"The difference between the hypnotised and the normal subject, as it appears to me from a long series of observed facts, is not so much in conduct as in increased mental and physical powers. Any changes in the moral sense, I have noticed, have invariably been for the better, the hypnotised subject evincing superior refinement. As regards obedience to suggestion, there is apparently little to choose between the two. A hypnotised subject, who has acquired the power of manifesting various physical and mental phenomena, will do so, in response to suggestion, for much the same reasons as one in the normal condition.... When the act demanded is contrary to the moral sense, it is usually refused by the normal subject, and invariably by the hypnotised one." The hypnotic state evinces an extraordinary extension of faculty. Dr Bramwell's remarkable series of experiments on "time appreciation" shows that orders were carried out by the subject at expiration of such periods as 20,290 minutes from the beginning of the order. In her normal state the female subject of this experiment was incapable of correctly calculating how many days and hours 20,290 minutes would make, and even in her hypnotised condition could reckon only with errors; yet, what is singular to relate, even when a blunder was made in the former calculation the order of the hypnotist was none the less fulfilled when the correct period expired. The conclusion is not easy to avoid: that beneath the stratum of human consciousness brought to the surface by hypnotism there is one--perhaps two--"subliminal" strata more alert and more capable than our ordinary workaday ego. What light this theory of a "subliminal" self will shed on our subject we will see when we come to discuss clairvoyance and the trance utterances of the spiritualistic "medium." CHAPTER III PHANTASMS OF THE LIVING We have seen that the hypnotic agent is able to project from his own brain certain thoughts and images into the mind of the percipient. "When," writes Professor Barrett, "the subject was in the state of trance or profound hypnotism, I noticed that not only sensations, but also ideas or emotions, occurring in the operator appeared to be reproduced in the subject without the intervention of any sign, or visible or audible communication.... In many other ways I convinced myself that the existence of a distinct idea in my own mind gave rise to some image of the idea in the subject's mind, not always a clear image, but one that could not fail to be recognised as a more or less distorted reflection of my own thought. The important point is that every care was taken to prevent any unconscious muscular action of the face, or otherwise giving any indication to the subject."