THE PARADOX OF DIDEROT. 543 



her. " If I feel that I have not gained it over far enough, I make 

 an intense physical effort to accomplish this. At the climax of 

 emotion, the public appears quite indistinct, like a collective 

 mass ; but when my part only half possesses me, I discern the 

 slightest movements occurring in the hall. I have a very clear 

 perception of the silence that denotes that the attention of the 

 audience is fixed, as I have also of its wandering." 



We come now to the illusion of the theater as it is felt by the 

 spectators. Taine's description of it as something that is alter- 

 nately excited and destroyed is not sustained by the persons 

 whom I have interrogated, and so little resembles the reality that 

 I suppose it is a purely theoretical and systematic explanation, 

 invented in all its parts, perhaps unconsciously, by one who was 

 nothing less than he was an observer. As I interpret the teach- 

 ing of observation, we most clearly and curiously perceive the 

 illusion side of the spectacle when we enter the theater after the 

 curtain has been raised, and are still in the lobbies regarding 

 from a distance what is passing on the stage. At that moment 

 we have a very strange impression that the actors are playing 

 false, and all that there is of the conventional in the theater stands 

 out before us. This impression is strongest at the beginning, and 

 is gradually dissipated as we listen and comprehend the piece. 

 Leaving aside this somewhat exceptional circumstance, and 

 describing what the spectator usually experiences at the theater, 

 we may theoretically, after the manner of Taine, distinguish two 

 different states of consciousness in our minds : we are moved by 

 the piece, and are aware that it is a fiction. But these two states 

 of consciousness in the large majority of cases have not each an 

 independent life, and do not take each other's places by turns. Our 

 real experience is a complex, composite feeling, in consequence of 

 which we are captured by the emotions of the piece while still 

 vaguely aware that it is a fiction. There are not two contrary 

 acts of the mind, two antagonistic attitudes, but everything is 

 mingled and fused. There are at the same time, in our minds, an 

 emotion of the spectator, a feeling of the illusion, a critical judg- 

 ment on the actor's playing and the merit of the piece, and a good 

 many other things. 



About ten years ago, when hypnotic experiments in psychol- 

 ogy were in great favor, the thought sometimes occurred of 

 transforming the personalities of subjects and giving them parts 

 to play. M. Charles Richet took the initiative in these ingenious 

 transformations. A woman, a mother of a family, was by his 

 suggestion metamorphosed into a general, an archbishop, a ballet 

 dancer, or a sailor, and we are assured that she acquitted herself 

 in her parts with a perfection which the most accomplished actor 

 could not attain. The superiority of these subjects of suggestion. 



