rtificial somnambulism. But somnambulism, while
arising in sleep, is not at all a feature of sleep.

While sleep is characterized by a decrease of sensitiveness and of
selective powers, the selective process of hypnotism rather reenforces
sensitiveness and memory in every field which is covered by the
suggestive influence. Stimuli may become noticeable which the normal man
is unable to perceive, and long-forgotten experiences which seem
inaccessible to the search of the waking mind may reproduce themselves
and may vividly enter consciousness. Again we have there symptoms which
rather characterize the state of over-attention than the state of sleep.
We might add further that we know states with all the characteristics of
hypnotism in which even the subjective idea of sleep is entirely
absent, for instance, all those which are usually called states of
fascination. A certain shining light or a glimpse of an uncanny eye may
startle and upset the imagination of the subject and throw him into a
state of abnormally increased suggestibility. It is well known that
whole epidemics of such captivation have occurred and have resulted in
hysterias of the masses in which the subjects become the slaves of their
impulse, perhaps to imitate what they see or hear, or to realize ideas
in which they believe without logical warrant. They surely are not
asleep, are not even partially asleep. Every center of their brains
would be ready to work, if the captivated attention were not forcing the
mind in one direction and selectively suppressing every impulse to
opposite actions. The developed hypnotism finally shades off into
innumerable states of hypnoid character in which the sleeplike symptoms
are entirely in the background.

Thus the increased suggestibility of the hypnotic state will result not
from a partial sleeplike decrease of functioning but the decrease of
function is a motor inhibition which results from over-attention. In the
ordinary attention, our motor setting secures only an increase in
clearness and vividness of the attended ideas, but in an abnormal
over-attention the new motor setting produces a complete acceptance with
all its consequences. Abnormal or heightened attention thus goes
directly over into the belief and into the impulse without resistance.
There is no hypnotism which does not contain from the first stage this
definite relation to certain objects of attention, usually to a
particular person. All the manipulation