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64
HYPNOTISM
maintain his individual character, to perform the functions of reasoning, but in hypnotism, he does not perform those functions. When a suggestion is given to him he indeed deduces a conclusion from this suggestion, but he has no reasoning power of his own, so far as the external circumstances of the world are concerned; he is not hiinself. Still there are higher phases in which a certain lucidity is manifested, but this we do not call the hypnotic state. It is another stage ; it comes after this induced sleep. But if a person knows a thousand times as much as usual at eight o'clock this evening, and at nine o'clock all this knowledged goes away, he is no better off. He is worse off in one respect, that his will has become the instrument of some other person. But there are otherways in which we may look at hypnotism ; there are other standpoints from which hypnotism is to be judged. When the will is concerned, there may be some cases in which it may do some good ; it may be used for the purpose of surgical operations or in soothing pain. In such cases, it may be successful, but there is even here some objection. Suppose that the person has given up his will; there may be certain circunstances in which it would be better that he should give up his will; if he can be cured of some disease by the employment of this power, then we may do so; but every one must be the judge in the light of his own circumstances.
The greatest danger in this connection, in any mode or process by which the patient becomes amenable to
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