"First of all, it is only right to say that Colonel de Rochas is a savant who seeks nothing but objective truth and does so with a scientific strictness and integrity that have never been questioned. He puts certain exceptional subjects into a hypnotic sleep and, by means of downward passes, makes them trace back the whole course of their existence. He thus takes them successively to their youth, their adolescence and down to the extreme limits of their childhood. At each of these hypnotic stages, the subject reassumes the consciousness, the character and the state of mind which he possessed at the corresponding stage in his life. He goes over the same events, with their joys and their sorrows. If he has been ill, he once more passes through his illness, his convalescence and his recovery.
"Let us, to come to details, take one of the simplest cases. The subject is a girl of eighteen, called Joséphine. She lives at Voiron, in the department of Isére. By means of downward passes she is brought back to the condition of a baby at its mother's breast The passes continue and the wonder-tale runs its course. Joséphine can no longer speak; and we have the great silence of infancy, which seems to be followed