568. The fact is, that since the days of those old controversies between mesmerists proper and hypnotists proper, the conditions of the controversy have greatly changed. The supposed mesmeric effluence was then treated as an entirely isolated, yet an entirely physiological phenomenon. There was supposed to be a kind of radiation or infection passing from one nervous system to another. It was of this that Cuvier (for instance) was convinced; it was this theory which Elliotson defended in the Zoist with a wealth of illustration and argument to which little justice has even yet been done. Yet it was hard to prove effluence as opposed to suggestion, because where there was proximity enough for effluence to be effective there was also proximity enough for suggestion to be possible. Only in some few circumstances, - such as Esdaile's mesmerisation of a blind man over a wall,1 - was it possible to claim that the mesmeric trance had been induced without any suspicion whatever on the subject's part that the mesmerist was trying to entrance him.

Since those days, however, the evidence for telepathy - for psychical influence from a distance - has grown to goodly proportions. A new form of experiment has been found possible, from which the influence of suggestion can be entirely excluded. It has now, as I shall presently try to show, been actually proved that the hypnotic trance can be induced from a distance so great, and with precautions so complete, that telepathy or some similar supernormal influence is the only efficient cause which can be conceived.

I subjoin a series of experiments in this "telepathic hypnotism," in one of the best of which (Dr. Gibert's, see 568 A) I had the good fortune to take a part. These experiments are not easy to manage, since it is essential at once to prevent the subject from suspecting that the experiment is being tried, and also to provide for his safety in the event of its success. In Dr. Gibert's experiment, for instance, it was a responsible matter to bring this elderly woman in her dream-like state through the streets of Havre. It was needful to provide her with an unnoticed escort; and, in fact, several persons had to devote themselves for some hours to a single experiment.

569. I have cited first this long series of experiments at a distance, without attempting to analyse the nature of the suggestion given or power employed by the hypnotist. Of course it is plain that if one can thus influence unexpectant persons from a distance, there must be sometimes some kind of power actually exercised by the hypnotiser; - something beyond the mere tact and impressiveness of address, which is all that Bernheim and his followers admit or claim. Evidence of this has been afforded by the occasional production of organic and other effects in hypnotised subjects by the unuttered will of the operator when near them. The ingenious experiments of Gurney (569 A) in the production of local rigidity and anaesthesia were undertaken to test whether the agency employed were more in the nature of an effort of will or, - as the early mesmerists claimed, - of an emission of actual "mesmeric fluid " or physical effluence of some sort. Gurney was inclined to think that his results could not be explained solely by mental suggestion or telepathy, because the physical proximity of the operator's hand seemed necessary to produce them, and he thought it probable that they were due to a direct nervous influence, exercised through the hand of the operator, but not perceptible through the ordinary sensory channels.

Mrs. Sidgwick's experiments of the same kind, however (569 B), in which success was obtained when the operator was standing with folded arms several feet away from the subject, removed Gurney's main objection to the telepathic explanation. The fact that a thick sheet of glass over the subject's hands did not interfere with the results also afforded some presumption against the hypothesis of a physical influence; and Mrs. Sidgwick pointed out that the delicate discrimination involved in the specific limitations of the effects is much more easily attributable to mental suggestion, through the action of the operator's mind on that of the subject, than to any direct physical influence on the latter's nerves. Following these accounts, I refer briefly (in 569 C) to experiments in the so-called "silent willing," frequently practised by the early mesmerists. I may mention that Mr. H. S. Thompson, who figures largely in their records, was a gentleman of high character, active benevolence, and marked ability.

I never saw him myself; but I have known various persons (some of these his own relations) in the Yorkshire county society of that date, and his powers were there universally recognised as genuine, although they were sometimes regarded with social disapproval, or even with superstitious horror.

1 Natural and Mesmeric Clairvoyance, pp. 227-28; quoted in Phantasms of the Living, vol. i. p. 88.

Mr. H. S. Thompson's history is to my mind a real proof that some one individual man may be endowed for hypnotic efficacy in a quite exceptional way. His experience, indeed, goes far to prove the reality of "silent willing" and was thought by himself to prove also the direct local influence of passes, - the " mesmeric effluence " theory.