Furthermore, it
cannot receive or interpret the reports of its own bodily senses. In
short, its relations with the external world are suspended: and since the
body is a part of the external world, the brain can no longer control the
body's movements.
Bodily movements are, however, to some extent, automatic. Given a certain
stimulus in the brain or nerve-centres, and certain corresponding muscular
contractions follow: and this whether or not the stimulus be applied in a
normal manner. Although, therefore, the entranced brain cannot
spontaneously control the body, yet if we can apply an independent
stimulus to it, the body will make a fitting and apparently intelligent
response. The reader has doubtless seen those ingenious pieces of
mechanism which are set in motion by dropping into an orifice a coin or
pellet. Now, could we drop into the passive brain of an entranced person
the idea that a chair is a horse, for instance,--the person would give
every sensible indication of having adopted that figment as a fact.
But how (since he can no longer communicate with the world by means of his
senses) is this idea to be insinuated? The man is magnetized--that is to
say, insulated; how can we have intercourse with him?
Experiments show that this can be effected only through the magnetizer.
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