There is evidently involved here the condition of mind called "temporary" or "momentary" hypnosis, or what Eduard Von Hartmann more aptly calls "masked somnambulism." It is not fully developed hypnosis, but simply its incipient forms—hypnoid states of manifold variations. Now the question arises, Of what do these states consist? What are their essential characteristics? And how are they to be psychologically explained? For even our appeal to hypnotism simply puts a new empty name into the place of an old one. If we do not understand hypnosis, its production for the explanation of the magic mirror profits us very little. The task, accordingly, presents itself of referring, in connection with some psychological theory of hypnotism, the well-established facts at our disposal to one and the same cause.
The theory from which I shall proceed in attempting an explanation, has already been frequently touched upon in the course of this article; for certain observations indicated it so clearly that mention of it was not to be avoided. It is the doctrine of the double consciousness of the human soul.[30] Acts are done in the course even of our every-day life, which presuppose for their origin and execution all the faculties of the soul, yet nevertheless occur without the knowledge of the individual; they require a sort of consciousness and a separate memory beyond the cognisance of the normal person. One of the most frequent cases in practical experience is where the thoughts of a person reading aloud wander and become occupied with an entirely different subject; and where despite this aberration the person in question reads correctly with the proper emphasis and expression, turns the leaves, and in short performs acts which without intelligent control are hardly conceivable. An English psychologist, Mr. Barkworth, has acquired such expertness in the practice of this, that during an animated debate he can rapidly and correctly add long columns of figures without having his attention diverted in the least. This points not only to an unconscious intelligence, but—which is of still greater consequence—to an unconscious memory. Mr. Barkworth must keep two series of figures in his mind in order to obtain from them a third; this latter sum he is again obliged to retain in order to add to it a newly acquired fourth; and so on. The latter chain of memories, let it be remarked, performs its office entirely independently of that upon which the recollection of the debate is constructed; and it may therefore be reasonably maintained that there exists beyond the cognisance of the individual, both consciousness and memory; and if the essential components of the ego are found in these two last-mentioned factors, then every person conceals within himself the germs of a second personality. I designate the two halves of consciousness that thus operate in greater or less independence of each other,—in a figurative sense of course,—as super-and sub-consciousness, and comprehend the whole as the doctrine of double consciousness or the double ego.
[30] Compare my treatise Das Doppel-Ich, the first number of the "Publications of the Society of Experimental Psychology of Berlin," Leipsic 1890, Ernst Günther. I must refer here, moreover, to an acute criticism of my views by Adolf Bentivegni, published as No. 4 of the above-named series, and entitled Die Hypnose und ihre civilrechtliche Bedeutung, Leipsic, 1890. The views set forth in the present article will be found in the German magazine Vom Fels zum Meer.
The division very clearly appears in the opposition between waking and dreaming. Even when we very accurately remember a dream which we have just had,—which happens very seldom,—we feel the difference of the two states of consciousness with unmistakable distinctness. We have no power over the tricks that phantasy plays with us in our sleep, and in spite of the often present belief that it is all but a dream, yet every power fails us of penetrating into its independent activity. Moreover the images are generally of a very definite signification, since they are merely reproduced from the store-house of impressions that have sunk into the unfathomable depths of our soul. In this way many a dream reveals to us the true character of our Self; in this manner sub-basal dream-images exhibit the thoughts and emotions that principally occupy us in our innermost heart. Closer investigation teaches further, that in dreams, states of intoxication, in somnambulistic and epileptic attacks, not only does a consciousness different from the normal consciousness rule, but that also between separate successive periods memory-links of greater or lesser stability are wont to form. But this is most strikingly exhibited in the case of hypnosis. The hypnotic state is nothing more than an artificially produced ascendancy of the secondary or subordinate ego. All its peculiarities are explainable from this; for psychology endows the dream-consciousness prevailing in this state, with sensibility and suggestibility, the waking consciousness on the other hand with the inhibitory ideas that represent reality. It has established, moreover, that our fully conscious soul-life rests upon an automatically operating substratum of hallucinatory character, in which images, long since forgotten, have their abode. By virtue of these properties the subconsciousness becomes the source of bold and fantastic creations, while the superconsciousness is made the vehicle of our psychic life-work, laboriously sustaining and regulating itself in its relations with the outside world.
To this conception, which explains crystal-visions as a form of the activity of the subconsciousness, it will be variously objected, that such a simultaneous coexistence of two divisions of consciousness does not possess the same degree of probability as an alternation of states of consciousness. But how, upon this latter supposition, could the "Hibbs House" case be explained? In this instance, two psychical groups do not alternate, but one operates during the existence of the other.
Further, the propriety in general is questioned of speaking of half-conscious or unconscious ideas and mental processes. It is the opinion of the Göttingen philosopher G. E. Müller, that just as every excitation of the brain immediately occasioned by a sensory stimulus is not competent to produce a sensation, so also all reproduced nervous excitations are not necessarily accompanied by perceptual images. In the cases mentioned, and in many others, there is no reason why groups of true psychical states should be admitted, which, in contradistinction to other psychical states, only lack consciousness; on the contrary, we have to deal with simply a series of nervous excitations, which, as distinguished from other excitations, are not accompanied by corresponding states of our consciousness.
This conception of soul-life, which has been of late very favorably received, Hugo Münsterberg has formulated thus—that the psychical phenomenon is to a certain extent the subjective internal aspect of a thus and thus constituted objective physical phenomenon. We are to bear in mind that the succession of the physical processes is nowhere interrupted, and that in addition certain of these physical processes, those namely which are carried on with a certain intensity in particular apparatuses of the brain, possess a psychical internal aspect; so that this excitation of the nervous cells is, without losing thereby anything in physical effect, the condition of the appearance of certain sensations in consciousness.
But by the side of the physiological theory legitimately exist as possibilities a psychological one and a psycho-physical one. It is the doctrine of the latter theories that not only are physical vestiges left behind in the cortex of the brain after every perception, but also psychical dispositions to the formation of ideas and images; and that it is possible for images of all kinds to continue to exist without distinctly attaining to consciousness. These theories distinguish between degrees of luminosity in our percepts and images, the three most important degrees of which I have designated as consciousness, subconsciousness, and unconsciousness. There exists a gradation of degrees of consciousness, and the fully-conscious course of mental representation is everywhere conditioned by its connection with the obscured spheres beyond. Our attention surveys but a small area, on the boundary lines of which the altitudes of consciousness decrease, and finally approach the zero point. I say approach, for they never reach it. Our experiments with the magic mirror in fact show us how the oldest impressions, and impressions of ridiculous insignificance, after long long years awake as it were from the slumber of the fabled Sleeping Beauty. If our millions of perceptions were to live on in consciousness we should no longer have a past, but live in a continuous celestial present; but were the operation of consciousness so limited that it destroyed great numbers of images, the very facts upon which the belief in supernatural powers rests, would lose their only rational explanation. One result of our study of crystal-visions is assuredly this, that we shall have to erase the word "forgotten" with all its derivatives from the dictionary, and at the most employ the phrase "not remembered." With more ardent yearning than ever before will we long for a river of Lethe, and join with our whole hearts in the cry of Themistocles, "O that some one might teach me the art of forgetting!"
Along with the inner process the outward form of the hallucination still requires a brief explanation. The circumstance, namely, which lends magic-mirror phenomena their salient feature, is the sensory reproduction of the images that have sprung up from the subconsciousness. The subterranean ideas produced do not reach the surface as thoughts, but as pseudo-perceptions. To refer the latter to the place to which they belong, I shall first remind the reader of the well-known after-images which arise when an excitation produced in the sensory organ and in the sensory nerves does not immediately disappear with the cessation of the excitatory action. By gazing at the sun we can at once obtain this effect. But despite the fact that the last-mentioned class of images possesses the full distinctness of real sensations as distinguished from mere memory and imagination images, they still bear no relation to our subject on account of their union with recently occurring sensory impressions. Still less do the repetition-sensations in the dark field of vision—as of revolving wheels—belong here; or illusions. There remain accordingly only hallucinations, which are withdrawn from all conscious control, and which possess the exact character of sensory perceptions externally awakened, without any object or objective stimulation actually being present in the outer world to correspond to them.
Hallucinations, the production of which are facilitated by the fixation of shining surfaces, do not occur with all persons; and there may be a kernel of truth in the tradition which designates women and children as endowed with especial capacities in this respect. The investigations of Fechner upon the varying vividness of after-images; the statistics of Galton upon hallucinatory phantasms in artists; and the extensive statistical work of the Society for Psychical Research, appear to point to a connection of this character. Miss Goodrich told me that her dreams were few in number and colorless. I must confess that I was surprised at this; but she added that all her recollections of places were accompanied with the vividness of actual sensory impressions. If, for example, she desires to describe a room in a friend's house, she returns in recollection to the occasion of her last visit; she again occupies the same chair; the carpet at her feet becomes visible, then the furniture nearest her, then the walls and ceiling, until a true picture of the whole room is extended before her mind's eye. Crystal-visions are distinguished from internal visions of this character only by the single circumstance that they are projected outwards to or upon a reflecting point. These visions often consist of a room that Miss Goodrich has lately seen, or a street sign, or of some movement that has startled her, as of a servant letting a plate fall, or of a dog running under a wagon. No consideration that the objects are not before her is of avail; the force of out-rushing memory-formations and the acquired established connection of the elements of soul-life are reduced to the primitive state that obtains in the soul of a child, to whom life is in reality a dream without definite limits. I well remember from the period of my early boyhood, the peculiar sensation of a state flickering between reality and fancy, and I understand the condition of those primitive tribes with whom dreamland and life intermingle in the strangest way; but capacities in this direction have disappeared down to the striking want of a normally developed faculty for colors.