efined, well educated lady, who was brought in for
shop-lifting. Though her husband was well to do, and she did not sell or
even use the things she took, she had made a regular business of
stealing whenever she could. She had begun it about seven months before
by taking a lace handkerchief, which she slipped under her shawl: Soon
after she accomplished another theft. "I felt so encouraged," she said,
"that I got a large bag, which I fastened under my dress, and into this
I slipped whatever I could take when the clerks were not looking. I do
not know what made me do it. My success seemed to lead me on."

Other cases of kleptomania could easily be cited.

"Simulation," say Messieurs Binet and Fere, "which is already a
stumbling block in the study of hysterical cases, becomes far more
formidable in such studies as we are now occupied with. It is only when
he has to deal with physical phenomena that the operator feels himself
on firm ground."

Yet even here we can by no means feel certain. Physicians have invented
various ingenious pieces of apparatus for testing the circulation and
other physiological conditions; but even these things are not sure
tests. The writer knows of the case of a man who has such control over
his heart and lungs that he can actually throw himself into a profound
sleep in which the breathing is so absolutely stopped for an hour that a
mirror is not moistened in the least by the breath, nor can the pulses
be felt. To all intents and purposes the man appears to be dead; but in
due time he comes to life again, apparently no whit the worse for his
experiment.

If an ordinary person were asked to hold out his arms at full length for
five minutes he would soon become exhausted, his breathing would
quicken, his pulse-rate increase. It might be supposed that if these
conditions did not follow the subject was in a hypnotic trance; but it
is well known that persons may easily train themselves to hold out the
arms for any length of time without increasing the respiration by one
breath or raising the pulse rate at all. We all remember Montaigne's
famous illustration in which he said that if a woman began by carrying a
calf about every day she would still be able to carry it when it became
an ox.

In the Paris hospitals, where the greater number of regular scientific
experiments have been conducted, it is found that "trained subjects" are
required for all of the more difficult demonstrations. That some of