The Edinburgh Lectures on Mental Science

By Thomas Troward, Late Divisional Judge, Punjab, 1904

IV. SUBJECTIVE AND OBJECTIVE MIND - 1

Up to this point it has been necessary to lay the foundations of the
science by the statement of highly abstract general principles which we
have reached by purely metaphysical reasoning. We now pass on to the
consideration of certain natural laws which have been established by a long
series of experiments and observations, the full meaning and importance of
which will become clear when we see their application to the general
principles which have hitherto occupied our attention. The phenomena of
hypnosis are now so fully recognized as established scientific facts that
it is quite superfluous to discuss the question of their credibility. Two
great medical schools have been founded upon them, and in some countries
they have become the subject of special legislation. The question before us
at the present day is, not as to the credibility of the facts, but as to
the proper inferences to be drawn from them, and a correct apprehension of
these inferences is one of the most valuable aids to the mental scientist,
for it confirms the conclusions of purely a priori reasoning by an array
of experimental instances which places the correctness of those conclusions
beyond doubt.

The great truth which the science of hypnotism has brought to light is the
dual nature of the human mind. Much conflict exists between different
writers as to whether this duality results from the presence of two
actually separate minds in the one man, or in the action of the same mind
in the employment of different functions. This is one of those distinctions
without a difference which are so prolific a source of hindrance to the
opening out of truth. A man must be a single individuality to be a man at
all, and, so, the net result is the same whether we conceive of his varied
modes of mental action as proceeding from a set of separate minds strung,
so to speak, on the thread of his one individuality and each adapted to a
particular use, or as varied functions of a single mind: in either case we
are dealing with a single individuality, and how we may picture the
wheel-work of the mental mechanism is merely a question of what picture
will bring the nature of its action home to us most clearly. Therefore, as
a matter of convenience, I shall in these lectures speak of this dual
action as though it proceeded from two minds, an outer and an inner, and
the inner mind we will call the subjective mind and the outer the
objective, by which names the distinction is most frequently indicated in
the literature of the subject.

A long series of careful experiments by highly-trained observers, some of
them men of world-wide reputation, has fully established certain remarkable
differences between the action of the subjective and that of the objective
mind which may be briefly stated as follows. The subjective mind is only
able to reason deductively and not inductively, while the objective mind
can do both. Deductive reasoning is the pure syllogism which shows why a
third proposition must necessarily result if two others are assumed, but
which does not help us to determine whether the two initial statements are
true or not. To determine this is the province of inductive reasoning which
draws its conclusions from the observation of a series of facts. The
relation of the two modes of reasoning is that, first by observing a
sufficient number of instances, we inductively reach the conclusion that a
certain principle is of general application, and then we enter upon the
deductive process by assuming the truth of this principle and determining
what result must follow in a particular case on the hypothesis of its
truth. Thus deductive reasoning proceeds on the assumption of the
correctness of certain hypotheses or suppositions with which it sets out:
it is not concerned with the truth or falsity of those suppositions, but
only with the question as to what results must necessarily follow supposing
them to be true. Inductive reasoning; on the other hand, is the process by
which we compare a number of separate instances with one another until we
see the common factor that gives rise to them all. Induction proceeds by
the comparison of facts, and deduction by the application of universal
principles. Now it is the deductive method only which is followed by the
subjective mind. Innumerable experiments on persons in the hypnotic state
have shown that the subjective mind is utterly incapable of making the
selection and comparison which are necessary to the inductive process, but
will accept any suggestion, however false, but having once accepted any
suggestion, it is strictly logical in deducing the proper conclusions from
it, and works out every suggestion to the minutest fraction of the results
which flow from it.