520. Leaving perforce this problem for the present unsolved, let us consider other ways in which this conception of subliminal operation may throw light on the actual phenomena of hypnotism; - phenomena at present scattered in bewildering confusion.

In the first place, then, since we have found that it is in the sleeping phase of personality that subliminal faculty is most readily exercised, we shall expect that any evocation of that faculty will involve some kind of development of sleep. Let us here pause and consider the validity of this presumption. The place in our argument is suitable for such an inquiry. We have already discussed the empirical ways in which hypnotism has been induced. We must presently go on to discuss the therapeutic effects which hypnotism brings in its train. It is fitting that we should here briefly review the familiar phenomena of the hypnotic condition itself.

Now the word hypnotism itself implies that some kind of sleep or trance is regarded as its leading characteristic. And although so-called hypnotic suggestions do sometimes take effect in the waking state, our usual test of the hypnotiser's success lies in the slumber - light or deep - into which his subject is thrown. It is, indeed, a slumber which admits at times of strange wakings and activities; but it is also manifestly profounder than the sleep which we habitually enjoy.

The true nature of this hypnotic sleep has been a subject of much debate. At first it was regarded as a specific form of trance, brought on by a specific agency - namely, the mesmeric or magnetic effluence, communicated from the baquet or from the hands or eyes of the mesmerist. Similarly Elliotson and Esdaile continued to treat the mesmeric sleep as a condition sui generis, evoked by the mesmeric effluence in which they also believed.

When, however, it became known that hypnosis could often be induced by mere verbal suggestion or by self-suggestion, under circumstances which precluded the idea of any transmission of effluence, it was found very hard to explain the nature of the characteristic sleep; - until at last Bernheim and his followers took the bull by the horns, and declared that the sleep was not characteristic; but that the hypnotic trance was identical with ordinary slumber, - ordinary slumber "rendered by suggestion more suggestible." That is to say, out of ordinary sleep, regarded as a definite result of certain physiological conditions, Bernheim nevertheless develops (without further physiological agency of any kind) a psychological condition which differs obviously and profoundly from ordinary sleep, and which is even consistent with apparently complete vigilance. This, surely, is a mere abandonment of the real problem.

521. From my point of view, on the other hand, the problem here is merely an inevitable part of a problem already faced (albeit not solved) in a wider form. If sleep be the phase of personality specially consecrated to subliminal operation, it follows that any successful appeal to the subliminal self will be likely to induce some form of sleep. And further, if that form of sleep be in fact not an inevitable result of physiological needs, but a response to a psychological appeal, it seems not unlikely that we should be able to communicate with it without interrupting it; - and should thus be able to guide or supplement subliminal operations, just as in genius the subliminal self guided or supplemented supraliminal operations.

For my part, then, I shall abandon the attempt to force all the varied trances, lethargies, sleep-waking states, to which hypnotism introduces us into the similitude of ordinary sleep. Rather I shall say that in these states we see the subliminal self coming to the surface in ways already familiar to us, and displacing just so much of the supraliminal as may from time to time be needful for the performance of its own work. That work, I say, will be of a character which we know already; the difference is that what we have seen done spontaneously we now see done in response to our appeal.

522. Armed with this simplifying conception, - simplifying in spite of its frank admission of an underlying mystery, - we shall find no added difficulty in several points which have been the subjects of eager controversy. The sequence of hypnotic phenomena, the question of the stages of hypnotism, is one of these. I have already briefly described how Charcot propounded his three stages. - lethargy, catalepsy, somnambulism - as though they formed the inevitable development of a physiological law; - and how completely this claim has now had to be withdrawn. Other schemes have been drawn out, by Liébeault, etc, but none of them seem to do more than reflect the experience of some one hypnotist's practice. The simplest arrangement is that of Edmund Gurney, who spoke only of an "alert stage " and a "deep stage" of hypnosis (522 B); and even here we cannot say that either stage invariably precedes the other. The alert stage, which often came first with Gurney's subjects, comes last in Charcot's scheme; and it is hardly safe to say more than that hypnotism is apt to show a series of changes from sleep-waking to lethargy and back again, and that the advanced stages show more of subliminal faculty than the earlier ones.

There is much significance in an experiment of Dr. Jules Janet, who, by continued " passes," carried on Wittman, Charcot's leading subject, beyond her usual somnambulic state into a new lethargic state, and out again from thence into a new sleep-waking state markedly superior to the old (522 A).