246 MYTH AND SCIENCE. 



It appears from this fact, which will be confirmed 

 by many of my readers, that some waking states 

 resemble those of dreams in form, and moreover they 

 are sometimes even alike in substance. Ideas and 

 thoughts in the conditions just indicated may not 

 only be latent, active, combined, or transformed by 

 suggestive impulses, but ideas are represented by 

 images in such vivid relief that, until the observer 

 recollects himself, they are seen and felt by him 

 with the same sense of reality as in a dream. This 

 mental transformation is however so habitual, that 

 the implicit conviction of being really awake, does 

 not allow us to observe what the actual nature 

 of the phenomenon is, since there is an immediate 

 transition from an implicit perception of the image as 

 real to the habitual form of simple thought, with- 

 out distinguishing the difference between these two 

 states of consciousness. Any one who has long 

 practised himself in the observation of such dis- 

 tinctions will, however, be able to understand the 

 psychical process and to estimate its value. 



It has often occurred to myself, in circumstances 

 analogous to the above, when thinking of persons or 

 places at a distance, to see them imaged before me 

 in such vivid relief that I have been startled as if by 

 a morbid hallucination. Once, in passing through 

 rny chamber, my attention was so strongly fixed on 

 an absent person that I was not only vividly conscious 

 of his form, but also of his voice and gestures, so that 



