er a few headings, and the
recital of them will serve to bring this class of phenomena into the
general lines of classification drawn out in this chapter.

_The Facts._--When by any cause the attention is held fixed upon an
object, say a bright button, for a sufficient time without
distraction, the subject begins to lose consciousness in a peculiar
way. Generalizing this simple experiment, we may say that any method
or device which serves to secure undivided and prolonged attention to
any sort of Suggestion--be it object, idea, anything that is clear and
striking--brings on what is called Hypnosis to a person normally
constituted.

The Paris school of interpreters find three stages of progress in the
hypnotic sleep: First, Catalepsy, characterized by rigid fixity of the
muscles in any position in which the limbs may be put by the
experimenter, with great Suggestibility on the side of consciousness,
and Anaesthesia (lack of sensation) in certain areas of the skin and in
certain of the special senses; second, Lethargy, in which
consciousness seems to disappear entirely; the subject not being
sensitive to any stimulations by eye, ear, skin, etc., and the body
being flabby and pliable as in natural sleep; third, Somnambulism, so
called from its analogies to the ordinary sleep-walking condition to
which many persons are subject. This last covers the phenomena of
ordinary mesmeric exhibitions at which travelling mesmerists "control"
persons before audiences and make them obey their commands. While
other scientists properly deny that these three stages are really
distinct, they may yet be taken as representing extreme instances of
the phenomena, and serve as points of departure for further
description.

On the mental side the general characteristics of hypnotic
Somnambulism are as follows:

1. _The impairment of memory_ in a peculiar way. In the hypnotic
condition all affairs of the ordinary life are forgotten; on the other
hand, after waking the events of the hypnotic condition are forgotten.
Further, in any subsequent period of Hypnosis the events of the former
similar periods are remembered. So a person who is frequently
hypnotized has two continuous memories: one for the events of his
normal life, exercised only when he is normal; and one for the events
of his hypnotic periods, exercised only when he is hypnotized.

2. _Suggestibility_ to a remarkable degree. By this is meant the
tendency of the subject to have in r