814. The next class of the Socratic monitions can only be briefly dealt with here. They touch on that singular phenomenon of so-called rapport which is to us at present and has long been in the eyes of Science an unexplained and a very disputable thing; but on which recent hypnotic experiments are slowly bringing us to look as in some sense a reality. In modern terms we should say that the disciples of Socrates were influenced not so much by his instruction as by his suggestion; and that some inward and perhaps telepathic instinct - expressed by the monitory voice whose utterances we are analysing - informed him without conscious consideration whether his intending disciples were receptive to his suggestion or no. It is in the Platonic dialogue Theages that this aspect of the divine monition is most insisted on.

"I never learnt from you," says a certain Aristeides to Socrates, "anything at all. You yourself well know this. But I always made progress whenever I was along with you, even if I were in the same house but not in the same room; yet most when I was in the same room; and even in the same room I got on better if I looked at you when you were speaking than if I looked anywhere else. But I got on far the best of all when I was sitting near you and holding or touching you. But now, said he, all my then character has dribbled out of me".

I would not insist too strongly on an interpretation which may seem merely fanciful. But nevertheless we should be puzzled to find Greek words more expressive of the gradual dissipation and disappearance of a post-hypnotic suggestion, - the melting away of some imparted energy in well-doing as the subject is removed from the operator's influence. And that the possibility of some rapport of this kind should be indicated, not by conscious thought but by a message emanating from some sub-conscious phase of a man's being; - this, too, is a phenomenon to which modern experience furnishes not unfrequent analogies.

The third class of Socratic monitions which I have mentioned rests on very slender evidence. We cannot be sure that the monitory sign ever warned him of anything which no possible sagacity of the ordinary kind could have led him to discover. As is natural in the beginning of such inquiries, the cases cited to illustrate this supposed supernormal knowledge are mainly interesting and important incidents; and it is precisely in relation to such incidents that some unconscious guess is likely to have been made. What we should like would be just what Plato had omitted; - specimens, namely, of the trivial cases where the divine warning saved the philosopher from some momentary mishap. Of this sort I can find one only; and that is merely a tradition, given in Plutarch's essay De Genio Socratis. Socrates, according to this story (which Plutarch puts into the mouth of a supposed eye-witness), is walking and talking with Euthyphron, but stops suddenly, and calls his friends to turn back by another street.

Most of them follow him, but others keep on their way, and presently meet a great herd of swine who knock down some of them and befoul the rest. "Charillus" (who had thus braved Socrates' warning) "returned home with legs and clothes all full of mire, - so that we all remembered Socrates' familiar spirit, with roars of laughter, marvelling how the Divinity had care of him continually".

One more remark. Among the most singular incidents in Socrates' life were those pauses of immobility, frequently lasting for hours, and once, as reported, for a consecutive day and night, when he was inaccessible to any outward stimulus, and remained fixed as in a deep contemplation. Medical readers have seen that there must have been more than mere contemplation here; and Lelut has treated these accesses as a kind of stupor attoni-tus - of bewildered paralysis of all intellectual operation, such as is seen in minds overbalanced by some terrible shock. I cannot accept the parallel, nor believe that symptoms so grave can supervene in robust health and disappear without leaving a trace behind. Nor, again, is there anything which suggests epilepsy. I believe the accesses to have been accesses of ecstasy, reached, as in some rare cases, without any previous hysterical disturbance; and indicating (as I hold) a subliminal self, so powerful and so near the surface that some slight accident sufficed to determine its temporary predominance over the whole man.

But I must now leave the story of Socrates, rich in unworked psychological suggestion, but cited here only as an example of wise automatism; of the possibility that the messages which are conveyed to the supraliminal mind from subliminal strata of the personality, - whether as sounds, as sights, or as movements, - may sometimes come from far beneath the realm of dream and confusion, - from some self whose monitions convey to us a wisdom profounder than we know.