It is not my intention to dwell more on this form of trance at present. Various cases, exemplifying its varieties, will be found in the letter on Religious Delusions. It is the commonest product of fanatical excitement. I have called this form initiatory trance, because, in day-somnambulism, it always precedes the half-waking which constitutes that state; and because it is the state into which mesmeric manipulators ordinarily first plunge the patient. Out of this initiatory state I have seen the patient thrown into trance-coma; but the ordinary progress of the experiment is to conduct him in the other direction—that is, towards trance-waking.
HALF-WAKING TRANCE OR SOMNAMBULISM.—The same thing with ordinary sleep-walking—Its characteristic feature, the acting of a dream—Cases, and disquisition.
A curious fate somnambulism has had. While other forms of trance have been either rejected as fictions, or converted to the use of superstition, somnambulism with all its wonders, being at once undeniable and familiar, has been simply taken for granted. While her sisters have been exalted into mystical phenomena, and play parts in history, somnambulism has had no temple raised to her, has had no fear-worship, at the highest has 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, as the term is used in England, exactly comprehends all the phenomena of half-waking trance.[5]
[Footnote 5: Many writers employ the term somnambulism to denote indiscriminately several forms of trance, or trance in general. I prefer restricting it to the peculiar class of cases commonly known as sleep-walking.]
The seizure mostly comes on during common sleep. But it may supervene in the daytime; in which case the patient first falls into the lightest form of trance-sleep. After a little, still lost to things around him, he manifests one or more of three impulses: one, to speak, but coherently and to a purpose; a second, to dress, rise, and leave his room with an evident intention of going somewhither; a third, to practise some habitual mechanical employment. In each case he appears to be pursuing the thread of a dream. If he speaks, it is a connected discourse to some end. If he goes out to walk, it is to a spot he contemplates visiting; his general turn is to climb ascents, hills, or the roofs of houses: in the latter case he sometimes examines if the tiles are secure before he steps on them. If he pursues a customary occupation, whether it be cleaning harness or writing music, he finishes his work before he leaves it. He is acting a dream, which is connected and sustained. The attention is keenly awake in this dream, and favours its accomplishment to the utmost. In the mean time the somnambulist appears to be insensible to ordinary impressions, and to take no cognisance of what is going on around him—a light maybe held so close to his eyes as to singe his eyebrows without his noticing it—he seems neither to hear nor to taste—the eyelids are generally closed, otherwise the eyes are fixed and vacant. Nevertheless he possesses some means of recognising the objects which are implicated in his dream; he perceives their place, and walks among them with perfect precision. Let me narrate some instances. The first, one of day-somnambulism, exemplifies, at the same time, the transitions to full waking, which manifest themselves occasionally in the talking form of the trance. The case is from the _Acta Vratisv._ ann. 1722.