248 MYTH AND SCIENCE. 



tions are presented to the attentive reader in such 

 a vivid form as to transport him into a real world, 

 much more must the authors of these marvellous 

 creations have looked upon them as real at the 

 moment cf composition. The impression of truth- 

 fulness is indeed produced by the fact that the 

 writers saw these things as though they were real. 

 I speak of states of consciousness, not of reflex 

 observation, of intense moments of sensation and 

 imagination, which are unnoticed by the man who 

 experiences them in his waking moments. Such 

 is the reader of a poem, a romance, or history, 

 the spectator of a picture, who is able for the time 

 to abstract himself from surrounding objects, and 

 who implicitly believes that he sees those places 

 and persons, or whatever the book or painter has 

 described or represented. If suddenly interrupted, 

 he rouses himself, and may be said to awake to the 

 present reality of things, as if startled from a dream. 



Wigau relates that a celebrated portrait painter 

 worked with such quickness and facility that he 

 painted more than three hundred portraits in a year. 

 When he was asked the secret of his rapid execution 

 and of the faithfulness of the likeness, he replied, 

 " When any one proposes to have his portrait taken, 

 I look at him attentively for half an hour, while sketch- 

 ing his features on the canvas ; I then lay the canvas 

 aside and pursue the same method with another 

 portrait, and so on. When I wish to return to the 



