A curious fate somnambulism has had. While other forms of trance have been either rejected as fictions, or converted to the use of superstition, somnambulism with all its wonders, being at once undeniable and familiar, has been simply taken for granted. While her sisters have been exalted into mystical phenomena, and play parts in history, somnambulism has had no temple raised to her, has had no fear-worship, at the highest has been promoted to figure in an opera. Of a quiet and homely nature, she has moved about the house, not like a visiting demon, but as a maid of all work. To the public the phenomenon has presented no more interest than a soap-bubble, or the fall of an apple.

Somnambulism, as the term is used in England, exactly comprehends all the phenomena of half-waking trance.5

The seizure mostly comes on during common sleep. But it may supervene in the daytime; in which case the patient first falls into the lightest form of trance-sleep. After a little, still lost to things around him, he manifests one or more of three impulses: one, to speak, but coherently and to a purpose; a second, to dress, rise, and leave his room with an evident intention of going somewhither; a third, to practise some habitual mechanical employment. In each case he appears to be pursuing the thread of a dream. If he speaks, it is a connected discourse to some end. If he goes out to walk, it is to a spot he contemplates visiting; his general turn is to climb ascents, hills, or the roofs of houses: in the latter case he sometimes examines if the tiles are secure before he steps on them. If he pursues a customary occupation, whether it be cleaning harness or writing music, he finishes his work before he leaves it. He is acting a dream, which is connected and sustained. The attention is keenly awake in this dream, and favours its accomplishment to the utmost. In the mean time the somnambulist appears to be insensible to ordinary impressions, and to take no cognisance of what is going on around him—a light maybe held so close to his eyes as to singe his eyebrows without his noticing it—he seems neither to hear nor to taste—the eyelids are generally closed, otherwise the eyes are fixed and vacant. Nevertheless he possesses some means of recognising the objects which are implicated in his dream; he perceives their place, and walks among them with perfect precision. Let me narrate some instances. The first, one of day-somnambulism, exemplifies, at the same time, the transitions to full waking, which manifest themselves occasionally in the talking form of the trance. The case is from the Acta Vratisv. ann. 1722.

A girl, seventeen years of age, was used to fall into a kind of sleep in the afternoon, in which it was supposed, from her expression of countenance and her gestures, that she was engaged in dreams that interested her. (She was then in light trance-sleep, initiatory trance.) After some days she began to speak when in this state. Then if those present addressed remarks to her, she replied very sensibly, but then fell back into her dream discourse, which turned principally upon religious and moral topics, and was directed to warn her friends how a female should live—Christianly, well governed, and so as to incur no reproach. When she sang, which often happened, she heard herself accompanied by an imaginary violin or piano, and would take up and continue the accompaniment upon an instrument herself. She sewed, did knitting, and the like. She imagined, on one occasion, that she wrote a letter upon a napkin, which she folded for the post. Upon waking, she had not the slightest recollection of any thing that had passed. After a few months she recovered.

The following case is from the Hamburgh Zeitschrift fÜr die gesammte Medicin, 1848:—

A lad of eleven years of age, at school at Tarbes, was surprised several mornings running at finding himself dressed in bed, though he had undressed himself overnight. Then on the 3d of May he was seen by a neighbour, soon after three in the morning, to go out dressed with his cloak and hat on. She called to him, but he did not answer; and she concluded that he was going to BagnÈres with his father. In fact that was the road he took; and he was afterwards seen by several persons near BagnÈres, trudging after a carriage. It rained hard; and they were surprised to see so young a lad travelling at so early an hour; but they thought he probably belonged to the people in the carriage. He reached BagnÈres at half past five, having done the distance of five post leagues in two hours and a quarter. He went to the hotel of M. Lafargue, which he had on a former occasion visited with his father, and entered the eating-room. The people of the hotel addressed him. He told them that he had come with his father in a post-chaise, and that they would find his father in the yard busied with the carriage. M. Lafargue went out to look for him. In the mean time the people of the house observed that the boy’s remarks were incoherent; so they took off his cloak and cap, when they found that his eyelids were closed, and that he was fast asleep. They led him towards the stove, took off his wet things and his boots without awakening him; but before they had completely undressed him to put him to bed he awoke. The impressions of his dream did not desert him. He complained of having had a bad night; and asked for his father. They told him his father had been obliged to set off again immediately. They put him to bed, and he slept. They sent intelligence to his father, who came to BagnÈres. The boy believed, and believes still, that he came to BagnÈres with his father in a chaise that was driven very slowly. Being asked what he had seen on the road, he described having passed a number of monks and priests in procession. He said there was one good-looking young man who did not leave him, but was always saying, “Good day, Joseph; Adieu, Joseph.” He said that what had most annoyed him was the burning heat of the sun, which was so intense that he had been obliged to wrap himself up in his cloak; that he could not bear its bright light.

The following case of somnambulism, allied with St. Vietz’s dance, is given by Lord Monboddo:—

The patient, about sixteen years of age, used to be commonly taken in the morning a few hours after rising. The approach of the seizure was announced by a sense of weight in the head and drowsiness, which quickly terminated in sleep, (trance-sleep,) in which her eyes were fast shut. She described a feeling beginning in the feet, creeping like a gradual chill higher and higher, till it reached the heart, when consciousness left her. Being in this state, she sprang from her seat about the room, over tables and chairs, with astonishing agility. Then, if she succeeded in getting out of the house, she ran, at a pace with which her elder brother could hardly keep up, to a particular spot in the neighbourhood, taking the directest but the roughest path. If she could not manage otherwise, she got over the garden wall, with astonishing rapidity and precision of movement. Her eyelids were all the time fast closed. The impulse to visit this spot she was often conscious of during the approach of the paroxysm, and afterwards she sometimes thought that she had dreamed of going thither. Towards the termination of her indisposition, she dreamed that the water of a neighbouring spring would do her good, and she drank much of it. One time they tried to cheat her by giving her water from another spring, but she immediately detected the difference. Near the end, she foretold that she would have three paroxysms more, and then be well; and so it proved.

The next case is from a communication by M. Pigatti, published in the July number of the Journal Encyclopedique of the year 1662. The subject was a servant of the name of Negretti, in the household of the Marquis Sale.

In the evening Negretti would seat himself in a chair in the ante-room, when he commonly fell asleep, and would sleep quietly for a quarter of an hour. He then righted himself in his chair so as to sit up. Then he sat some time without motion, looking as if he saw something. Then he rose and walked about the room. On one occasion he drew out his snuff-box, and would have taken a pinch, but there was little in it; whereupon he walked up to an empty chair, and, addressing by name a cavalier, whom he supposed to be sitting in it, asked him for a pinch. One of those who were watching the scene, here held towards him an open box, from which he took snuff. Afterward he fell into the posture of a person who listens; he seemed to think that he heard an order, and thereupon hastened with a wax candle in his hand to a spot where a light usually stood. As soon as he imagined that he had lit the candle, he walked with it in the proper manner, through the salle, down the steps, turning and waiting from time to time as if he were lighting some one down. Arrived at the door he placed himself sideways, in order to let the imaginary persons pass; and he bowed as he let them out. He then extinguished the light, returned up stairs, and sat himself down again in his place, to play the same farce once or twice over again the same evening. When in this condition he would lay the table-cloth, place the chairs, which he sometimes brought from a distant room, opening and shutting the doors as he went with exactness; would take decanters from the buffet, fill them with water at the spring, put them down on a waiter, and so on. All the objects that were concerned in these operations he distinguished, when they were before him, with the same precision and certainty as if he had been in the full use of his senses. Otherwise he seemed to observe nothing; so, on one occasion in passing a table, he threw down a waiter with two decanters upon it, which fell and broke without attracting his attention. The dominant idea had entire possession of him. He would prepare a salad with correctness, and sit down and eat it. If they changed it, the trick escaped his notice. In this manner he would go on eating cabbage, or even pieces of cake, without observing the difference. The taste he enjoyed was imaginary, the sense was shut. On another occasion, when he asked for wine they gave him water, which he drank for wine, and remarked that his stomach felt the better for it. On a fellow-servant touching his legs with a stick, the idea arose in his mind that it was a dog, and he scolded to drive it away; but the servant continuing his game, Negretti took a whip to beat the dog. The servant drew back, when Negretti began whistling and coaxing to get the dog near him; so they threw a muff against his legs, which he belaboured soundly.

M. Pigatti watched these proceedings with great attention, and convinced himself by many experiments that Negretti did not use his ordinary senses. He did not hear the loudest sound when it lay out of the circle of his dream-ideas. If a light was held close to his eyes, near enough to singe his eyebrows, he did not appear to be aware of it. He seemed to feel nothing when they inserted a feather into his nostrils.

Perhaps the most interesting case of somnambulism on record is that of a young ecclesiastic, the narrative of which, from the immediate communication of the Archbishop of Bordeaux, is given under the head of Somnambulism, in the French Encyclopedia.

This young ecclesiastic, when the archbishop was at the same seminary, used to rise every night, and write out either sermons or pieces of music. To study his condition, the archbishop betook himself several nights consecutively to the chamber of the young man, where he made the following observations:—

The young man used to rise, take paper, and begin to write. Before writing music, he would take a stick and rule the lines with it. He wrote the notes, together with the words corresponding to them, with perfect correctness; or when he had written the words too wide, he altered them. The notes that were to be black he filled in after he had written the whole. After completing a sermon, he would read it aloud from beginning to end. If any passage displeased him, he erased it, and wrote the amended passage correctly over the other. On one occasion he had substituted the word “adorable” for “divin;” but he did not omit to alter the preceding “ce” into “cet,” by adding the letter “t” with exact precision to the word first written. To ascertain whether he used his eyes, the archbishop interposed a sheet of pasteboard between the writing and his face. The somnambulist took not the least notice, but went on writing as before. The limitation of his perceptions to what he was thinking about was very curious. A bit of aniseed cake, that he had sought for, he ate approvingly; but when, on another occasion, a piece of the same cake was put into his mouth, he spat it out without observation. The following instance of the dependence of his perceptions upon his preconceived ideas is truly wonderful. It is to be observed that he always knew when his pen had ink in it. Likewise, if they adroitly changed his papers when he was writing, he knew it, if the sheet substituted was of a different size from the former, and he appeared embarrassed in that case. But if the fresh sheet of paper, which was substituted for that written on, was exactly of the same size with it, he appeared not to be aware of the change. And he would continue to read off his composition from the blank sheet of paper, as fluently as when the manuscript lay before him; nay more, he would continue his corrections, and introduce an amended passage, writing it upon exactly the place in the blank sheet corresponding with that which it would have occupied on the written page.—Such are the feats of somnambulists.

At first sight, the phenomena thus exemplified appear strange and unintelligible enough. But upon a careful consideration of them, much of the marvellous disappears. The most curious features seem, in the end, to be really the least deserving of wonder. The simplest of the phenomena are alone the inexplicable ones.

I have, however, advanced this group of cases as instances of trance, in which, therefore, I assume that an abnormal relation exists between the mind and body, in which the organs of sensation are partially or entirely deserted by their functions, and in which new perceptive powers manifest themselves. Then an opponent might argue:—

“I know nothing about your trance. What I see is first a person asleep, then the same person half or partially awake, occupied with a dream or vivid conception of an action; which, being partially awake, and therefore having partially resumed his power of attention, he is capable of realizing. He appears to be insensible; but this may be deceptive; for he is still asleep, and therefore notices not things around him; and his attention is partly still suspended as in sleep, partly more useless still for general purposes through intent preoccupation.

“He goes about the house in his rapt state, and finds his way perfectly; but the house is familiar to him; every thing in it is distinctly before his conception; he has, too, the advantage of perfect confidence; and besides, being partially awake, he partially, vaguely perhaps, uses customary sensations in reference to the objects which his dream contemplates his meeting.

“The ecclesiastic, indeed, seems at first to see through a sheet of pasteboard. But the concluding interesting fact in his case shows that he really used his perception only to identify the size and place of the sheet of paper. His writing upon it was the mechanical transcript of an act of mental penmanship. The corrections fell into the right places upon the paper, owing to the fidelity with which he retained the mental picture. The clearness and vividness of the picture, again, is not so very surprising, when it is considered that the attention was wholly and exclusively concentrated on that one operation.”

The observations of my imaginary opponent might sufficiently account for the more striking phenomena in the preceding cases, and are doubtless near the truth as regards the principal parts of the young ecclesiastic’s performance. Still there remains the commoner instance of the lad going about with precision with his eyes shut. I see no mode of accounting for that on common principles.

And besides, it may be presumed that, if more decisive experiments as to their sensibility had been made upon all these subjects, they would have been found really without sight and feeling. For, in general character, persons in somnambulism exactly resemble other entranced persons, who certainly feel nothing; for they have borne the most painful surgical operations without the smallest indication of suffering. So I have little doubt that the insensibility, which the observers imputed to the somnambulists, really existed, although they may have failed to establish the fact by positive evidence.

The question as to the development of a new power of perception, such as I conjecture the lad used in his walk from Tarbes to BagnÈres, will be found to be resolved, or, at any rate, to be attended with no theoretical difficulties, when the performances of full-waking in trance, which I propose to describe in the next letter, shall have been laid before the reader.