In contrast with the above conception of the states of sleeping and waking, the alternations of which compose our ordinary being, I have now to hold up another conception, resembling the first, of which it is the double,--but vaguer, more shadowy, of larger and gigantic proportions, from its novelty astonishing, like the mocking spectre of the Hartz; which is yet but your own shadow cast by the level sunbeams on the morning mist.
All the phenomena embodied in this conception, I propose to denominate Trance. But let me premise that all do not belong to every instance of trance. If I undertook to specify the external appearances of the human species, I must enunciate among other things, as colours of the skin, white, yellow, brown, black; as qualities of the hair, that it is flowing, soft, lanky, harsh, frizzled, woolly; but I should not mean that every human being presented all these features.
Then, as our ordinary being presents an alternation of sleeping and waking, so does trance-existence. There is a trance-sleep and a trance-waking to correspond with ordinary sleep and ordinary waking.
As natural sleep has different degrees of profoundness, so has trance sleep. They present a latitude so extensive, that it is convenient and allowable to lay down three different degrees or states of trance-sleep.
Then, of trance-sleep first, and of its three degrees.
The deepest grade of trance-sleep extinguishes all the ordinary signs of animation. It forms the condition in which many are buried alive. It is the so-called vampyr state in the vampyr superstition. [See Letter II. of this series.]
The middle grade presents the appearance of profound unconsciousness; but a gentle breathing and the circulation are distinguishable. The body is flexible, relaxed, perfectly impassive to ordinary stimuli. The pupils of the eyes are not contracted, but yet are fixed. This state is witnessed occasionally in hysteria, after violent fits of hysteric excitement.
In the lightest degree of trance-sleep, the person can sustain itself sitting; the pupils are in the same state as above, or natural; the apparent unconsciousness profound.
Two features characterise trance-sleep in all its grades. One, an insensibility to all common stimulants, however violently applied; the other, an inward flow of ideas, a dream or vision. It is as well to provide all words with a precise meaning. The term vision had better be restricted to mean a dream during trance-sleep.