ii6 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



here what heat does for sealing wax, and permits the fixation of 

 the group of images, disordered as they may be, that burst out at 

 the opportune moment. Bat while we can expose the wax again 

 to the fire, these curious products of fancy do not bear remelting, 

 and the ideas or the cerebral cells continue fixed in the fortuitous 

 relations that were contracted at that privileged instant. How 

 else can we account for associations so absurd and at the same 

 time so persistent as that of a day of the week with a person steal- 

 ing or selling some indefinite thing ? We can not reconstitute 

 the striking incident or the collection of unforeseen relations and 

 subtle analogies which accomplished the soldering of two such 



heterogeneous things in M. F 's mind ; but it is supposable that 



the operation is effectuated at once, and that the initial plasticity 

 was immediately spent ; for the thing stolen and sold continues 

 always indistinct, in spite of the natural curiosity which would 

 ultimately have precisely identified it, if the activity of the im- 

 agination had retained the slightest hold upon it. 



The same remark may be applied to the other incomprehen- 

 sible details abundant in M. F 's personifications. We might 

 speak of fragments of dreams suddenly registered and riveted for- 

 ever to the words which the caprices of the nocturnal imagina- 

 tion had momentarily brought into relations with them. The 

 dissociation of words from their usual sense and their application 

 to other images by virtue of a connection which the dreamer 

 clearly feels and finds quite natural, but which vanishes on awak- 

 ening to give place to the opposite feeling of complete incoher- 

 ence, are in fact a frequent feature of dreams. In the personifi- 

 cations the images attached to the words independently and 

 outside of their proper sense are nearly always as arbitrary as 

 the dream, but permanent, and the connection is felt by the sub- 

 ject, although he himself knows that it is irrational and inex- 

 plicable. 



The physiological conditions of this singular process are still 

 unknown to us. No evidence of heredity has been brought to 



light in the particular case. Still, the fact that M. F has 



never met an echo in his family when he speaks of his impres- 

 sions does not prove that his parents have not in their infancy 

 experienced similar phenomena, which have disappeared and been 

 forgotten in older life. Translated for the Popular Science 

 Monthly from L'Annee Psychologique. 



AN amusing story is told in his Notes from a Diary by Sir E. Grant Duff 

 of the London Metaphysical Society, now defunct. It is to the effect that 

 Sir John Simeon, after one of the society's early meetings, rushed up to one 

 of the members and asked, with the appearance of great anxiety, " Well, is 

 there a God ? " " Oh, yes,' 1 was the reply, " we had a very good majority." 



