DKEAMS AND ILLUSIONS. 249 



first, I take his person into my mind and place it 

 before me as distinctly as if he were actually present. 

 I set to work, looking at the sitter from time to time, 

 since I am able to see him whenever I look that way." 

 Talma asserted that when he was on the stage, he was 

 able by mere force of will to transform his audience 

 into skeletons, which affected him with such emotion 

 as to add force and energy to his action. Abercromby 

 speaks of a man who had the faculty of calling up 

 visions with all the vividness of reality whenever he 

 pleased, by strongly fixing his attention on mental 

 conceptions which corresponded to them. Yet he was 

 a sane man, in the prime of life, perfectly intelligent, 

 and versed in practical affairs. 



A very slight withdrawal of the attention from 

 surrounding objects is all that is necessary to enable 

 artists and some other persons to call up these 

 images with vivid distinctness, since even in the 

 waking state the image may for the moment appear 

 to be actually before them. Any one might attain to 

 the same power of vivification if the transition from 

 the real to the merely ideal image were not in the 

 waking state so instantaneous and easy; whereas 

 in a dream the state of illusion is uninterrupted, and 

 it is physiologically impossible for the mind to pass 

 immediately from the image, which is believed to be 

 real, to the simply representative idea of the thing. 



Even in the waking state, the image and repre- 

 sentative idea of the thing naturally tend to become, 



