"On the 23rd M. Janet lunched in our company and retired to his own house at 4.30 (a time chosen by lot), to try to put her to sleep from thence. At 5.5 we all entered the _salon_ of the Pavilion, and found her asleep with shut eyes, but sewing vigorously (being in that stage in which movements once suggested are automatically continued). Passing into the talkative stage, she said to M. Janet: 'C'est vous qui m'avez fait dormir à quatre heures et demi.' The impression as to the hour may have been a suggestion received from M. Janet's mind. We tried to make her believe that it was M. Gibert who had sent her to sleep, but she maintained that she had felt that it was M. Janet.
"On 24th April the whole party chanced to meet at M. Janet's house at three P.M., and he then, at my suggestion, entered his study to will that Madame B. should sleep. We waited in his garden, and at 3.20 proceeded together to the Pavilion, which I entered first at 3.30, and found Madame B. profoundly sleeping over her sewing, having ceased to sew. Becoming talkative, she said to M. Janet: 'C'est vous qui m'avez commandé.' She said that she fell asleep at 3.5 P.M."
Of the twenty-five trials made in the course of two months, eighteen were wholly and four partially successful.
This somnolent state might, it is thought, have been induced by telepathy; in fact, as we shall see, telepathy will in some quarters have to bear the burden of most, if not all, of the phenomena under investigation.
Not only is the hypnotic subject frequently induced to do the will of the operator, but he may actually have presented to his intelligence certain ideas or images, material or imaginary, known only to the hypnotiser. After following carefully all the experiments conducted by the late Professor Sidgwick and others, in the presence of witnesses of repute, I do not see how it is possible to deny the fact of telepathy. In these experiments the subject or percipient was always hypnotised, remaining so to a varying degree throughout the experiment.
Albeit, even as regards this thought-transference, we must be on our guard against a too rash acceptance of unknown or supernormal agencies in every bona-fide experiment. Certainly all experiments of the hypnotiser do not _ipso facto_ prove that any new method of apprehension has been employed. The hypnotised subject is extremely susceptible to suggestions, and might even glean an indication of what is proceeding through the look, the gestures, the very breathing, of those present. The utmost precautions, therefore, were taken by the Society for Psychical Research when it began its experimental inquiries.