256 MYTH AND SCIENCE. 



destroyed, and to this the apparent reality of images 

 seen is owing, since there is no longer any distraction 

 from the external world, or, at all events, its impulses 

 are so attenuated as to be unobserved. In such 

 conditions past images recur with an appearance of 

 ivality owing to the mnemonic and automatic action 

 of the brain ; such a tendency exists in the waking 

 state, and the images are associated and dissociated in 

 a thousand ways, by means of analogies, resemblances, 

 former combinations of facts, and series of facts analo- 

 gous to those of the waking state, and are modified 







by suggestive impulses. We have experimental proof, 

 to which I can add my own irrefragable witness, that 

 the stimulating influence exerted by the brain in the 

 waking state is dormant in sleep, and that only its 

 automatic act of representation remains active, with 

 the occasional exercise of an aroused and conscious 

 will. 



The following strange and unpleasant phenomenon 

 generally occurs to me once or twice a year. All at 

 once, in the midst of a deep sleep, I become wide 

 awake ; I am fully conscious of mj^self, of the place 

 where I am, of rny position and the like, and wish to 

 move like a person who is fully awake. Yet for some 

 time this is impossible ; the psychical, cerebral faculty 

 is perfectly awake, and master of itself, but not the 

 stimulating faculty, so that the limbs do not respond 

 to the first impulse of the will. All my efforts are 

 unsuccessful ; I only succeed in escaping from this 



