Bodily movements are, however, to some extent, automatic. Given a certain stimulus in the brain or nerve-centres, and certain corresponding muscular contractions follow: and this whether or not the stimulus be applied in a normal manner. Although, therefore, the entranced brain cannot spontaneously control the body, yet if we can apply an independent stimulus to it, the body will make a fitting and apparently intelligent response. The reader has doubtless seen those ingenious pieces of mechanism which are set in motion by dropping into an orifice a coin or pellet. Now, could we drop into the passive brain of an entranced person the idea that a chair is a horse, for instance,--the person would give every sensible indication of having adopted that figment as a fact. But how (since he can no longer communicate with the world by means of his senses) is this idea to be insinuated? The man is magnetized--that is to say, insulated; how can we have intercourse with him? Experiments show that this can be effected only through the magnetizer. Asleep towards the rest of the world, towards him the entranced person is awake. Not awake, however, as to the bodily senses; neither the magnetizer nor any one else can approach by that route. It is true that, if the magnetizer speaks to him, he knows what is said: but he does not hear physically; because he perceives the unspoken thought just as readily. But since whatever does not belong to his body must belong to his soul (or mind, if that term be preferable), it follows that the magnetizer must communicate with the magnetized on the mental or spiritual plane; that is, immediately, or without the intervention of the body. Let us review the position we have reached:--We have an entranced or magnetized person,--a person whose mind, or spirit, has, by a certain process, been so far withdrawn from conscious communion with his own bodily senses as to disable him from receiving through them any tidings from the external world. He is not, however, wholly withdrawn from his body, for, in that case, the body would be dead; whereas, in fact, its organic or animal life continues almost unimpaired. He is therefore neither out of the body nor in it, but in an anomalous region midway between the two,--a state in which he can receive no sensuous impressions from the physical world, nor be put in conscious communication with the spiritual world through any channel--save one.