a quarter of an hour, once or twice only making an indifferent remark, and on leaving the room for a light to seal the supposed letter, we beckoned the operator away. No effect whatever had been produced, although we had been told that two or three minutes were sufficient, even when mesmerising from the drawing-room, through walls and apartments, into the kitchen. In our own experiment the intervening distance had been very much less, and only one solid substance intervened, and that not completely; but here we suspect was the difference—the "subject" was unconscious of the magnetism and expected nothing.'
In another case Dr. Noble tried the converse experiment with equally convincing results. Being in company one evening with a young lady said to be of high mesmeric susceptibility, he requested and received permission to test this quality in her. In one of the usual ways he 'magnetised' her, and having so far satisfied himself, he 'demagnetised' her. He next proceeded to 'hypnotise' her, adopting Mr. Braid's method of directing the stare at a fixed point. 'The result varied in no respect from that which had taken place in the foregoing experiment; the duration of the process was the same, and its intensity of effect neither greater nor less.' 'De-hypnotisation' again restored the young lady to herself. 'And now,' says Dr. Noble, 'we requested our patient to rest quietly at the fire-place, to think of just what she liked, and to look where she pleased, excepting at ourselves, who retreated behind her chair, saying that a new mode was about to be tried, and that her turning round would disturb the process. We very composedly took up a volume which lay upon a table, and amused ourselves with it for about five minutes, when on raising our eyes, we could see by the excited features of other members of the party that the young lady was once more magnetised. We were informed by those who had attentively watched her during the progress of our little experiment, that all had been in every respect just as before. The lady herself, before she was undeceived, expressed a distinct consciousness of having felt our unseen passes streaming down the neck.'
In a similar way, Mr. Bertrand, who was the first (Dr. Carpenter tells us) to undertake a really scientific investigation of the phenomena of mesmerism, proved that the supposed effect of a magnetised letter from him to a female somnambule was entirely the work of her own lively imagination. He magnetised a letter first, which on receipt was placed at his suggestion upon the epigastrium of the patient, who was thrown into the magnetic sleep with all the customary phenomena. He then wrote another letter, which he did not magnetise, and again the same effect was produced. Lastly he set about an experiment which should determine the real state of the case. 'I asked one of my friends,' he says, 'to write a few lines in my place, and to strive to imitate my writing, so that those who should read the letter should mistake it for mine (I knew he could do so). He did this; our stratagem succeeded, and the sleep was produced just as it would have been by one of my own letters.
It is hardly necessary to say, perhaps, that none of the phenomena of hypnotism require, as indeed none of them, rightly understood, suggest, the action of any such occult forces as spiritualists believe in. On the other hand, I believe that many of the phenomena recorded by spiritualists as having occurred under their actual observation are very readily to be explained as phenomena of hypnotism. Of course I would not for a moment deny that in the great majority of cases much grosser forms of deception are employed. But in others, and especially in those where the concentration of the attention for some time is a necessary preliminary to the exhibition of the phenomena (which suitable 'subjects' only are privileged to see), I consider the resulting self-deception as hypnotic.
We may regard the phenomena of hypnotism in two aspects—first and chiefly as illustrating the influence of imagination on the functions of the body; secondly, as showing under what conditions the imagination may be most readily brought to bear in producing such influence. These phenomena deserve far closer and at the same time far wider attention than they have yet received. Doubt has been thrown upon them because they have been associated with false theories, and in many cases with fraud and delusion. But, rightly viewed, they are at once instructive and valuable. On the one hand they throw light on some of the most interesting problems of mental physiology; on the other they promise to afford valuable means of curing certain ailments, and of influencing in useful ways certain powers and functions of the body. All that is necessary, it should seem, to give hypnotic researches their full value, is that all association of these purely mental phenomena with charlatanry and fraud should be abruptly and definitely broken off. Those who make practical application of the phenomena of hypnotism should not only divest their own minds of all idea that some occult and as it were extra-natural force is at work, but should encourage no belief in such force in those on whom the hypnotic method is employed. Their influence on the patient will not be lessened, I believe, by the fullest knowledge on the patient's part that all which is to happen to him is purely natural—that, in fact, advantage is simply to be taken of an observed property of the imagination to obtain an influence not otherwise attainable over the body as a whole (as when the so-called magnetic sleep is to be produced), or over special parts of the body. Whether advantage might not be taken of other than the curative influences of hypnotism is a question which will probably have occurred to some who may have followed the curious accounts given in the preceding pages. If special powers may be obtained, even for a short time, by the hypnotised subject, these powers might be systematically used for other purposes than mere experiment. If, again, the repetition of hypnotic curative processes eventually leads to a complete and lasting change in the condition of certain parts or organs of the body, the repetition of the exercise of special powers during the hypnotic state may after a while lead to the definite acquisition of such powers. As it now appears that the hypnotic control may be obtained without any effort on the part of the operator, the effort formerly supposed to be required being purely imaginary and the hypnotic state being in fact readily attainable without any operation whatever, we seem to recognise possibilities which, duly developed, might be found of extreme value to the human race. In fine, it would seem that man possesses a power which has hitherto lain almost entirely dormant, by which, under the influence of properly-guided imagination, the will can be so concentrated on special actions that feats of strength, dexterity, artistic (and even perhaps scientific) skill may be accomplished by persons who, in the ordinary state, are quite incapable of such achievements.
In Montaigne's well-known essay on the 'Resemblance of Children to their Fathers,' the philosopher of Périgord remarks that 'there is a certain sort of crafty humility that springs from presumption; as this, for example, that we confess our ignorance in many things, and are so courteous as to acknowledge that there are in works of nature some qualities and conditions that are imperceptible to us, and of which our understanding cannot discern the means and causes; by which honest declaration we hope to obtain that people shall also believe us of those that we say we do understand.' 'We need not trouble ourselves,' he goes on, 'to seek out miracles and strange difficulties; methinks there are such incomprehensible wonders amongst the things that we ordinarily see as surpass all difficulties of miracles.' He applies these remarks to inherited peculiarities of feature, figure, character, constitution, habits, and so forth. And certainly few of the phenomena of nature are more wonderful than these, in the sense of being less obviously referable to any cause which seems competent to produce them. Many of those natural phenomena which are regarded as most striking are in this respect not to be compared with the known phenomena of heredity. The motions of the planets can all be referred to regular laws; chemical changes are systematic, and their sequence at least is understood; the phenomena of heat, light, and electricity are gradually finding interpretation. It is true that all these phenomena become in a sense as miracles when we endeavour to ascertain their real cause. In their case we can ascertain the 'how,' but in no sense the 'why.' Gravity is a mastery of mysteries to the astronomer, and has almost compelled us to believe in that 'action at a distance' which Newton asserted to be unimaginable by anyone with a competent power of reasoning about things philosophical. The ultimate cause of chemical changes is as great a mystery now as it was when the four elements were believed in. And the nature of the ether itself in which the undulations of heat, light, and electricity are transmitted is utterly mysterious even to those students of science who have been most successful in determining the laws according to which those undulations proceed. But the phenomena themselves being at once referable (in our own time at least) to law, have no longer the mysterious and in a sense miraculous character recognised in them before the laws of motion, of chemical affinity, of light and heat and electricity, had been ascertained. It is quite otherwise with the phenomena of heredity. We know nothing even of the proximate cause of any single phenomenon; far less of that ultimate cause in which all these phenomena had their origin. The inheritance of a trait of bodily figure, character, or manner is a mystery as great as that other and cognate mystery, the appearance of some seemingly sudden variation in a race which has for many generations presented an apparently unvarying succession of attributes, bodily, physical, or mental.
It need hardly be said that this would not be the place for the discussion of the problems of heredity and variation, even if in the present position of science we could hope for any profitable result from the investigation of either subject. But some of the curious facts which have been noted by various students of heredity will, I think, be found interesting; and though not suggesting in the remotest degree any solution of the real difficulties of the subject, they may afford some indication of the laws according to which parental traits are inherited, or seemingly sudden variations introduced.