SUBJECTIVE AND OBJECTIVE MIND.


Up to this point it has been necessary to lay the foundations of the
science by the statement of highly abstract general principles which we
have reached by purely metaphysical reasoning. We now pass on to the
consideration of certain natural laws which have been established by a long
series of experiments and observations, the full meaning and importance of
which will become clear when we see their application to the general
principles which have hitherto occupied our attention. The phenomena of
hypnosis are now so fully recognized as established scientific facts that
it is quite superfluous to discuss the question of their credibility. Two
great medical schools have been founded upon them, and in some countries
they have become the subject of special legislation. The question before us
at the present day is, not as to the credibility of the facts, but as to
the proper inferences to be drawn from them, and a correct apprehension of
these inferences is one of the most valuable aids to the mental scientist,
for it confirms the conclusions of purely _a priori_ reasoning by an array
of experimental instances which places the correctness of those conclusions
beyond doubt.

The great truth which the science of hypnotism has brought to light is the
dual nature of the human mind. Much conflict exists between different
writers as to whether this duality results from the presence of two
actually separate minds in the one man, or in the action of the same mind
in the employment of different functions. This is one of those distinctions
without a difference which are so prolific a source of hindrance to the
opening out of truth. A man must be a single individuality to be a man at
all, and, so, the net result is the same whether we conceive of his varied
modes of mental action as proceeding from a set of separate minds strung,