The above instances show how various are the features attending the transposition of one sense alone in waking trance; and they suggest a multitude of experiments. I remember, in 1838, on communicating facts of this kind to a clear-headed practical man, he raised this objection to their credibility: “If we can see without eyes, why has the Creator given us eyes!” The objection is specious enough, but it admits of an obvious answer. The state of trance is one of disease, transient and temporary; it is during its persistence only that this new power of apprehension is manifested. In our natural state, the mind is intended to operate and try experiences in subordination to matter, and through definite material organs, in which it is, in truth, imprisoned. Such is the law of our normal mortal being. Accordingly, when the trance is over, and the mind has returned to its normal relations with the body, all its trance-apprehensions are forgotten by it—they form no part of our moral life.
III. _Sources of Error in the communications of entranced persons._—I put aside cases of deliberate deception; but when persons are really entranced, they are liable, in various ways, to be deceived themselves, and to deceive others, as to the value of their revealments. There is often, in waking trance, a great vivacity and disposition to be communicative from the first. Those, again, who have frequently been thrown into trance, and have become familiar with their new condition, are generally anxious to shine in it, and make a display. This disposition is further heightened when the entranced person expects to be rewarded for his performance.
1. When indulging their lively fancy, they are liable to have a sort of waking dream, during which they describe imaginary scenes with the precision and minuteness of reality, and represent them as actual, passing at some place they name.
2. They are liable to recall past impressions, and to deliver bits of old conclusions for intuitions.
3. They are liable to adopt the thoughts of others who may be near them, especially those of their mesmeriser, and to deliver them as trance-revelations.
4. In one instance which came to my knowledge, a young lady, previously unacquainted with mathematics or astronomy, would, when entranced, and sitting with her mother and sister, write fluently off pages of an astronomical treatise, calculations, diagrams, and all. She averred and believed in her entranced state—for, when awake, it was all a mystery to her—that this performance was the product of an intuition. Her manuscript was afterwards found to run word for word with an article in the _Encyclopædia Britannica_. That book, however, stood in the library, in a remote part of the house. She certainly had it not with her when she used to scribble its contents; nor did she remember ever having looked into it, awake or asleep. She said—when entranced, and this had been found out—that she believed she read the book as it stood in the library.