fulness and ease akin to the
mental composure which is the usual preliminary to sleep; but it goes
no further. It is succeeded by a state of steady wakefulness, which
effort of attention or effort not to attend only intensifies. If the
victim of insomnia could only forget that he is thus afflicted, could
forget himself altogether, his case would be more hopeful. The
contrast between this condition and that already described shows that
it is the Self-idea, with the emotions it awakens,[11] which prevents
the suggestion from realizing itself and probably accounts for many
cases of insomnia.

[Footnote 11: A friend informs me that when he pictures himself dead
he can not help feeling gratified that he makes so handsome a
corpse.]

_Sense Exaltation._--Recent discussions of Hypnotism have shown the
remarkable "exaltation" which the senses may attain in somnambulism,
together with a corresponding refinement in the interpretative
faculty. This is described more fully below. Events, etc., quite
subconscious, usually become suggestions of direct influence upon the
subject. Unintended gestures, habitual with the experimenter, may
suffice to hypnotize his accustomed subject. The possibility of such
training of the senses in the normal state has not had sufficient
emphasis. The young child's subtle discriminations of facial and other
personal indications are remarkable. The prolonged experience of
putting H. to sleep--extending over a period of more than six months,
during which I slept beside her bed--served to make me alive to a
certain class of suggestions otherwise quite beyond notice. It is well
known that mothers are awake to the needs of their infants when they
are asleep to everything else.

In the first place, we may note the intense auto-suggestion of sleep
already pointed out, under the stimulus of repeated nursery rhymes or
other regular devices regularly resorted to in putting the child
asleep. Second, surprising progressive exaltation of the hearing and
interpretation of sounds coming from her in a dark room. At the end of
four or five months, her movements in bed awoke me or not according as
she herself was awake or not. Frequently after awaking I was
distinctly aware of what movements of hers had awaked me.[12] A
movement of her head by which it was held up from the pillow was
readily distinguished from the restless movements of her sleep. It was
not so much, therefore, exaltation of hearing as exaltation of th