TRANCE (through the French, from Lat. transitus, from transire, to cross, pass over)

This article appears in Volume V27, Page 169 of the Encyclopedia Britannica.

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TRANCE (through the French, from Lat. transitus, from transire, to cross, pass over) , a term used very loosely in popular speech to denote any kind of sleeplike state that seems to pre-sent obvious differences from normal sleep; in medical and scientific literature the meaning is but little better defined. In its

original

ORIGINAL

usage the word no doubt implied that the soul of the entranced person was temporarily withdrawn or passed away from the

body

BODY

, in accordance with the belief almost universally held by uncultured peoples in the possibility of.such withdrawal. But the word is now commonly applied to a variety of sleeplike states without the implication of this theory; ordinary sleep. walking, extreme cases of melancholic lethargy and of allergic stupor, the deeper stages of hypnosis (see HYPNoxisM), the
Electric period, Steam period, Horse period,
19071908. 1896. 1879.
Length of route open 2,464.22 1009 321.27
Total number of passengers carried 2,625,532,895 759,466,047 150,881,515
Percentage of net receipts to total

capital

CAPITAL (i.e. capital stock or fund)
CAPITAL (Lat. caput, head)

outlay . 6.81 6.88 3'97
Percentage of working expenditure to gross receipts 62.64 74'79 83.81
Passengers carried per mile of route open . . 1,065,462 752,691 469,641
Average fare per passenger 1o9d. 1.61d. 1.84d.
Years ended June 30. Year ending Dec. 31 (coin-
panies) and March31 (local
authorities).
1878. 1886. 1898. 1902. 19071908
Total

capital

CAPITAL (i.e. capital stock or fund)
CAPITAL (Lat. caput, head)

authorized ,586,111 17,640,488 1624,,492435,,427 5 1,677,471 91,345,439
64,207,350 12,573,041
Totalcapitalexpended 869 31,562,267 68,199,918
Length of route open (miles) 269 865 1,064 1;484 2,464
Number of horses 9,222 24,535 38,777 24,120 5,288
Number of locomotive engines 14 452 589 388 ' 64
Number of cars 1,124 3,440 5,335 7,752 10,908
Total number of passengers carried 146,001,223 384,157,524 858,485,524 1,394,452,983 2,625,532,895
Quantity of electrical energy used, B.O.T. units 431,969,119
Gross receipts 1,099,271 2,630,338 4,560,126 6,679,291 12,439,625
Working expenditure 868,315 2,021,556 3,507,895 4,817,873 7,792,663
Net receipts 230,956 608,782 1,052,231 1,861,418 4,646,962
The total figures at the date of the return are summarized in the following table, which is accompanied by one showing the lengths of line worked by various methods of traction :cataleptic state, the ecstasy of religious enthusiasts, the self-induced dream-like condition of the medicine-men, wizards or priests of many savage and barbarous peoples, and the abnormal
Capital expenditure Total expendi- Length open for traffic. No. of
on lines and works ture on capital under-
open for traffic. account. takings.
Double. Single. Total.

M. Ch. M. Ch. M. Ch.
Tramways and light railways belonging to
local authorities 32,978,579 44,920,317 1113 77 505 77 1619 74 177
Tramways and light railways belonging to com-
panies and private individuals 18,641,2791 23,279,601 408 58 435 46 844 24 128
Total United Kingdom . . 51,619,858 68,199,918 1522 55 941 43 2464 18 305
Table showing lengths worked by various methods of traction :-
Method of England and Scotland. Ireland. Total.
traction.
M. Ch. M. Ch. M. Ch. M. Ch.
Electric . . 1922 66 235 35 127 69 2286 10
Steam . . . 22 67 29 45 52 32
Cable . . . 4 49 22 72 27 41
Gas motors . 4 2 -- 4 2
Horse . . . 82 6o 4 28 7 5 94 13
Total. 2037 4 262 55 164 39 2461 18
1 These figures include cost of buildings and equipment in respect of certain local authorities' lines worked in conjunction with other lines.state into which many of the mediums of modern spiritualistic seances seem to fall almost at will; all these are commonly spoken of as trance, or trance-like, states. There are no well-marked and characteristic physical symptoms of the trance state, though in many cases the pulse and respiration are slowed, and the reflexes diminished or abolished. The common feature which more than any other determines the application of the name seems to be a relative or complete temporary indifference to impressions made on the sense-organs, while yet the entranced person gives evidence in one way or another, either by the expression of his features, his attitudes and movements, his speech, or by subsequent relation of his experiences, that his
condition is not one of simple quiescence or arrest of mental life, such as characterizes the state of normal deep sleep and the coma produced by defective cerebral circulation by toxic substances in the blood or by mechanical violence done to the brain.
If we refuse the name trance to ordinary sleep-walking, to normal dreaming, to catalepsy, to the hypnotic state and to stupor, there remain two different states that seem to have equal claims to the name; these may be called the ecstatic trance and the trance of mediumship respectively.
The ecstatic trance is usually characterized by an outward appearance of rapt, generally joyful, contemplation, the subject seems to lose

touch

TOUCH (derived through Fr. toucher from a common Teutonic and Indo-Germanic root, cf. " tug," " tuck," O. H. Ger. zucchen, to twitch or draw)

for the time being with the world of things and persons about him, owing to the extreme concentration of his attention upon some image or

train

TRAIN (M. Eng. trayn or trayne, derived through Fr. from Late Lat. trahinare, to drag, draw, Lat. trahere, cf. trail, trace, ultimately from the same source)

of imagery, which in most cases seems to assume an hallucinatory character (see HALLUCINATION). In most cases, though not in all, the subject remembers in returning to his normal state the nature of his ecstatic vision or other experience, of which a curiously frequent character is the radiance or sense of brilliant luminosity.
In the mediumistic trance the subject generally seems to fall into a profound sleep and to retain, on returning to his normal condition, no memory of any experience during the period of the trance. But in spite of the seeming unconsciousness of the subject, his movements, generally of speech or writing, express, either spontaneously or in response to verbal interrogation, intelligence and sometimes even great intellectual and emotional activity. In many cases the parts of the

body

BODY

not directly concerned in these expressions remain in a completely lethargic condition, the eyes being closed, the muscles of neck, trunk and limbs relaxed, and the breathing stertorous.
Trances of these two types seem to have occurred sporadic-ally (occasionally almost epidemically) amongst almost all peoples in all ages. And everywhere popular thought has interpreted them in the same ways. In the ecstatic trance the soul is held to have transcended the bounds of space or time, and to have enjoyed a;vision of some earthly event distant in space or time, or of some supernatural sphere or being. The mediumistic trance, on the other hand, popular thought in-t erprets as due to the withdrawal of the soul from the body and the taking of its place, the taking possession of the body, by some other soul or spirit; for not infrequently the speech or writing produced by the organs of the entranced subject seems to be, or actually claims to be, the expression of a personality quite other than that of the sleeper. It is noteworthy that in almost all past ages the possessing spirit has been regarded in the great majority of cases as an evil and non-human spirit; whereas in modem times the possessing spirit has usually been regarded as, and often claims to be, the soul or spirit of some deceased human being. Modern science, in accordance with its materialistic and positive tendencies, has rejected these popular interpretations. It inclines to see in the ecstatic trance a case of hallucination induced by prolonged and intense occupation with some emotionally exciting idea, the whole mind becoming so concentrated upon some image in which the idea is bodied forth as to bring all other mental functions into abeyance. The mediumistic trance it regards as a state similar to deep hypnosis, and seeks to explain it by the application of the notion of cerebral or mental dissociation in one or other of its many current forms; this assimilation finds strong support in the many points of resemblance between the deeper stages of hypnosis and the mediumistic trance, and in the fact that the artificially and deliberately induced state may be connected with the spontaneously occurring trance state by a

series

SERIES (a Latin word from serere, to join)

of states which form an insensible gradation between them. A striking feature of the mediumistic trance is the frequent occurrence of " automatic " speech and writing; and this feature especially may be regarded as warranting the application of the theory of mental dissociation for its explanation, for such automatic speech and writing arc occasionally produced by a considerable number of apparently healthy personswhile in a waking condition which presents little or no other symptom of abnormality. In these cases the subject hears his own words, or sees the

movement

MOVEMENT

of his hand and his own hand writing, as he hears or sees those of another person, having no sense of initiating or controlling the movements and no anticipatory awareness of the thoughts expressed by the movements. When, as in the majority of cases, such movements merely give fragmentary expression to ideas or facts that have been assimilated by the subject at some earlier date, though perhaps seemingly completely forgotten by him, the theory of mental dissociation affords a plausible and moderately satisfactory explanation of the movements; it regards them as due to the

control

CONTROL (Fr. contrdle, older form contre rolle, from Med. Lat. contra-rotulus, a counter roll or copy of a document used to check the original; there is no instance in English of the use of " control " in this, its literal, meaning)

of ideas or memories which somehow have become detached or loosened from the main system of ideas and tendencies that make up the normal personality, and which operate in more or less complete detachment; and the application of the theory is in many cases further justified by the fact that the " dissociated " ideas and memories seem in some cases to become taken up again by, or reincorporated with, the normal personality.
But in

recent

RECENT

years a new

interest

INTEREST

has been given to the study of the mediumistic trance by careful investigations (made with a competence that commands respect) which tend to re-establish the old savage theory of possession, just when it seemed to have become merely an anthropological curiosity. These investigations have been conducted for the most part by members of the Society for Psychical Research, and their most striking results have been obtained by the prolonged study of the automatic speech and writing of the American medium, Mrs Piper. In this case the medium passes into a trance state apparently at will, and during the trance the organs of speech or the hand usually express what purport to be messages from the spirits of deceased relatives or friends of those who are present. A number of competent and highly critical observers have arrived at the conviction that these messages often comprise statements of facts that could not have come to the know-ledge of the medium in any normal fashion; and those who are reluctant to accept the hypothesis of " possession " find that they can reject it only at the cost of assuming the operation of telepathy (q.v.) in an astonishing and unparalleled fashion. During 19071908 the investigation was directed to the obtaining of communications which should not be explicable by the most extended use of the hypothesis of telepathic communication from the minds of living persons. The plan adopted was to seek for " cross-correspondences " between the communications of the Piper " controls " and the automatic writings of several other persons which claimed to be directed by the same disembodied spirits; i.e. it was sought to find in the automatic writings of two or more individuals passages each of which in itself would be fragmentary and unintelligible, but which, taken in connexion with similar fragments contemporaneously produced by another and distant writer, should form a significant whole; for it is argued that such passages would constitute irrefutable evidence of the operation of a third intelligence or personality distinct from that of either medium. The results published up to 19o9 seem to show that this attempt met with striking success; and they constitute a body of evidence in favour of the hypothesis of possession which no impartial and unprejudiced mind can lightly set aside. Nevertheless, so long as it is possible to believe, as so many of the most competent workers in this field believe, that dissociated fragments of a personality may become synthesized to form a secondary and as it were parasitic personality capable of assuming temporary

control

CONTROL (Fr. contrdle, older form contre rolle, from Med. Lat. contra-rotulus, a counter roll or copy of a document used to check the original; there is no instance in English of the use of " control " in this, its literal, meaning)

of the organs of expression, and so long as we can set no limits to the scope of telepathic communication between embodied minds, it would seem wellnigh impossible, even by the aid of this novel and ingenious plan of investigation, to achieve completely convincing evidence in favour of the hypothesis of " possession."
(London, 1906). See also various articles in Grenzfragen des Nervenund Seelenlebens, edited by L. Loewenfeld and H. Kurella (Wiesbaden, 1900), especially the article " Somnambulismus and Spiritismus "; also articles in Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research, especially pts. liii., Iv. and 1vii., and in the Journ. of Abnormal Psychology, edited by Morton Prince (Boston, 190619o9) ; also literature cited under AUTOMATISM; HYPNOTISM; MEDIUM; TELEPATHY and POSSESSION. (W. Mc D.)

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