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a like condition in a very moderate degree.

A succession of images is vividly present to the mind, while the action of the senses and of the will is suspended. The degree of excitement to which an abnormal state may bring a faculty or a sense is sometimes illustrated in sickness. The slightest light or the least sound may be intensely painful, and passing events may impress themselves in quite a new way on the feelings. The nervous system under excitements or tension takes on an action quite novel to it. In hypnotism and mesmerism an abnormal state of wakefulness and of repose is induced by artificial means, the activity of certain faculties being as remarkable as the suspension of others. In the mesmeric state the patient for we may fitly call the person subject to such disordered action in a patient becomes inattentive to the ordinary conditions of action, and highly sensitive to those which proceed from the person inducing the state. In hypnotism there is a like suspension of habitual sensations, and a kindred attention to other relations determined by previous association. "We may ally the action to that by which we listen intently without seeing, or look through one eye to the exclusion of objects in the other. The states implied in hypnotism, while akin to these, are much more extreme, much more abnormal.

In these and kindred conditions unconscious and automatic connections gain ground on conscious and voluntary ones. The eye, our most voluntary sense, is least attentive, while touch, or rather the organic stimuli allied to it, may be very active. Persons who have united hands thus become the unconscious mediums of impressions passing from an active agent at one extremity to a passive agent at the other; and the latter, abnormally sensitive, marks the slightest change in the former. The least movement accompanying the recognition of the right word or the right