In contrast with the above conception of the states of sleeping and waking, the alternations of which compose our ordinary being, I have now to hold up another conception, resembling the first, of which it is the double,—but vaguer, more shadowy, of larger and gigantic proportions, from its novelty astonishing, like the mocking spectre of the Hartz; which is yet but your own shadow cast by the level sunbeams on the morning mist.
All the phenomena embodied in this conception, I propose to denominate Trance. But let me premise that all do not belong to every instance of trance. If I undertook to specify the external appearances of the human species, I must enunciate among other things, as colours of the skin, white, yellow, brown, black; as qualities of the hair, that it is flowing, soft, lanky, harsh, frizzled, woolly; but I should not mean that every human being presented all these features.
Then, as our ordinary being presents an alternation of sleeping and waking, so does trance-existence. There is a trance-sleep and a trance-waking to correspond with ordinary sleep and ordinary waking.
As natural sleep has different degrees of profoundness, so has trance sleep. They present a latitude so extensive, that it is convenient and allowable to lay down three different degrees or states of trance-sleep.
Then, of trance-sleep first, and of its three degrees.
The deepest grade of trance-sleep extinguishes all the ordinary signs of animation. It forms the condition in which many are buried alive. It is the so-called vampyr state in the vampyr superstition. [See Letter II. of this series.]
The middle grade presents the appearance of profound unconsciousness; but a gentle breathing and the circulation are distinguishable. The body is flexible, relaxed, perfectly impassive to ordinary stimuli. The pupils of the eyes are not contracted, but yet are fixed. This state is witnessed occasionally in hysteria, after violent fits of hysteric excitement.
In the lightest degree of trance-sleep, the person can sustain itself sitting; the pupils are in the same state as above, or natural; the apparent unconsciousness profound.
Two features characterise trance-sleep in all its grades. One, an insensibility to all common stimulants, however violently applied; the other, an inward flow of ideas, a dream or vision. It is as well to provide all words with a precise meaning. The term vision had better be restricted to mean a dream during trance-sleep.
The behaviour of Grando, who had been buried in the vampyr state, when they were clumsily cutting his head off, makes no exception to the first of the above positions. He had then just emerged out of his trance-sleep, either through the lapse of time, or from the admission of fresh air, or what not.
It will not be doubted that the mind may have visions in all the grades of trance-sleep, if it can be proved capable of them in the deepest; therefore, one example will suffice for all three cases.
Henry Engelbrecht, as we learn in a pamphlet published by himself in the year 1639, after a most ascetic life, during which he had experienced sensorial illusions, was thrown for a brief period into the deepest form of trance-sleep, which event he thus describes:—
In the year 1623, exhausted by intense mental excitement of a religious kind, and by abstinence from food, after hearing a sermon which strongly affected him, he felt as if he could combat no more, so he gave in and took to his bed. There he lay a week without tasting any thing but the bread and wine of the sacrament. On the eighth day, he thought he fell into the death-struggle; death seemed to invade him from below upwards; his body became rigid; his hands and feet insensible; his tongue and lips incapable of motion: gradually his sight failed him, but he still heard the laments and consultations of those around him. This gradual demise lasted from mid-day till eleven at night, when he heard the watchmen; then he lost consciousness of outward impressions. But an elaborate vision of immense detail began; the theme of which was, that he was first carried down to hell, and looked into the place of torment; from thence, quicker than an arrow, was he borne to paradise. In these abodes of suffering and happiness, he saw and heard and smelt things unspeakable. These scenes, though long in apprehension, were short in time, for he came enough to himself by twelve o'clock, again to hear the watchmen. It took him another twelve hours to come round entirely. His hearing was first restored; then his sight, feeling, and motion followed; as soon as he could move his limbs, he rose. He felt himself stronger than before the trance.
Trance-waking presents a great variety of phases; but it is sufficient for a general outline of the subject to make or specify but two grades—half-waking and full-waking.
In trance half-waking, the person rises, moves about with facility, will converse even, but is almost wholly occupied with a dream, which he may be said to act, and his perceptions and apprehensions are with difficulty drawn to any thing out of the circle of that dream.
In trance full-waking, the person is completely alive to all or most of the things passing around him, and would not be known by a stranger to be otherwise than ordinarily awake.
I propose to occupy the latter half of this letter with details of cases exemplifying these two states. Those which I shall select, will be instances either of somnambulism, double consciousness, or catalepsy, the popular phenomena of which I take this occasion of displaying. By these details the following features will be proved to belong to trance-waking.
1. Common feeling, taste, and smell, are generally suspended in trance-waking. In trance half-waking, sight is equally suspended. In trance full-waking, every shade of modified sensibility up to perfect possession of sensation, presents itself in different cases, and sometimes in successive periods of the same cases.
2. The general diminution or suspension of sensation is, as it were, made up for, either by an intense acuteness of partial sensation, often developed in an unaccustomed organ, or by some new mode of perception.
3. The memory and circle of ideas are curiously circumscribed.
4. To make up for this, some of the powers of the mind acquire concentration and temporary increase of force, and occasionally new powers of apprehension appear to be developed.
5. Spasms of the muscles, generally tonic or maintained spasms, but sometimes, having the character of convulsive struggles, are occasionally manifested in trance. And they may bear either of two relations to it. They may occur simultaneously with trance-waking or alternately with it, and occupying the patient's frame in the intervals of trance.
In the ordinary course of things, trance-sleep precedes trance-waking, and follows it. So that some have described trance-waking as waking in trance. Trance-sleep may come on during ordinary sleep, or during ordinary waking. By use the introductory and terminal states of trance-sleep become abridged; and sometimes, if either exist, it is so brief, that the transition to and from trance-waking out of and into ordinary waking, appears immediate.
Now to illustrate the phenomena of trance half-waking, by describing somnambulism.
A curious fate somnambulism has had. When other forms of trance have been exalted into mystical phenomena and figure in history, somnambulism has had no superstitious altars raised to her—has had no fear-worship—has at the highest been promoted to figure in an opera. Of a quiet and homely nature, she has moved about the house, not like a visiting demon, but as a maid of all work. To the public, the phenomenon has presented no more interest than a soap-bubble or the fall of an apple.
Somnambulism is a form of half-waking trance which usually comes on during the night, and in ordinary sleep. When it occurs in the daytime, the attack of trance is still ordinarily preceded by a short period of common sleep.
The somnambulist then, half waking in trance, is disposed to rise and move about. Sometimes his object seems a mere excursion, and then it is remarked that he shows a disposition to ascend heights. So he climbs, perhaps, to the roof of the house, and makes his way along it with agility and certainty: sometimes he is observed, where the tiles are loose, to try if they are secure before he advances. Generally these feats are performed in safety. But occasionally, a somnambulist has missed his footing, fallen, and perished. His greatest danger is from ill-judged attempts to wake and warn him of his perilous situation. Luckily, it is not easy to wake him. He then returns, goes to bed, sleeps, and the next morning has no recollection of what he has done. In other cases, the somnambulist, on rising from his bed, betakes himself to his customary occupations, either to some handiwork, or to composition, or what not.
These three points are easily verifiable respecting his condition. He is in a dream, which he, as it were, acts after his thoughts; occasionally he remembers on the following day some of the incidents of the night before, as part of a dream.
But his common sensibility to ordinary impressions is suspended: he does not feel; his eyes are either shut, or open and fixed; he does not see; he does not observe light, and works as well with as without it; he has not taste or smell: the loudest noise makes no impression on him.
In the mean time, to accomplish the feats he performs, the most accurate perception of sensible objects is required. Of what nature is that of which he so marvellously evinces the possession? You may adopt the simple hypothesis,—that the mind, being disengaged from its ordinary relations to the senses, does without them, and perceives things directly. Or you may suppose, if you prefer it, that the mind still employs sensation, using only impressions that in ordinary waking are not consciously attended to, for its more wonderful feats; and otherwise common sensation, which, however generally suspended, may be awakened by the dreaming attention to its objects.
The following case of somnambulism, in which the seizure supervened, in a girl affected with St Vitus's dance, and combined itself with that disorder, is given by Lord Monboddo:—
The patient, about sixteen years of age, used to be commonly taken in the morning a few hours after rising. The approach of the seizure was announced by a sense of weight in the head, a drowsiness which quickly terminated in sleep, in which her eyes were fast shut. She described a feeling beginning in the feet, creeping like a gradual chill higher and higher, till it reached the heart, when consciousness or recollection left her. Being in this state, she sprang from her seat about the room, over tables and chairs, with the astonishing agility belonging to St Vitus's dance. Then, if she succeeded in getting out of the house, she ran at a pace with which her elder brother could hardly keep up, to a particular spot in the neighbourhood, taking the directest but the roughest path. If she could not manage otherwise, she got over the garden-wall with surprising rapidity and precision of movement. Her eyes were all the time fast closed. The impulse to visit this spot she was often conscious of during the approach of the paroxysm, and, afterwards, she sometimes thought she had dreamed of going thither. Towards the termination of her indisposition, she dreamed that the water of a neighbouring spring would do her good, and she drank much of it. One time they tried to cheat her by giving her water from another spring, but she immediately detected the difference. Towards the end, she foretold that she would have three paroxysms more, and then be well—and so it proved.
The following case is from a communication by M. Pigatti, published in the July Number of the Journal Encyclopédique of the year 1762. The subject was a servant of the name of Negretti, in the household of the Marquis Sale.
In the evening, Negretti would seat himself in a chair in the anteroom, when he commonly fell asleep, and would sleep quietly for a quarter of an hour. He then righted himself in his chair, so as to sit up. [This was the moment of transition from ordinary sleep into trance.] Then he sat some time without motion, as if he saw something. Then he rose and walked about the room. On one occasion, he drew out his snuff-box and would have taken a pinch, but there was little in it; whereupon he walked up to an empty chair, and addressing by name a cavalier whom he supposed to be sitting in it, asked him for a pinch. One of those who were watching the scene, here held towards him an open box, from which he took snuff. Afterwards he fell into the posture of a person who listens; he seemed to think that he heard an order, and thereupon hastened with a wax-candle in his hand, to a spot where a light usually stood. As soon as he imagined that he had lit the candle, he walked with it in the proper manner, through the salle, down the steps, turning and waiting from time to time, as if he had been lighting some one down. Arrived at the door, he placed himself sideways, so as to let the imaginary persons pass, and he bowed as he let them out. He then extinguished the light, returned up the stairs, and sat himself down again in his place, to play the same farce over again once or twice the same evening. When in this condition, he would lay the tablecloth, place the chairs, which he sometimes brought from a distant room, and opening and shutting the doors as he went, with exactness; would take decanters from the beauffet, fill them with water at the spring, put them on a waiter, and so on. All the objects that were concerned in these operations, he distinguished where they were before him with the same precision and certainty as if he had been in the full use of his senses. Otherwise he seemed to observe nothing—so, on one occasion, in passing a table, he upset a waiter with two decanters upon it, which fell and broke, without exciting his attention. The dominant idea had entire possession of him. He would prepare a salad with correctness, and sit down and eat it. Then, if they changed it, the trick passed without his notice. In this manner he would go on eating cabbage, or even pieces of cake, seemingly without observing the difference. The taste he enjoyed was imaginary; the sense was shut. On another occasion, when he asked for wine, they gave him water, which he drank for wine, and remarked that his stomach felt the better for it. On a fellow-servant touching his legs with a stick, the idea arose in his mind that it was a dog, and he scolded to drive it away; but the servant continuing his game, Negretti took a whip to beat the dog. The servant drew off when Negretti began whistling and coaxing to get the dog near him; so they threw a muff against his legs, which he belaboured soundly.
M. Pigatti watched these proceedings with great attention, and convinced himself by many trials that Negretti did not use his senses. The suspension of taste was shown by his not distinguishing between salad and cake. He did not hear the loudest sound, when it lay out of the circle of his dreaming ideas. If a light was held close to his eyes, near enough to singe his eyebrows, he did not appear to be aware of it. He seemed to feel nothing when they inserted a feather into his nostrils. The ordinary sensibility of his organs seemed withdrawn.