551. I speak of calculations subliminally performed in the carrying out of post-hypnotic suggestions.

These suggestions à échéance - commands, given in the trance, to do something under certain contingent circumstances, or after a certain time has elapsed - form a very convenient mode of testing the amount of mentation which can be started and carried out without the intervention of the supraliminal consciousness. Experiments have been made in this direction by three men especially who have in recent times done some of the best work on the psychological side of hypnotism, namely, Edmund Gurney, Delboeuf, and Milne Bramwell. A summary of their results is given in 551 A, B, and C.

Dr. Milne Bramwell's experiments (to mention these as a sample of the rest) were post-hypnotic suggestions involving arithmetical calculations; the entranced subject, for instance, being told to make a cross when 20,180 minutes had elapsed from the moment of the order. Their primary importance lay in showing that a subliminal or hypnotic memory persisted across the intervening gulf of time, - days and nights of ordinary life, - and prompted obedience to the order when at last it fell due. But incidentally, as I say, it became clear that the subject, whose arithmetical capacity in common life was small, worked out these sums subliminally a good deal better than she could work them out by her normal waking intelligence.

Of course, all that was needed for such simple calculations was close attention to easy rules; but this was just what the waking mind was unable to give, at least without the help of pencil and paper. If we lay this long and careful experiment, concerned though it was with very easy problems, side by side with the accounts already given of the solution of problems in somnambulic states, which states were forgotten on waking, it seems clear that there is yet much to be done in the education of subliminal memory and acumen as a help to supraliminal work.

552. Important in this connection is an account given by Dr. Dufay of help given by him to an actress in the representation of her rôles by hypnotisation (see 552 A). Every one knows how much more vividly the objectivation de types, as Professor Richet long ago called it, is effected in the hypnotic than in the normal state; and it seems obvious that stage-fright is just the kind of nervous annoyance from which hypnotisation should give relief. Somewhat similarly I believe that self-hypnotisa-tion is employed by some professional "trance-speakers," whose utterances (while by no means obliging us to refer them to "spirit-control") are often remarkably ready and fluent. It is possible for some persons, that is to say, thus to secure a cheap substitute for genius on stage or platform; to evoke by suggestion or self-suggestion an uprush of subliminal thought and diction, or of dramatic gesture and intonation, which, even if it is of no very rare quality, at least carries the self-inspired artist over many ordinary stumbling-blocks.

Here, again, the hypnotisation is a kind of extension of "secondary automatism"; - of the familiar lapse from ordinary consciousness of movements (walking, pianoforte playing, &c), which have been very frequently performed. The possibilities thus opened up are very great: no less than the combination by mankind of the stability of instinct with the plasticity of reason. The insect, as we know, performs with great ease and perfection certain difficult acts, by dint of an instinct which perhaps in many cases is "lapsed intelligence"; - an obscurely conscious effort gradually transformed through generations into an unintelligent but accurate automatism. Man benefits by a similar lapsed intelligence or secondary automatism, but to a very small degree in comparison with the amount of work which he has to perform by conscious effort. There seems no reason why his range of automatism should not thus be largely increased in two main ways. Many things (namely) which now are unpleasant to do might be done with indifference, and many things which now are difficult to do might be done with ease.

Other cases where memory has been greatly quickened by hypnotic suggestion are given in 552 B, and we have already found that the lapsed recollections of secondary states may be recovered by hypnotism in the primary state (see also 552 C).

553. Let us pass on from these specialised influences of suggestion on certain kinds of attention to its influence on attention generally, as needed, for instance, in education. This is eminently one of the directions where a wider knowledge of hypnotism is likely to stimulate experiment which may be of great practical value. Incapacity, indolence, and inattention divide between them the responsibility for most failures whether in work or in play. Inattention may no doubt be called a special form of indolence; but it is often so far "constitutional " that strenuous voluntary effort cannot cure it. If we can arrest this shifting of the mental focus to undesired ideational centres in at all the same way as we can arrest the choreic or fidgetty shiftings of motor impulse to undesired motor centres, we shall have done perhaps as much for the world's ordinary work as if we had raised the average man's actual intelligence a step higher in the scale. We shall have checked waste, although we may not have improved quality.

The well-known case of Dr. Forel's warders (553 A) who were enabled by hypnotic suggestion to sleep soundly by the side of the patients they had to watch, and wake only when the patients required to be restrained, shows us how by this means the attention may be concentrated on selected impressions and waste of energy be avoided in a way that could hardly be compassed by any ordinary exercise of the will.

How far, indeed, we can go in actually heightening intelligence by suggestion we have yet to learn. We must not expect to add a cubit to intellectual any more than to physical stature. Limitations at birth must prevent our developing the common man into a Newton; but there seems no reason why we should not bring up his practical achievements much nearer than at present to the maximum of his innate capacity. One illustrative instance and references to others are given in 553 B.