Such are what we may call the classical reasons for admitting that the mind is active even when the person afterwards ignores the fact. Of late years, or rather, one may say, of late months, they have been reinforced by a lot of curious observations made on hysterical and hypnotic subjects, which prove the existence of a highly developed consciousness in places where it has hitherto not been suspected at all.These observations throw such a novel light upon human nature that I must give them in some detail.That at least four different and in a certain sense rival observers should agree in the same conclusion justifies us in accepting the conclusion as true.'Unconsciousness' in Hysterics.One of the most constant symptoms in persons suffering from hysteric disease in its extreme forms consists in alterations of the natural sensibility of various parts and organs of the body.Usually the alteration is in the direction of defect, or anaesthesia.One or both eyes are blind, or color-blind, or there is hemianopsia (blindness to one half the field of view), or the field is contracted.Hearing, taste, smell may similarly disappear, in part or in totality.Still more striking are the cutaneous anaesthesias.
The old witch-finders looking for the 'devil's seals' learned well the existence of those insensible patches on the skin of their victims, to which the minute physical examinations of recent medicine have but recently attracted attention again.They may be scattered anywhere, but are very apt to affect one side of the body.Not infrequently they affect an entire lateral half, from head to foot; and the insensible skin of, say, the left side will then be found separated from the naturally sensitive skin of the right by a perfectly sharp line of demarcation down the middle of the front and back.Sometimes, most remarkable of all, the entire skin, hands, feet, face, everything, and the mucous membranes, muscles and joints so far as they can be ex- plored, become completely insensible without the other vital functions becoming gravely disturbed.
These hysterical anaesthesias can be made to disappear more or less completely by various odd processes.It has been recently found that magnets, plates of metal, or the electrodes of a battery, placed against the skin, have this peculiar power.And when one side is relieved in this way, the anaesthesia is often found to have transferred itself to the opposite side, which until then was well.Whether these strange effects of magnets and metals be due to their direct physiological action, or to a prior effect on the patient's mind ('expectant attention' or 'suggestion') is still a mooted question.A still better awakener of sensibility is the hypnotic trance, into which many of these patients can be very easily placed, and in which their lost sensibility not infrequently becomes entirely restored.
Such returns of sensibility succeed the times of insensibility and alternate with them.But Messrs.Pierre Janet and A.Binet have shown that during the times of anaesthesia, and coexisting with it, sensibility to the anaesthetic parts is also there , in the form of a secondary consciousness entirely cut off from the primary or normal one, but susceptible of being tapped and made to testify to its existence in various odd ways.
Chief amongst these is what M.Janet calls 'the method of distraction.'
These hysterics are apt to possess a very narrow field of attention, and to be unable to think of more than one thing at a time.When talking with any person they forget everything else."When Lucie talked directly with any one," says M.Janet, "she ceased to be able to hear any other person.
You may stand behind her, call her by name, shout abuse into her ears, without making her turn round; or place yourself before her, show her objects, touch her, etc., without attracting her notice.When finally she becomes aware of you, she thinks you have just come into the room again, and greets you accordingly.This singular forgetfulness makes her liable to tell all her secrets aloud, unrestrained by the presence of unsuitable auditors."
Now M.Janet found in several subjects like this that if he came up behind them whilst they were plunged in conversation with a third party, and addressed them in a whisper, telling them to raise their hand or perform other simple acts, they would obey the order given, although their talking intelligence was quite unconscious of receiving it.
Leading them from one thing to another, he made them reply by signs to his whispered questions, and finally made them answer in writing, if a pencil were placed in their hand.The primary consciousness meanwhile went on with the conversation, entirely unaware of these performances on the hand's part.The consciousness which presided over these latter appeared in its turn to be quite as little disturbed by the upper consciousness's concerns.This proof by ' automatic ' writing , of a secondary consciousness's existence, is the most cogent and striking one;
but a crowd of other facts prove the same thing.If I run through them rapidly, the reader will probably be convinced.
The apparently anaesthetic hand of these subjects, for one thing, will often adapt itself discriminatingly to whatever object may be put into it.With a pencil it will make writing movements; into a pair of scissors it will put its fingers and will open and shut them, etc., etc.The primary consciousness, so to call it, is meanwhile unable to say whether or no anything is in the hand, if the latter be hidden from sight."I put a pair of eyeglasses into Léonie's anaesthetic hand, this hand opens it and raises it towards the nose, but half way thither it enters the field of vision of Léonie, who sees it and stops stupefied:
