Another singular fact in this connection is the receptivity of the hypnotized brain for suggestions from the minds of other persons. Usually, the patient is insensible to all communications which do not emanate from the agent by whom he is held in control; but in certain cases it is probable that the brain is more or less open to impressions of a particular sort from any source. Numerous examples illustrate the manner in which the course of an ordinary dream may be thus directed. The hypnotic dream is far more easily modified by suggestions from without. The simplest examples of this are exhibited by the hypnotized subject who walks, jumps, lies down, executes every variety of pantomime, in obedience to the commands of his director. Somewhat more complicated are the actions that are developed through excitement of the imitative faculties. Every movement of the director _that can be perceived by the subject_ will be at once reproduced. Dr. Fischer relates[97] the case of a patient who, although exceedingly ignorant of the art of music, was able, during the hypnotic paroxysm, to sing with Jenny Lind all kinds of songs, so accurately that it was impossible to distinguish their separate voices. Expression of the various emotions and passions may also be provoked by merely placing the subject in the several attitudes characteristic of such feelings. In the lower grades of the hypnotic state, consciousness is not abolished, and the subsequent recollection of events during the experience may be quite perfect. In such cases illusions and hallucinations, that were excited by suggestions from the controlling mind of another, survive in memory, and become the causes of serious delusion. Witness, for example, the manner in which excitable people, partially hypnotized in a so-called “spiritual circle,” believe in the reality of the illusions which have occupied their powers of perception during a “seance.” To this inferior grade of self-induced hypnotism belong all those conditions of sensory hyperæsthesia by means of which certain persons are enabled to read the hidden thoughts of others. This capacity is, essentially, a mere exaltation of that power which all mankind shares in a greater or less degree. In every instance it has been remarked that the ordinary “medium” can only respond correctly to questions for which the true answer is present in the mind of the questioner. To all other interrogatories the replies are delivered purely under the influence of random suggestion. In some cases the pathway of communication lies through actual bodily contact, as in ordinary “mind-reading,” where the invisible molecular oscillations of the muscular elements of one person serve to guide the perceptions and movements of another. But, more frequently, the transmission of ideas is effected through the action of the facial and ocular muscles. From these organs of expression the “table-rapper,” or the