[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.
Altogether, the most interesting case of somnambulism on record, is that of a young ecclesiastic, the narrative of which, from the immediate communication of an Archbishop of Bordeaux, is given under the head of somnambulism in the French Encyclopædia.
This young ecclesiastic, when the archbishop was at the same seminary, used to rise every night, and write out either sermons or pieces of music. To study his condition, the archbishop betook himself several nights consecutively to the chamber of the young man, where he made the following observations.
The young man used to rise, to take paper, and to write. Before he wrote music, he would take a stick and rule the lines with it. He wrote the notes, together with the words corresponding with them, with perfect correctness. Or, when he had written the words too wide, he altered them. The notes that were to be black, he filled in after he had written the whole. After completing a sermon, he read it aloud from beginning to end. If any passage displeased him, he erased it, and wrote the amended passage correctly over the other; on one occasion he had to substitute the word "adorable" for "divin;" but he did not omit to alter the preceding "ce" into "cet," by adding the letter "t" with exact precision to the word first written. To ascertain whether he used his eyes, the archbishop interposed a sheet of pasteboard between the writing and his face. He took not the least notice, but went on writing as before. The limitation of his perceptions to what he was thinking about was very curious. A bit of aniseed cake, that he had sought for, he eat approvingly; but when, on another occasion, a piece of the same cake was put in his month, he spit it out without observation. The following instance of the dependance of his perceptions upon, or rather their subordination to, his preconceived ideas is truly wonderful. It is to be observed that he always knew when his pen had ink in it. Likewise, if they adroitly changed his papers, when he was writing, he knew it, if the sheet substituted was of a different size from the former, and he appeared embarrassed in that case. But if the fresh sheet of paper, which was substituted for that written on, was exactly of the same size with the former, he appeared not to be aware of the change. And he would continue to read off his composition from the blank sheet of paper, as fluently as when the manuscript itself lay before him; nay, more, he would continue his corrections, and introduce the amended passage, writing it upon exactly the place on the blank sheet which it would have occupied on the written page.
The form of trance which has been thus exemplified may be therefore well called half-waking, inasmuch as the performer, whatever his powers of perception may be in respect to the object he is thinking of, is nevertheless lost in dream, and blind and deaf to every thing without its scope.
The following case may serve as a suitable transition to instances of full-waking in trance. The subject of it alternated evidently between that state and half-waking. Or she, could be at once roused from the latter into the former by the conversation of her friends. The case is recorded in the Acta Vratisl. ann. 1722, Feb. class iv., art. 2.
A girl seventeen years of age was used to fall into a kind of sleep in the afternoon, in which it was supposed, from her expression of countenance and her gestures, that she was engaged in dreams which interested her. After some days, she began to speak when in this state. Then, if those present addressed remarks to her, she replied very sensibly; but then fell back into her dream-discourse, which turned principally upon religious and moral topics, and was directed to warn her friends how a female should live, Christianly, well-governed, and so as to incur no reproach. When she sang, which often happened, she heard herself accompanied by an imaginary violin or piano, and would take up and continue the accompaniment upon an instrument herself. She sewed, did knitting, and the like. But on the other hand, she imagined on one occasion that she wrote a letter upon a napkin, which she folded with the intention of sending it to the post. Upon waking, she had not the least recollection of her dreams, or of what she had been doing. After a few months she recovered.
I come now to the exemplification of full-waking in trance, as it is very perfectly manifested in the cases which have been termed double consciousness. These are in their principle very simple; but it is not easy in a few words to convey a distinct idea of the condition of the patient. The case consists of a series of fits of trance, in which the step from ordinary waking to full trance-waking is sudden and immediate, or nearly so, and either was so originally, or through use has become so. Generally for some hours on each day, occasionally for days together, the patient continues in the state of trance; then suddenly reverts to that of ordinary waking. In the perfectest instances of double consciousness, there is nothing in the bearing or behaviour of the entranced person which would lead a stranger to suppose her (for it is an affection far commoner in young women than in boys or men) to be other than ordinarily awaked. But her friends observe that she does every thing with more spirit and better—sings better, plays better, has more readiness, moves even more gracefully, than in her natural state. She has an innocent boldness and disregard of little conventionalisms, which imparts a peculiar charm to her behaviour. In the mean time, she has two complete existences separate and apart, which alternate but never mingle. On the day of her first fit, her life split into a double series of thoughts and recollections. She remembers in her ordinary state nothing of her trance existence. In her trances, she remembers nothing of the intervening hours of ordinary waking. Her recollections of what she had experienced or learned before the fits began is singularly capricious, differing extraordinarily in its extent in different cases. In general, the positive recollection of prior
