They have the power of attracting hypnotised subjects. Thus, if a
good-sized magnet is placed at some little distance from the subject,
and behind a screen so that he cannot see it, after a time he will
get up and go towards it. If now another magnet be placed at an equal
distance behind him, he will stop and remain as it were balanced
between the two. By withdrawing one or other he can be drawn
backwards or forwards. Further, he can be charged with magnetism by
placing near him a large magnet with five ends. If it be suddenly
removed and hidden in another room, he is impelled to follow it with
such force that he will fling aside all obstacles in his way, and
tracking it step by step will walk straight up to it. 'Once he sights
it, he either remains in dumb contemplation of it in front of its two
poles, or else lays his hands on both of the poles with a kind of
profound satisfaction.' These experiments with magnets are very
exhausting.
* * * * *
Finally, if the senses can be so heightened as in the cases already
cited from Braid and the clinique of La Salpetriere, it requires no
great stretch of imagination to suppose them carried still further
until they become comparable to those inexplicable faculties which we
call instinct in animals, that for instance by which animals--cats,
dogs, and sheep--can find their way home, sometimes over hundreds of
miles of unknown country.
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