570. With all our later evidence in view, however, - with so much proof of a transmission from man to man of something which needs no action of the finger-tips, - it would be natural indeed to dismiss that notion altogether, as a first rude theory which wider knowledge had shown to be needless. Needless it is, in the sense that we could plausibly refer to mere suggestion all the sensations which subjects have alleged as accompanying the passes; - as following the track, so to say, of the mesmerising hand. If the effluence were something in itself monstrously improbable, we might think it needful to interpret the evidence in this way. But since, in my view, it is by no means improbable that effluences, as yet unknown to science, but perceptible by sensitive persons as the telepathic impulse is perceptible, should radiate from living human organisms, I see no reason to assume that the varied and concordant statements made by patients in the Zoist and early mesmeric works merely reflect subjective fancies. I have myself performed and witnessed experiments on intelligent persons expressly designed to test whether or no the sensation following the hand was a mere fancy.

It seems to me hardly likely that persons who have never experienced other purely subjective sensations, and who are expressly alive to the question here at issue, should nevertheless again and again feel the classical tingling, etc, along the track of the hypnotiser's passes without any real external cause. To assume that all which they feel is a mere result of suggestion may be a premature attempt at simplifying modes of supernormal communication which, in fact, are probably not simpler but more complex than any idea which we have as yet formed of them.

571. And here at last we arrive at what is in reality the most interesting group of inquiries connected with the hypnotic trance.

We have just seen that the subliminal state of the hypnotised subject may be approached by ways subtler than mere verbal suggestion - by telepathic impacts and perhaps by some effluence of kindred supernormal type. We have now to trace the supernormal elements in the hypnotic response. Whether those elements are most readily excited by a directly subliminal appeal, or whether they depend mainly on the special powers innate in the hypnotised person, we can as yet but imperfectly guess. We can be pretty sure, at any rate, that they are not often evoked in answer to any rapid and, so to say, perfunctory hypnotic suggestion; they do not spring up in miscellaneous hospital practice; they need an education and a development which is hardly bestowed on one hypnotised subject in a hundred. The first stage of this response lies in a subliminal relation established between the subject and his hypnotiser, and manifesting itself in what is called rapport, or in community of sensation. The earlier stages of rapport - conditions when the subject apparently hears or feels the hypnotiser only, and so forth - arise probably from mere self-suggestion or from the suggestions of the operator (see 571 A) causing the conscious attention of the subject to be exclusively directed to him.

Indications of the possible development of a real link between the two persons may rather be found in the cases where there is provable community of sensation, - the hypnotised subject tasting or feeling what the hypnotiser (unknown to the subject) does actually at that moment taste or feel. Of this there was much evidence in the palmy days of Esdaile and Elliotson, when psychological experiment was pursued regardless of time or trouble; there is some evidence of our own recent collecting (see 571 B); and there will be, I venture to say, far more evidence so soon as the study of hypnotism devolves upon the psychologist, without therefore being deserted by the physician. It must be observed, however, that in experiments of this kind with hypnotised persons, the hypnotist was generally if not invariably - the only person who attempted to play the part of agent, so that the evidence of a special relation between him and his subject is inconclusive. And in the similar experiments with non-hypnotised persons, quoted in 571 C, several different agents were successful in transferring sensations to the same percipients.

572. We have thus brought the hypnotised subject up to the point of knowing supernormally, at any rate, the superficial sensations of his hypnotiser. From that starting-point, - or, at any rate, from some supernormal perception of narrow range, - his cognition widens and deepens. He may seem to discern some picture of the past, and may retrace the history of some object which he holds in his hand, or he may seem to wander in spirit over the habitable globe, and to bring back knowledge of present facts discernible by no other means. Perhaps he seems to behold the future, predicting oftenest the organic history of some person near him; but sometimes discerning, as it were pictorially, scattered events to which we can guess at no attainable clue. For all this there is already more of positive evidence than is generally realised; nor (I must repeat) is there any negative evidence which might lead us to doubt that further care in developing hypnotic subjects may not at any moment be rewarded in the same way. We have here, in fact, a successful branch of investigation which has of late years been practically dropped from mere inattention to what has been done already, - mere diversion of effort to the easier and more practical triumphs of suggestive therapeutics.

I begin with two cases partly retrocognitive, in 572 A and B.

573. The next group of cases to which I pass relate chiefly to knowledge of present facts. I place first some experiments in thought-transference with hypnotised persons (573 A) analogous to the experiments with persons in a normal condition recorded in my next chapter. Here the subject seems simply to become aware telepathically of the thoughts of his hypnotiser, the hypnotic condition perhaps facilitating the transfer of the impression. Next come the cases of what used to be called "travelling clairvoyance" in the hypnotic state. These are more like the partially retrocognitive cases in that they cannot be traced with certainty to the contemporary thoughts of any particular person, though they very rarely relate to facts unknown to any one (as in Major Buckley's cases, 573 E). In travelling clairvoyance we seem to have a development of "invasive dreams," - of those visions of the night in which the sleeper seems to visit distant scenes and to bring back intelligence otherwise unattainable. These distant hypnotic visions seem to develop out of thought-transference; thus the subject may discern an imaginary picture as it is conceived in the hypnotiser's mind (e.g. in 573 A). Thence he may pass on and discern a true contemporaneous scene (e.g. in 573 B, C, and D), unknown to any one present, and in some few cases there is an element of apparent prevision in the impression (573 F).