Now there exists a way of inducing hypnosis in some hysterical persons which seems intermediate between massive and localised stimulations. It is indeed a local stimulation; but there seems no reason beyond some deep-seated caprice of the organism why the special tract which is thus sensitive should have become developed in that direction. I speak of the induction of trance in certain subjects by pressure upon so-called _hypnogenous zones_. These zones form a curious development of hysterical _cliniques_. Their starting-point is the well-known phenomenon of patches of anæsthesia found upon hysterical subjects--the "witch-marks" of our ancestors. So far as we at present know, the situation of these "marks" is altogether capricious. It does not apparently depend, that is to say, upon any central lesion, in the same way as do the "referred pains," familiar in deep-seated organic complaints, which manifest themselves by superficial patches of tenderness, explicable by the distribution of nerve-trunks. The anæsthetic patches are an example of what I have called the irrational self-suggestions of the hypnotic stratum;--determined by dream-like fancies rather than necessitated by purely physiological antecedents. Quite in accordance with this view, we find that under favourable conditions--especially in a hospital of hysterics--these anomalous patches or zones develop and specialise themselves in various ways. Under Dr. Pitres at Bordeaux (for example), we have _zones hystérogènes_, _zones hypnogènes_, _zones hypnofrénatrices_, etc.; that is to say, he finds that pressure on certain spots in certain subjects will bring on or will check hysterical accesses, or accesses of what is ranked as hypnotic sleep. There is no doubt that this sleep does in certain subjects follow instantly upon the pressure of certain spots,--constant for each subject, but different for one subject and for another;--and this without any conscious co-operation, or even foreknowledge, on the patient's part. Stated thus nakedly, this seems the strongest possible instance of the induction of hypnosis by localised stimulus. The reader, however, will at once understand that in my view there is here no simple physiological sequence of cause and effect. I must regard the local pressure as a mere _signal_--an appeal to the pre-formed capacities of lawlessly acting centres in the hypnotic stratum. A scrap of the self has decided, in dreamlike fashion, that pressure on a certain point of the body's surface shall produce sleep;--just as it has decided that pressure on that same point or on some other point shall _not_ produce pain. Self-suggestion, and no mere physiological nexus, is responsible for the sleep or the hysterical access which follows the touch. The anæsthetic patches are here a direct, but a capriciously chosen avenue to the subliminal being, and the same random self-suggestiveness which is responsible for frequent