[22] Anatomy of Melancholy, Part III. section 2.
[23] This church was originally the temple of Pythian Apollo, and stands much as it originally did.
[24] The peasants believe still that the Madonna opens gates, out of which her son issues on his daily course round the world—an obvious confusion between Christianity and the old Sun-worship.
[25] George Eliot’s Life. By J. W. Cross. Three volumes. Blackwood and Sons. 1885.
[26] The Empire of the Hittites. By William Wright, B.A., D.D. James Nisbet and Co.
[27] A distinguished French savant, writing in the Revue Philosophique for December 1884 has described some ingenious experiments for detecting the indications of telepathic influence—of the transference of thought from mind to mind which may be afforded by the movements communicated to a table by the unconscious pressure of the sitters. Dr. Richet’s investigations, though apparently suggested, in part at least, by those of the Society for Psychical Research, have followed a quite original line, with results of much interest.
[28] In a paper on “The Stages of Hypnotism” in Mind for October 1884, Mr. E. Gurney, describes an experiment where this persistent influence of an impressed idea could in a certain sense, be detected in the muscular system. “A boy’s arm being flexed” (and the boy having been told that he cannot extend it), “he is offered a sovereign to extend it. He struggles till he is red in the face; but all the while his triceps is remaining quite flaccid, or if some rigidity appears in it, the effect is at once counteracted by an equal rigidity in the biceps. The idea of the impossibility of extension—i.e., the idea of continued flexion—is thus acting itself out, even when wholly rejected from the mind.”
[29] M. Taine, in the preface to the later editions of his “De l’Intelligence,” narrates a case of this kind, and adds, “Certainement on constate ici un dédoublement du moi; la présence simultanée de deux séries d’idées parallèles et indépendantes, de deux centres d’action, ou si l’on veut, de deux personnes morales juxtaposées dans le même cerveau.”
[30] It is obvious that in an argument which has to thread its way amid so much of controversy and complexity, no terminology whatever can be safe from objection. In using the word self I do not mean to imply any theory as to the metaphysical nature of the self or ego.
[31] It is worth noticing in this connection that in one case of Brown-Séquard’s an aphasic patient talked in his sleep.