In order to understand the primeval process of thought by means of images, it is necessary to conceive such a picture as living and mobile, and constantly forming a fresh combination of parts. Animals have not, and primeval man had not, the phonetic signs or words which give an individual character to the images, and so represent them that by combining these images in an articulate form, thought may be represented by signs; and in and through these a universal and objective mode of exercising the intellectual faculty of reasoning has been created.

Speech can, by means of reflex memory, produce at will the particular images already classified in the mind, and this makes the process of reasoning possible; since such a process becomes more easy by the use of signs to which the attention can revert. The relative size of objects, and the like qualities, which are at first regarded as so many different intuitions in space, are defined by words or gestures, and are thus subjected to comparative analogy; but in the early stages of language these relations were presented in an extrinsic form by phonetic signs, and became images which in some sort represented one particular state of consciousness with respect to the two things compared. Galton, speaking of the Damaras, tells us that they find great difficulty in counting more than five, since they have not another hand with which to grasp the fingers which represent the units. When they lose any of their cattle, they do not discover the loss by the diminution of the number, but by missing a familiar object. If two packets of tobacco are given to them as the regulation price of a sheep, they will be altogether at a loss to understand the receipt of four packets in exchange for two sheep. Such examples might be multiplied to any extent.

We repeat that when not endowed with speech, or some analogous means, animals and man think in images, and the relations between these images are observed in the simultaneousness and succession of their real differences; these images are combined, associated, and compared by the development of reflex power, and hence arises the estimate of their concrete relations. Of this we have another proof, observed by Romanes in a lecture on the intelligence of animals, and confirmed by myself, in the condition of deaf-mutes before they are educated, in whose case the extrinsic sign and figure takes the place of the phonetic and articulate sign. Where speech is wanting, it is still possible to follow a conscious and imaginative process of reasoning, but not to rise to the higher abstract ideas which may be generated by such reasoning. The thought of deaf-mutes always assumes the most concrete form, and one who was educated late in life informed Romanes that he had always before thought in images. I know no instance of a deaf-mute who has independently attained to an advanced intellectual stage, or who has been able without education to form any conception of a supernatural world. R.S. Smith asserts that one of his deaf-mute pupils believed, before his education, that the Bible had been printed in the heavens by a printing press of enormous power; and Graham Bell speaks of a deaf-mute who supposed that people went to church to do honour to the clergyman. In short, the intellectual condition of uneducated deaf-mutes is on a level with that of animals, as far as the possibility of forming abstract ideas is concerned, and they think in images. There is a well-known instance in the deplorable condition of Laura Bridgman, who from the time she was two years old, was deaf and dumb, blind, and even without the sense of taste, so that the sense of touch was all that remained. By persevering and tender instruction, she attained to an intellectual condition which was relatively high. A careful study of her case showed that she had been altogether without intuitive knowledge of causes, of the absolute, and of God. Howe doubts whether she had any idea of space and time, but this was not absolutely proved, since as far as distance was concerned, she seemed to estimate it, by muscular sensation. Everything showed that she thought in images. Although without any sensation of light or sound, she made certain noises in her throat to indicate different people when she was conscious of their presence or when she thought of them, so that she was naturally impelled to express every thought or sensation, not externally perceived, by a sign; and this shows the tendency of every idea and image towards an extrinsic form. She often conversed with herself, generally making signs with one hand and replying with the other. It was evident that a muscular sign or the motion of the fingers was substituted for the phonetic signs of speech, and in this way ideas and images received their necessarily extrinsic form. The image was embodied in a muscular act and motion, and in this way thought had its concrete representation. The same results would, as far as we know, be obtained from others in the same unhappy conditions as Laura Bridgman.

It is therefore clear that primitive language was only a vocal and individual sign of material images, and it was for a long while restricted to these concrete limits. Since the vocal signs of the relations of things are less easily expressed, these relations were at first set forth by gestures, by a movement of the whole person, and especially of the hands and face. This preliminary action is helped by the imitative faculty with which children and uncultured peoples are more especially endowed, of which we have also instances in the higher animals nearest to man. The negroes imitate the gestures, clothing, and customs of white men in the most extraordinary and grotesque manner, and so do the natives of New Zealand. The Kamschatkans have a great power of imitating other men and animals, and this is also the case with the inhabitants of Vancouver. Herndon was astonished by the mimic arts of the Brazilian Indians, and Wilkes made the same observation on the Patagonians. This faculty is still more apparent in the lower races. Many travellers have spoken of the extraordinary tendency to imitation among the Fuegians; and, according to Monat, the Andaman islanders are not less disposed to mimicry and imitation. Mitchell states that the Australians possess the same power.

This fact also applies to the languages of extremely rude and savage peoples. Some American Indians, for instance, help out their sentences and make them intelligible by contortion of their features and other gesticulations, and the same observation was made by Schweinwurth of an African tribe. The language of the Bosjesmanns requires so many signs to make the meaning of their words intelligible that it cannot be understood in the dark. These facts partly explain the natural genesis of human languages.

We have learned from our earlier observations that phenomena appear to the perceptive faculty of primitive man as subjects endowed with power. The subjectivity of these phenomena, their intrinsic conditions and actions are fused into speech, which is their living and conscious symbol; and it is clear that the evolution of language from the concrete to the symbolical, and hence to the simple sign of the object, divested of its original power, is analogous to that of myth.

This law of evolution also applies to the art of writing, which is at first only the precise copy of the image; it is next transformed into an analogous symbol, and then into an alphabetical sign, which serves as the simple expression of the conception, divested of its originally representative faculty. Hence it is apparent that the evolution of myth conforms to the general law of the evolution of human thought, of all its products and arts in their manifold ramifications. From the image, the informing subject, from the conception and the myth, the necessary cycle is accomplished in regular phases, wherever the ethnic temperament and capacity and extrinsic circumstances permit it, until the rational idea is reached, the sign or cipher which becomes the powerful instrument of the exercise and generalization of thought. In order to show the efficacy of the mythical and scientific faculty of thought comprised in the systems of ancient and modern philosophy, and its slow progress towards positive and rational science, we will adduce an instance from the people in whom such an evolution was accomplished, aided by all the civilized peoples in reciprocal communication with them. Let us see how this faculty was manifested in the Greeks at a time when they first attempted to reduce the earlier and scanty knowledge of nature to a system.

In Greece the historical course of this faculty ramified into two classes of research, which were at that time objective, the Ionic and the Pythagorean schools. In the former, the phenomenon and nature were assumed to be the direct object of knowledge, while in the latter the object in view was the idea and harmony of things. Influenced by earlier and popular traditions, a mythical and philosophic system arose in the Ionic school, which was exclusively devoted to physical speculations. In Lower Italy, on the contrary, and in colonies which were for the most part Doric, a science was constituted which, although it included physics and natural phenomena, did not only consider their material value, but sought to extract from their laws and harmony a criterion of good and evil. Ritter observes that the intimate connection between the Pythagorean philosophy and lyrical music—of which the origin was sought as a clue to explain the world—shows how far this philosophy was consonant with Doric thought. This historic process is quite natural, since the speculations of philosophy are first directed to physical phenomena, as they are displayed in inward and in external life, and then rise to the consideration of specific types, in a word, to the general and the universal.

Throughout this philosophical evolution the consideration is mainly from the objective point of view, and this is in conformity with the intellectual evolution of reason, since the mind is first occupied with the knowledge of things. In accordance with tradition and the logic of things, Ionic speculation was developed before the Doric. The Eleatic school followed from the two former, although its development was contemporary with the more perfect stage of these, and its influence upon them was to some extent reactionary.

Thales taught that everything was derived from one unique principle, namely water. The ancients believed that the land was separated from the water by a primitive and mythical process, a belief which had its source in the appearance of aqueous and meteorological phenomena; so that the teaching of Thales followed the earliest popular traditions, of which we find traces in the Indies, in Egypt, in the book of Genesis, and in many legends diffused through the world even in modern times. He said that everything was nourished by moisture, from which heat itself was derived, and that moisture was the seed of all things; that water is the origin of this moisture, and since all things are derived from it it is the primitive principle of the world. We see how much this theory is concerned with natural phenomena in their life, nutrition, and birth by means of seed. He regarded the world as a living being, which had been evolved from an imperfect germ of moisture. This mode of animating the world, which consists in tracing the development of a germ already in existence, reappears in other parts of his philosophy. He saw life in the appearance of death, and held the loadstone and yellow amber to be animate bodies, declaring generally that the world is alive, and filled with demons and genii.[32]

We trace the basis of these ideas in traditions prior to Thales, declaring the world to be a living being, and that everything was derived from a primitive condition of germs. The same opinion was held by Hippo, by Diogenes of Apollonia, by Heraclitus, and by Anaxagoras. Aristotle states that the theory of development by germs was extremely ancient in his time. The other philosophers of the Ionic and successive schools mingled these fanciful ideas with the systematic arrangement of their theories as to the origin and constitution of the world, so that it is unnecessary to refer to them, since the method and conceptions are identical.

It is evident from this sketch that while thought gradually evolved a more rational system of general knowledge, the earlier idols and primitive mythical interpretations were not abandoned, although they assumed a larger and more scientific form. Thales and others assigned a mechanical origin to things, such as water, fire, or the like, which was contrary to anthropomorphic ideas; yet they still regarded the world as a living being, developed and perfected by the same laws and functions as all plants and animals, and they peopled it with genii and demons, thus handing on the earliest and rudest traditions of the race.

While the scientific faculty was gathering strength and leading the way to a more rational consideration of the world and natural phenomena, really advancing beyond the earlier ideas which had been almost wholly mythical, myth was still the matrix of thought, although its envelopment was partly rent asunder and was becoming transparent. From this brief notice of the Ionic philosophy, sufficient for our purpose, let us return to the Pythagorean school, in which, although the faculty at work is essentially objective, there is a closer consideration of the analogies between thought and the world, and the ground is more often retraced, so that theory assumes a more intellectual form.

The Pythagoreans represented the origin of the world as the union of the two opposite principles of the illimitable and the limited, of the equal and the unequal. Yet they conceive this to be a primitive union, since they formulated the supreme principle as equal—unequal (Arist. Met. xii. 7.) They held the infinite to be the place of the one. There was an attraction between the two principles, which was termed the act of breathing; hence the void entered into the world and separated things from each other. Thus their conception of the world was that of a concourse of opposite principles. They represented its limits as a unity and as the true beginning of multiplicity. They regarded the development of the world as a process of life regulated by the primitive principles contained in the world; its breath or life depended on the breaking forth of the infinite void in Uranus, and the time which is termed the interval of all nature penetrates at once and with the breath into the world. All therefore emanates from one, and all is at the same time governed by one supreme power. Number is everything, and is the essence of things, but the triad includes all number, since it contains the beginning, middle, and end. Everything is derived from the primitive one and from the principal number; and since this number in breathing its vital evolution into the void is divided into many units, everything is derived from the multiplicity of these units or numbers.

Since, by his idea of the source of universal order, Pythagoras partly accepted the theocosmic monad as the final and necessary root of all life, and of all that is knowable, he could not fail to see the convertibility of the unit into the Being. But if the unit must always precede the manifold, there is a first unit from which all the others proceed; if this first and eternal unit is at the same time the absolute being, it follows that number and the world have a common origin and a common essence, and that the intrinsic causes and possible combinations of number are virtually accomplished in the development of the world, and these causes and combinations are ideal forms of this development. The monad is developed by these laws through all the generative processes of nature, while at the same time it remains eternal in the system of the universe; so that things not only have their origin and essence, their place and time according to numerical causes, but each is in effect a number as far as its individual properties and the universal process of cosmic life are concerned. The reason of the number must depend upon the substance, by the configurations of which it is defined, divided, added, and multiplied, and to this geometry is added, which measures all things in relation to themselves and others. This eternal cause makes it intelligible that if immaterial principles precede and govern the whole material world, it is also by means of these that the classification of science is in intrinsic agreement with that of nature. Numbers have their value in music, in gymnastics, in medicine, in morals, in politics, in all branches of science. The Pythagorean arithmetic is the bond and universal logic of the knowable. But at the same time Pythagoras and his school peopled the world with demons and genii, which were the causes of disease; they did not abandon the old mythical ideas of the incarnation of spirits and the transmigration of souls—theories and beliefs which recur in nearly all primitive and savage peoples.

In this vast Pythagorean scheme, which contrasts with that of the Ionic school of physics, thought is more explicitly freed from the ruder mythical ideas, and rises to a more intelligent and rational conception of the world, but the ancient popular traditions still persist, and there is an evident entification of number. The primitive monad, numbers, their genesis and relations, are not regarded as abstract conceptions, necessary for understanding the order of nature, and a merely logical function of the mind; they are the substantial essence which underlies all mythical representations. Although the essential life of the world is considered from a more abstract point of view, yet the mythical analogy of animal life evidently finds a place in the breath of the void and of time, assumed to be independent entities. The subsequent train of beliefs in spirits, of their incarnations and transmigrations, are closely connected with the phantasmagoria of the past, and display their mythical genesis; yet by their deeper and more explicit thought they may be said to infuse intellectual life into the world and into science which relates to it. In this first rational classification of science by the Greeks, both on its physical and its ideal side, thought sometimes issues in the simple contemplation of manifold nature, while it still continues mythical in its fundamental conceptions and spiritual corollaries; myth, however, instead of being altogether anthropomorphic, begins to become scientific.

I must here be allowed to quote a hymn in the Rig-Veda, which was historically earlier than the primitive philosophy of Greece, but which reveals the same tendency, the same mythical and scientific teaching in its interpretation of the world. In this hymn, which has been translated and explained by Max Mueller, we see how boldly the problem of the origin of the world is stated (hymn 129, book x.)—

"Nor Aught nor Nought existed; yon bright sky Was not, nor heaven's broad woof outstretched above. What covered all? what sheltered? what concealed? Was it the water's fathomless abyss? There was not death—yet was there nought immortal, There was no confine betwixt day and night; The only One breathed breathless by itself, Other than It there nothing since has been. Darkness there was, and all at first was veiled In gloom profound—an ocean without light— The germ that still lay covered in the husk Burst forth, one nature, from the fervent heat. Then first came love upon it, the new spring Of mind—yea, poets in their hearts discerned, Pondering, this bond between created things And uncreated. Comes this spark from earth, Piercing and all-pervading, or from heaven? Then seeds were sown, and mighty powers arose— Nature below, and power and will above— Who knows the secret? who proclaimed it here, Whence, whence this manifold creation sprang? The gods themselves came later into being— Who knows from whence this great creation sprang? He from whom all this great creation came, Whether his will created or was mute, The Most High Seer that is in highest heaven, He knows it—or perchance even He knows not."

It is evident that in this hymn, the expression of the moment when human thought was partly freed from the earlier anthropomorphic ideas, the scientific faculty which attempts a rational explanation of the world is shown; and although this is an isolated inspiration of the prophet, yet it shadows forth the conclusions to which the primitive Hellenic speculation came when it was deliberately exerted to solve the problem of creation. In fact, there is here an intimation of the waters, of the void or deep abyss, as the beginnings of the world; of the breath of the One, the hidden germ of things developed by means of heat; of productive powers as a lower, and energy as a higher form of nature; of conceptions found in the Ionic, the Pythagorean, and the Eleatic philosophies, which all converge into the one. All belong to the same Aryan race.

The Vedic composition represents in Dyavaprthivi the close connection between the two divinities, Heaven and Earth, the one considered as the active and creative principle, the other as that which is passive and fertilized; the same ideas, more or less worked out, underlie not only the first philosophies, but successive theories and systems. The worship of water, of fire, and of air involved their personification, and they then became exciting principles, in accordance with the law of evolution which we have laid down. In the Rig-Veda, as well as in the Zendavesta, the waters are collectively invoked by their special name apas, and they are termed the mothers, the divine, which contain the amrta or ambrosia, and all healing powers. In Agni and its Vedic transformations we clearly trace the worship of fire, and its cosmic value. The Vedic worship of the air is Vayu, from va, to breathe, who is associated with the higher gods, and especially with Indra, ruler of the atmosphere: next comes Rudra, the god of storms, accompanied by the Maruti, the winds; and in the Zendavesta the air is invoked as an element. Hence we see that a more rational conception of the genesis of the world succeeds to these earlier representations and personifications of the elements; representations which in another form endure throughout the course of human thought.

It is now necessary to consider the other period of the mythical and scientific evolution which had its definitive conclusion in Plato and Aristotle, teachers who even now to some extent influence the two great currents of speculative science. For us, however, it is more important to consider the Platonic teaching as that in which the mythical evolution of the earlier representations has full and clear expression; while in the Aristotelian philosophy an element of dissolution is already at work which throws some light on the illusions of the Platonic school.

We must bear in mind that the spontaneous and even the reflective intellectual faculty gradually assimilated special and independent myths into comprehensive types, which referred to all natural objects. Next, the incarnation of spirits produced the earliest forms of polytheism, and these were slowly classified into more concentric circles, and finally into a single hierarchical system. Owing to the attitude and ethnic temperament of the Greeks, the glorious anthropomorphism of their Olympus arose in a more vivid form than elsewhere, and it was impersonated in the all-powerful and all-seeing Zeus, ruler of the world, of gods and men. This process, modified in a thousand ways, was carried on in all races. Hence it resulted that every object had a type, its god; everything was typically individuated in an anthropomorphic entity in such a way that there arose a natural dualism between the phenomena, facts, and cosmic orders on the one side, and on the other the hierarchy of gods who represented them and over whom they presided. The Hellenic philosophies prior to Plato, both physical and intellectual, and also the psychological morality of Socrates, had already accomplished the first evolution of this typical stage of universal polytheism, substituting for anthropomorphic representations physical and intellectual principles and powers. Thought was educated in its inward exercise, as well as in the observation of facts and ideal representations. But—and this constituted the first evolution of anthropomorphism in general—these powers all expressed the thing in its general and phenomenal form; it was endowed with merely zoomorphic force, and the world was regarded as physiologically living.

Plato, impelled by the foregoing evolution, and by the large and exquisitely aesthetic character of his genius, accomplished the second and altogether intellectual stage of evolution by inverting the problem; he affirmed that the final and intrinsic result of the exercise of thought was its earlier and eternal essence, extrinsic and objective. The types which were first fetishes and then polytheistic were transformed into the physical and intellectual principles of the world, divested of all mythical and extrinsic form as far as their material organization was concerned. Plato held that such types were really ideal, as in fact they had unconsciously been from the first; that is, that it was simply a logical conception of species and genera which is natural to human thought; a conception necessary for the spontaneous as well as for the reflex and scientific processes of thought. From the type, the specific idea, the generalization into the idea of each special object was easy, since each object has its psychical representation in the mind. Special and specific ideas were then arranged in a certain order, and those which are more general in a concentric and systematic classification; this had been also the case in the earlier polytheistic system, since the process of the intelligence naturally arranges all its representations. But he did not stop here, nor indeed was it possible for him to do so.

We know that the intelligence does not only understand objects, but their relations to each other, by means of its comparative faculty; these relations were, as in the case of animals, at first intuitively perceived by direct observation and the alternate and reciprocal motion of the images, and they were first presented to the imagination and then embodied in speech. We have said in the foregoing chapters that in primitive thought these relations involved an active entity, and were in a word entified. Plato, pursuing his intellectual process of reasoning, and the reciprocal properties of ideas, noted the ideality of these relations so far as they are a psychical representation, and hence he was constrained by the unconscious evolution of thought to affirm that an idea was present in every relation, and thus the great, the little, the less, the more, had their ideal representatives in the general construction of his theory. But man is not only an intellectual, but an active, sentient, living being, tending to an object as an individual and a social subject. So that he not only attains to the understanding of ideal truth, but also of the good and the beautiful. According to Plato, the Good and the Beautiful must also necessarily be Ideas of a general character, like those which embrace all ideal relations whatever. Since they are universal, and due to the innate impulse of thought towards concentric ascension, they must rank as the sum and apex of ideas, so that the Good is emphatically the Idea, or God. On turning to the world of sensations, or of particular objects, ideas are the eternal model (paradigm) according to which things are made; these are the images (idoli) of which the others are the imperfect copies (mimesi). The world of sense is itself only a symbol, an allegory, a figure. As in the sensible world there is a scale of beings from the lowest to the most perfect, that is to the material universe, so in the sphere of intellect, the type of the world, ideas are combined together by higher ideas, and these again by others still higher, and so on to the apex, the ultimate, supreme, omnipotent Idea, the Good which includes and sums up the whole.

Plato holds that matter is not the body, but that which may become the body by the plastic action of the idea, as Weber well expresses it; matter considered in itself is the indefinite (apeiron), the indefinable (aoriston), and the amorphous, and it is co-eternal with ideas, and inert; from the union of ideas and matter the cosmos had its origin, the image of the invisible deity, God in power, the living organism (Zoon), possessing a body, sense, a definite object, a soul. The body of the universe has the form of a sphere, the most beautiful which can be conceived; the circle described in revolving is also the most perfect motion.

The stars first had their source in the Idea of Good; first the fixed stars, then the planets, then the earth, created deities; the earth produced organized beings, beginning with man, the crowning work and object of all the rest; the fruits of the earth were made to nourish him, and animals were made to become the abode of fallen souls. Man, the microcosm, is reason within a soul, which is in its turn contained in a body. The whole body is organized with a view to this reason. The head, the seat of reason, is round because this is the most perfect form. The breast is the seat of generous passions, while the bestial appetites are found in the belly and intestines.

The human soul, like the soul of the world, contains immortal and mortal elements; the intelligence or reason, and sensuality. The immortality of the soul is also proved by the memory. The subsequent union of life and matter in the production of the universe is the work of an intermediate, equivocal being, the demiurgos. Thus Plato opposes the eternity of the intelligence to Ionic materialism, and the eternity of matter to the monistic theory of the Eleatics.

In the genesis of nature we again find the synthetic conception of the elements, which he estimates to be four; to which geometrical forms correspond, and the world was finally organized after its human type. He divides the soul into several distinct and independent powers, which are ever revolving between life and death: they inhabit the stars and depend upon them, since the soul which has been righteous on earth will be happy after death in the star to which it was originally destined; but those who on earth only desire here bodily pleasures will wander as shades round the tombs, or will migrate into the bodies of various animals. He constitutes the stars into contingent and sensible gods: they have beautiful and immortal bodies of a round form, and are made of fire. He asserts poetic inspiration and madness to be the result of demoniac possession, and says with Socrates that those who deny demoniac powers are themselves demoniacs.

We see from this account the mythical origin of all that concerns the organization and genesis of the world, the destinies and nature of the soul, since these are sublimated myths; the elements are first regarded as deities, and the world is made in the image of man, and considered to be alive; the stars and the earth are endowed with life and intelligence; the fate of souls before and after death, their recollection of a prior existence, their transmigrations and wanderings around the tombs, demoniac possession in inspiration and madness, are all very ancient mythical representations, which form a great part of the theoretical and spiritual cosmogony of savages in all times and places. We have seen that not only relatively civilized peoples, but those which are quite savage divide souls into distinct parts: throughout Africa, America, and Asia, there is a belief in the transmigration of souls into animals, plants, and other objects. The Tasmanians believed that their souls would ascend to the stars and abide there; and all savages hold the demoniac possession of inspired persons, of madmen, and of the sick, which has led to what may be called a diabolic pathology. The general conception of the world as a living animal, with all the tendencies ascribed to it by Plato, is only the primeval fact of the animation and personification of phenomena applied to the general idea of the universe. Hence it is easy to see how much of Plato's physics and psychology are due to the necessary and historic course of myth, and to the schools into which myth had been modified before his time.

We must dwell more particularly on his theory of ideas, since in this the advance made by Plato in the evolution of myth really consists, and it marks a very definite stage which had and still has a powerful influence on subsequent and modern thought.

We have already shown how, by the logical power of thought, this phase in the ideal evolution of myth was reached, and we have traced it in an inchoate form in various rude peoples, as well as in its ultimate modification in Plato. In his writings it takes the form of a complete, vast, and organic theory. The logical conceptions and representative ideas, idols peculiar to the mind, which were at first involved in fetishtic and anthropomorphic images, are now divested of their earlier wrappings, and are classified as the intellectual ideas which they really are, and which they have become by the innate and reflex exercise of human thought. But on account of the faculty which ever governs our immediate perception of internal and external things they could not in Plato's time, nor indeed in that of many subsequent philosophers, remain as simple intellectual signs of the process of reason. This faculty influenced these conceptions, these psychical forms, whether particular, specific, or general, and they became living subjects, like phenomena, objects, shades, images in dreams, normal and abnormal hallucinations. Thus the Ideas in Plato became, reflectively and theoretically, entities with an intrinsic existence, eternal, divine, and absolute essences. But the fetish, the anthropomorphic idol, was not only regarded as a living but as a causative subject; the same power was likewise infused into the Ideas, and they were held to be causes of particular things, of which they were the earlier and eternal type. Thus the myth in the Platonic Ideas became scientific, but it continued to be a myth; the substance varied, but the form was the same. The objective phenomena of the world had first been personified, or their fanciful images were assumed to be objective; now the world of reason was personified, and mythology became intellectual instead of cosmic.

Those who opposed Plato's theory of ideas said that he realized abstractions, or personified ideas; but no one, as I think, perceived the natural process which led him to do so, nor explained the faculty by which he was necessarily influenced. Plato's theory was only an ultimate phase of the evolution of the vague and primitive animation of the world, which had passed through fetishism, polytheism, and the worship of the elements of nature, and had reached the entification and subjectivity of ideas, which was also attained by natural science, after passing through its mythical envelopment. We have noted the causes, which in the case of the earlier philosophers happened to be objective, while they were in Plato's case subjective, owing to the character and temperament of his mind; both conduced to the development and aesthetic splendour of this teaching among the Greeks. The teaching of Plato, which had more or less influence on all the earlier civilized peoples, of his own and subsequent times, and which was also involved in the mythical representations of later savages, assumed an aspect which varied with the special history, the ethnic temperament, the geographical and extrinsic conditions of different peoples; but considered in itself, it is always the same, and is the necessary result of the evolution of myth and of thought. Since the evolution of myth leads to the gradual genesis of science, which becomes more rational as myth is transformed from the material to the ideal, ideas are substituted for myths, and laws, as Vico well observes, for the canons of poetry.

This noble and more rational theory of eternal and causative Ideas resembles anthropomorphic polytheism in concentrating into one supreme Idea the intellectual Zeus, the Being of beings, according to another mythical and scientific representation by Aristotle, and it was afterwards combined with the Semitic idea of the Absolute. This was fused with the Logos, the Platonic demiurgos of Messianic ideas, and afterwards produced the universal philosophy and religion of Catholicism, which dominated and still dominates over thought with vigorous tenacity, and extends into all the civilized world inhabited by European races. We do not only trace the same thought, modified, classified, and perfected in the Fourth Gospel, in the Councils, the Fathers, and the schoolmen, but also in independent philosophies. In our own time it has assumed new forms, derived from the rapid progress made in cosmic and experimental sciences, even in those which are apparently the most rationalizing. It is manifest in Hegel, Fichte, and Schelling, nor is it difficult to trace it in the latest and artificial theories of the schools of Schopenhauer and Hartmann. In all these cases the entification of logical conceptions is evident; in all there is an arbitrary personification of a conception or of a fundamental Idea.

In order fully to understand the evolution of thought in myth and science, it is necessary to consider the other schools which arose in Greece, prior to, and contemporaneously with, Plato, as we shall thus obtain a more comprehensive idea of the course of such a development. In addition to the natural and partly ideal schools, the Ionic, the Eleatic, the Pythagorean and the Platonic, there arose those of Leucippus, Democritus, and Epicurus, which might be called mechanical, and that of Aristotle, which takes a middle course between the idea and the fact, between the dynamic and the mechanical explanation of the universe.

In an intellectual people like the Greeks there arose, in addition to the speculative theories already mentioned, other opinions which were derived from minds singularly free from mythical ideas; the world was considered as a concourse of independent atoms; its genesis thus became more conformable with abstract mathematical calculation, effected by this combination of simple bodies and the evolution of elements. This was what Leucippus, Democritus, and Epicurus undertook to teach, passing beyond the natural and ideal myths, in order to take their stand on the movement of isolated parts as the maker of the universe. Hence followed the theory of atoms, and the mechanical construction of the world, of bodies and souls, their continual composition and decomposition. Since, however, these were mere speculations, not supported by experimental methods and adequate instruments, mythical forms were confounded with the mechanical explanation of the world, such as the altogether anthropomorphic conception of gods who were dissolved and formed again; the sensible effluvium from images, an effluvium which revealed the ancient belief in the normal and abnormal personification of imaginary forms, and of ideas. Yet the character of this teaching was progressive and rational in comparison with the mythical and ideal theory of Plato, and with the schools and religions which emanated from him, even up to our time, and thought was strongly stimulated in its opposition to the continuance of myth.

The influence of this school was confirmed by the Aristotelian teaching; if on the one side Aristotle inclined towards the mythical entities of Plato, and the old zoomorphic conception of the world, on the other his theory of perception and of ideas, his amazing observations in physiology and anatomy, and his natural classification of the animal kingdom, induced a positive tendency of thought, an a posteriori method of observation, which awakened the intelligence and predisposed it to a more rational and scientific evolution. His geocentric ideas of cosmogony, his logical forms, the human architecture of the world, his conception of the Being who was the end and cause of motion in all things, were indeed obstinately maintained by the philosophy of Catholics and schoolmen, and served as an obstacle to the real progress of science; but on the other hand, his general method of observing nature, the discoveries which he made, and the tendency of his researches, as well as the importance he assigned to consciousness in the formation of ideas, did much to foster independent inquiry in the history of human thought; and coupled with the earlier mechanical schools, he prepared the way for the evolution of modern science. This is not the place for tracing the simultaneous course of the evolution of the ideal and mechanical schools during the ages which separate us from their origin; and while the influence of the one gradually waned, the other gained strength, although in a sporadic way, first among privileged minds, and then more generally.

It necessarily happened that as the evolution of thought went on, impelled by its early tendencies, both mechanical and positive, the ideal system was also modified, and gave place to sounder and truer theories. This great fact, the ultimate evolution of our own time, was effected on the one side by psychological analysis, and on the other by the direct and experimental observation of nature. Setting aside the gradual preparation which led up to this point, we can consider Descartes and Galileo as the representatives of these two great factors; since the one by the analysis of thought, the other by natural experiments, overthrew the mythical ideas, although without being aware that the achievement would produce such grand results.

The Platonic Ideas were objective to the mind, and independent of it, since they were regarded as a divine, concrete, absolute world in themselves. The earlier evolution of myth and science relied upon this and were resolved into it. But we know that the process of thought is continuous in historic races, and that myth is gradually divested of its personality and assumes a more intellectual form in the mind. Thus the material Idea passed into an intellectual conception; that which first appeared in an objective and extrinsic form became subjective and intrinsic, a transition which was effected by the nominalists. This gave rise to a cognition which was altogether psychological; at first reality was wholly objective, and the ideas were only a sublime intellectual myth, but now the objective world disappeared, and the intellect which formulated the conception was the only real thing. In virtue of the faculty of entification, only the mind and its ideas were real, the world and all which it contained had a doubtful existence. This tendency had its ultimate expression in Fichte, who created the universe by means of the Ego, thus transforming the earlier objective myth into one which was wonderfully subjective. Descartes doubted about everything beyond the range of his own thought, and was the first to overthrow the former ideal realism, and to lead the way to science, and to more rational analysis. To him the teaching of Spinoza and Kant was really due, as well as the English schools which had so much to do with the destruction of the earlier mythical edifice of ideas.

But, as I have already observed, if this great rational progress were important on the one side, on the other it produced a more spiritualized form of myth, namely the subjective, which became still more powerful in the philosophy of Kant. While some thinkers sought to resolve and dissolve the objective myth, they did it in such a way as to add strength to the subjective form of myth and science, for which Descartes had prepared the way; the theory of Spinoza and of the German school in general fundamentally consists in the substitution of entified forms and dialectics of the mind for the earlier objective forms of ideas. A great error was rectified, and the former phase of the intellectual evolution of myth disappeared, in favour of another which, although still erroneous, was more rational and independent.

The subjective and still mythical representations, either of the mind or of external objects, were afterwards reduced to true science by positive and experimental methods, aided by instruments, and confirmed by the discoveries of Galileo and of his disciples throughout the civilized world. He was in modern times another great factor of the dissolution of myth, so far as it is definitive. Nature was made subordinate to weight and measure, and to their mathematical and mechanical proportions in various phenomena; these were deduced from experiment and the use of instruments, the factors which in the hands of Galileo and his great successors in all civilized nations, destroyed and are still destroying the old mythical conception of the world. In astronomy they overthrew the catholic tenet of the geocentric constitution of the heavens; they shattered the spheres in which they were confined, opened infinite space, and peopled it with an infinite number of stars, and in the attraction of gravity they discovered the universal law of motion in the firmament. Thus all the mythical representations of the system of the world, whether Aristotelian, Ptolemaic, or Biblical, vanished for ever, and the great zoomorphic body of the universe was dissolved; to be replaced by worlds circulating in infinite space, subject to the laws of number and of geometry.

Measure, weight, and proportion were applied to all celestial and terrestrial phenomena, and physics, chemistry, and all the organic sciences became the manifestation of facts, of observed and calculated laws, arranged in a natural order, and in this way an immense advance was made in all branches of science. The history of mankind, first regarded as the arbitrary arrangement of a superior being, as it was formulated in the teaching of Judaism and Christianity, had its own laws in the facts of which it consisted, and thus the mythical conception which endowed it with personal life was dissolved. The origin of things was explained by this method of observation, and by these positive conceptions; the records which had hitherto been regarded as a divine, extrinsic revelation came to be considered as simple documents, in which truth was to be separated from the myth which obscured and encompassed it. So by degrees, from fact to fact, from analysis to analysis, by observation, experiment, and decomposition, the rational, mechanical explanation arose and gathered strength. The generation of things, the variety of phenomena and their order, were derived from the primitive chemical atom, and from the various changes of form and rapidity of motion to which they are subjected. The old conception of atoms, which had never been forgotten, and which had unconsciously swayed and influenced the minds of men, reappears; but it reappears transformed by observation, by weight and measure and experiment, and it has become a science instead of a simple speculation. The atomistic evolution of the ancients, accepted by one school of speculative thought, which sought to overthrow the mythical representation of the world, was only an isolated anticipation of a few philosophers; it has now become a scientific evolution, common to all modern civilization. The theory of descent, transformation, and the general evolution of species, followed as a necessary corollary and immediate result of the dissolution of Plato's mythical conception of specific ideas, and of all the generic but material personifications with which nature had been peopled. When such conceptions of the ideal world were dissipated, those of the actual world of nature soon followed, and this de-personification of natural, mythical species in the vast organic kingdom is one of the most splendid intellectual achievements of the age.

This victory of the natural sciences has reacted on those which are psychological, and on the theory of the mind, and has subjected them to the necessities and form of this new phase of the evolution of thought. The subjective had been substituted for the objective myth and had created the forms of mind, its logical laws and intrinsic process, the objective synthesis of the world, and it was now influenced by the stupendous discoveries and analyses of other sciences, so that psychology was in its turn transformed into a science, not only of observation, but of experiment. Measure, weight, numerical proportion, in short the experimental method, took possession of the facts, acts, and processes of the mind, as of every other object and subject of nature. In addition to the great names of modern psychologists in England, we may mention among other experimental psychologists in Germany, Fechner, Wundt, Lotze, Helmholtz, Weber, Kammler, etc.; illustrious men in France and elsewhere might also be cited to show what progress has been made and is about to be made in this field. The destruction of myth and of the subjective myths of psychology is always going on, and a positive science of mental phenomena has arisen, like that of natural phenomena. The ultimate phase of myth is so near its end that it has been possible to create a psychology implying the absence of a soul. The scientific faculty has now indeed a complete ascendency over the mythical representation with which it was originally coeval.

Yet we do not mean to say that myth is extinct. In the case of the great majority of the human race, a small and elect portion excepted, myth and all the superstitions which proceed from it persist in an ideal, cosmic, spiritual, or religious form, and these are only slowly disappearing among the common people, and even among the educated classes. Owing to the primordial and innate necessity which it is so difficult to overcome, science itself still nourishes myths within its pale, although unconsciously and in their most rational form. Within our own recollection the imponderable was a tenet of physics, and this was indeed, in spite of all the enlightenment of science, a mythical entification of forces. The same mythical entifications were found in physiology, in chemistry, in nearly all the sciences. Undoubtedly these scientific myths had no anthropomorphic value, yet they are notwithstanding truly mythical entifications, inasmuch as they virtually personify laws, or mere modes of motion.

Ether, according to our present conception of it, differing in its laws and influences from the atoms which constitute the world, and working among and above them, is perhaps only a grand myth like that of the imponderable, which has been exploded; that is, it is held to be a material entity, while it may be only another modification of the elementary matter in a state differing from the three already known to us; some of Crooke's late experiments on one condition of extremely gaseous matter leads to this assumption. The divided forces of matter, and the dualism which still survives, are also mythical conceptions. Although so much progress has been made in a rational direction, and truth is widely diffused, yet the old mythical instinct constantly reappears in some form or other. I must be permitted to say that this is an evident proof of the truth of my theory. Unless myth were due to an intrinsic psychical and organic law, it would not so persistently reappear. As soon as men are rationally conscious of this entifying faculty and its immediate effects on knowledge, the illusion will cease. Myth will be destroyed in every kind of facts and phenomena, and science, no longer the unconscious victim of this illusion, will advance with caution and assurance.



CHAPTER VIII.

OF DREAMS, ILLUSIONS, NORMAL AND ABNORMAL HALLUCINATIONS, DELIRIUM, AND MADNESS—CONCLUSION.

In the preceding chapters, I have shown, as I believe, the genesis of myth, the fundamental faculty in which it necessarily originates, and its evolution in man, particularly in the Aryan and Semitic races. We have seen that the primitive and universal fact consists in the immediate and spontaneous entification of natural phenomena and of the ideas themselves; and we have resolved this fact into its elements, from which all the generating sources of myth issue, that is, from the immediate effects of the perception. Putting man out of the question, we ascertained that the same innate necessity was common to the animal kingdom.

In order to complete the theory, we must consider some other facts and psychical phenomena, both normal and abnormal, so as to ascertain whether these are not due to the same cause, as far as respects their intrinsic forms; namely, the belief in the reality of images seen in dreams, as well as in those which appear in illusions, in normal hallucinations of the senses, and in those which are abnormal, in ecstasy, in delirium, in madness, in idiocy, and dementia. In all these mental conditions, we ascribe a body and material existence to images which for various causes appear to be really presented to our senses.

If we are able to show that all such appearances are believed to have a real existence in virtue of the same law and faculty of perception which generated myth in its earliest manifestation, we shall have succeeded in establishing a common genesis for all these various psychical phenomena, thus affording no contemptible contribution to psychology in general, and to the science of human thought.

To dream is not merely a normal act of man, but, as it appears from many witnesses, it is common to all animals. In dreams the ordinary laws of time and space are strangely modified, and images of all kinds appear, sometimes confusedly, sometimes in a rational order, often in accordance with the laws of association, while the voluntary exercise of thought may be said to be dormant. This is, speaking generally, the condition and nature of dreams, which we must presently consider adequately with more subtle and exact analysis.

Before we trace the cause of the apparent reality of these images, and the laws which govern it, let us consider man in his waking condition, so as to ascertain at once the likeness and the difference between these two states. We must first inquire whether the waking is absolutely distinct from the dreaming state as far as the appearance of the images, their nature, and mode of action are concerned. It has been observed by many psychologists and physiologists that in the waking state, when images do not arise from the immediate presence of objects, or are not directed by the will to a definite aim, they appear, group themselves, and disperse by the immediate association of ideas, and the measurements of time and space are modified just as they are in dreams. These observations are correct, and the phenomena may be verified by every one for himself.

In this waking state, which really resembles that of dreams, only the analogy of form has been perceived; the ideas of the objects present to the mind have resembled those of images seen in dreams, but they have continued to be mere ideas, presented to the imagination, whereas in dreams the things seen have been supposed to have a real existence. In this respect the analysis is partly true and partly false; it is not, as we shall see, perfect and exact.

It sometimes happens, owing to special circumstances and conditions of mind, or to peculiar temperaments, that the ideas of things do not remain as mere thoughts in the thinker's mind, but that they become so intense that they are for the moment held to be real, precisely as in a dream.

I do not here speak of abnormal or pathological conditions, or of extraordinary phenomena, but of a normal and common condition. If there is any novelty in the assertion, it is owing to a want of observation and reflection, and to not attempting to trace the real nature of the phenomena in which we take part, and which occur every day. The habitual inaccuracy of observation has led to the use of many proverbs and aphorisms in the interpretation of things which have been transmitted from one generation to another, and are now accepted as indubitable axioms. These are to be found in every branch of knowledge, and we have an instance in the popular and scientific aphorism that in dreams images appear to be real, and that in the waking state they always continue to be mere thoughts and ideas.

This is not the fact, since, putting illusions and hallucinations out of the question, thoughts and ideas sometimes assume the character and nature of real objects, just as they do in dreams. This fact constitutes the link and gradual assimilation of the two states, since in no series of phenomena natura facit saltum.

When, for instance, as often happens, we abandon ourselves to a train of thought, and our perception of surrounding objects is weakened by inattention, we become as it were unconscious, and are only intent on the thoughts and ideas which move us. Since no definite object constrains the will to rule and guide these thoughts and ideas, that condition of mind is established which we have shown to be identical in form with the act of dreaming, for in this case also thoughts and ideas have their origin in association alone. In this condition a phenomenon peculiar to dreams may also occur which may be termed the suggestive impulse; a sound or some sudden sensation produces an immediate transformation of the image itself, and a new dream arises in conformity with the nature of the new impression. Every one must, consciously or unconsciously, have experienced such a phenomenon, and this special characteristic of dreams may also take place in the waking condition which I have described. I myself can bear witness to this fact, and will mention one among several instances: I was once reading inattentively, seated at my ease in a lounging chair, and my thoughts took quite another direction, wandering vaguely from one thing to another. All at once some people entered an adjoining room talking together; I heard what they said indistinctly, but the word Florence reached my ears, and I soon imagined myself to be in that city, and going on from one association to another I continued for some time to see again the places, monuments, and people I had known there. Yet I was fully awake, and from time to time I brushed the flies from my face and glanced at the clock on the chimney-piece, since I had to go out at three o'clock.

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, without distinguishing the difference between these two states of consciousness. Any one who has long practised himself in the observation of such distinctions 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 my 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 I was amazed by the lively image brought before me. I could adduce other instances from my own experience and that of others to show that in a waking and altogether normal state we may believe in the reality of the image as we do in dreams.

This vivid and momentary realization of images is very common in the lower classes, who often talk to themselves, and use gestures which show that they are conversing at the moment with imaginary persons, who stand before them, as if they were really there, in the same manner as in dreams. Indeed, every one has experienced this phenomenon for himself, especially when strongly excited by anger, sorrow, or hope. If it were possible to reflect on the process of thought at the time we should distinctly understand that we were dreaming while still awake.

The vivid imagination of artists is well known, so that they are able to see and represent things and persons, either in words, with the pencil, or the chisel, just as if they were actually present. The image so vividly realized is a necessary condition of the exercise of their respective arts. When great poets, such as Dante, Ariosto, Milton, and Goethe, conceived and idealized their thoughts with every detail of circumstances, persons, actions, expressions, and movements, no one can deny that the images were vividly present to their minds, and that while in the act of composition these were unconsciously regarded as having a real existence. If these poetic descriptions 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 of composition. The impression of truthfulness 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.

Wigan 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 sketching 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 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 verification 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 representative idea of the thing naturally tend to become, or to appear to be, actual realities, even in a strictly normal condition of mind and body. Nor do they only implicitly tend to become such by the innate impulse of the mind, but they actually become so in fugitive moments of which man is scarcely conscious, and they appear to him exactly as they do in dreams. Hence it follows that there is no hard and fast line between the sleeping and waking states, so far as the nature of images, their source, action, and combinations are concerned, when men are distracted in mind, and the course of their thoughts is not voluntarily directed to some definite object; so that by a psychological process the phenomena of the waking state may be partly transformed into those of dreams. The vivid character of the image, presented to the senses as if actually there, is common to both phenomena. The way in which we begin to dream shows how, owing to our physiological conditions, we pass through regular stages from the waking state into that of sleep.

"Nuovo pensiero dentro a me si mise, Dal qual piu altri nacquero e diversi; E tanto di uno in altro vaneggiai Che gli occhi per vaghezza ricopersi, E il pensamento in sogno trasmutai."[33]

So Dante writes in the "Purgatorio" with deep and subtle truth. Each man can verify for himself the exactness of the great poet's description.

I myself can readily study the phenomena of dreams, since I never sleep without dreaming so vividly that I remember all the circumstances in the morning. I have used all sorts of artifices in order to trace the beginning of sleep and dreams, and always with the same result, so that I am certain of the accuracy of experiments which have been repeated a hundred times. I have examined other persons who have made the same observations, all of whom agree with me.

When repose, the herald of sleep and dreams, begins, my thoughts wander in an irregular and somewhat confused manner. As they are gradually subjected to the associations to which they successively give rise, they are transformed into more vivid images, a vividness which is always in inverse proportion to the attention. This gradually produces the state which has been described by Maury and others as hypnagogic hallucination; that is, the images seem to be real, although the subject is still partly awake, and the voluntary exercise of thought is lost from time to time in this species of incipient chaos. It is at this point that images are really most intense, and that every idea assumes a body and form, every image a reality: finally, when the body and the brain have reached the physiological conditions of sleep, thoughts which had been changed into hypnagogic images in the intermediate stage between sleep and waking, are altogether transformed into the real images of dreams.

By an effort of will I have often been able to surprise myself in this intermediate stage, and the same thing has been done by others, and it always appears that this is the real moment of transition from wakefulness to dreaming, I have been able to verify the fact that the first dream is only the continuation of our last waking thoughts, which have now become dramatic and real I have also observed that this intermediate stage between waking and dreaming, during which the images are real and vivid, although we are still conscious of our real condition, goes on for a long while, sometimes for a whole night, with brief intervals of sleep. This has occurred to me when I was kept awake, either when travelling at night, or when I had taken a large draught of water before lying down (other liquids or food does not produce the phenomenon) or if I have been looking during the day at objects illuminated by dazzling sunshine. In all these circumstances the bright and vivid images appear reduced to an almost microscopic scale, although very distinct in form and colour; in ordinary cases, the images appear of the ordinary size, but not without a tendency to become smaller.

I believe that there is a physical cause for the reduction and attenuation of the images in the excessive excitement of the retina, or central encephalic organ in which images are formed in conscious concurrence with the cortical part of the hemispheres. Owing to the excitement caused by wakefulness, by fatigue, by sunshine, or in some cases by the condition of the nerves of the stomach, the objective projection on psychical space, partly transmitted by heredity and gradually formed by associations and local signs,[34] is arrested by the innate force of the image on the organ, and it appears to be smaller and in proportion with the relative smallness of the image which is produced by minute vibrations and by the susceptibility of the cellule. This intermediate and persistent stage of hypnagogic images serves in every way to explain the physical genesis of involuntary hallucinations.

As a proof that the image physiologically assumes the form of a real appearance, I may mention the experience of myself and others. When suddenly awakened from a vivid dream I have sometimes, even when I was fully awake, seen for an instant the figures of my dream still moving, and projected on the wall. This fact shows that even the images of our waking state have, in the physiological conditions of the brain, a tendency to take real forms, so that they may be termed normal, or more properly, inchoate hallucinations, corrected by the conscious efforts of our waking state and external consciousness. So that it might be said that dreams are at first the transformation of our waking thoughts into normal images and hallucinations, and afterwards into those of dreams, properly so called.

If the hypnagogic phase actually affects the cerebral cellules in connection with the various senses of which they are the organs, the phases of sleep and dreams, strictly so called, have more general conditions. The idea, converted into an image presented to the senses, may thus be said to have three stages: that of the waking state, which depends as we have said on the intensity and vividness with which it is reproduced, aided by a momentary detachment from the real environment; secondly, the hypnagogic phase, in which there is the physiological action of the nervous centres, which produce the image, though still with the implicit consciousness of the waking state; and finally, the actual dream, in which this implicit consciousness is almost always wanting, and the psychical exercise of thought is completely transformed into visions and figures which are believed to be real. This in its turn depends upon the other two causes, and on the physiological relaxation of the body, which is to a great extent isolated, so that the effectual impulses of external nature are greatly attenuated.

In the waking state, the whole body and all its organs of relation and movement are in tension. The cerebro-spinal axis virtually excites the whole muscular and peripheral system in such a way that relaxation or relative repose becomes impossible. But the brain, with all its dependencies and appendices, is not only the organ of thought, but it stimulates and directs our whole system, as numerous experiments have shown. In the waking state both these functions are exercised equally, as far as the impulses and functions of the body are concerned, and as long as the psychical and organic characteristics of the waking state continue. But in sleep the exciting influence of the brain is diminished, and the brain transmits much less of the normal excitement and normal tension to the spinal axis with its ramifications in the afferent and efferent nerves; in the waking state an external impression is promptly conveyed to the centres, whence it returns in corresponding movements with the usual connection and rapidity, whether reflex or deliberate. Since in sleep the relative condition is flaccid and torpid, this action no longer takes place. For if the brain be affected by strong impressions, and these are followed by corresponding movements due to reflex action, as is often the case, even in sleep, the dreamer is only obscurely conscious of them, and they almost wholly depend on the spinal axis, and the peripheral ganglia.

As we have said, the function of the brain is duplex; it stimulates and directs, and it is also sentient and conscious, and this second function is persistent in dreams. Although the brain is no longer directed by a power which dictates psychical acts and phenomena, yet its automatic action is not 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 reality 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 analogous 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 myself, of the place where I am, of my 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 unpleasant situation by uttering with great difficulty some inarticulate sound, which acts as a shock, and I thus obtain the mastery of my body, for the nerves of speech and the muscular movements of articulation also fail to answer to my will. If this occurs when I am alone, the struggle is severe, and there is a violent shock to the whole body before its equilibrium is restored and the motor function of the brain resumes its office.

It is therefore manifest that the stimulating function of the brain is dormant in sleep and dreams, but its automatic, psychical function persists; it sometimes happens that the stimulus of the will is awakened before the stimulus of motion, and that the brain may be aroused to consciousness for some moments before it has resumed its normal functions as a stimulating organ, which were attenuated and relaxed in sleep. The abnormal condition of paralysis proves and confirms this fact.

Let us now ascertain the cause of the various psychical and physiological conditions which aim at and often succeed in presenting to the mind a mere representative sign as a substantial and real image. What is the cause of the apparent reality of dreams? The image is clearly a psychical phenomenon, containing a sensible element of which we are conscious; the fundamental faculty of the perception is exerted on it as on a real object, and the immediate results are precisely identical. The reader will remember that we have shown that a phenomenon involves the intuitive idea of an active subject, so that the image also, in accordance with the innate faculty of perception, must normally appear to the mind as such. When this is not the case, it is because the normal effect of natural phenomena, to which our attention is constantly directed, and our mental education and hereditary influence, have accustomed us to distinguish at once between the mere idea and the real object, and thus we discern the difference between the normal action of thought and sense, and illusions, hallucinations, and dreams. But since these psychical and physiological conditions lose their force when the habit and actions of our waking state are dormant, the primitive and innate entification of the image quickly recurs, as we can plainly see from the previous analysis.

This is so much the case, that some savage peoples even now find it hard to distinguish real events from those of dreams, and this is owing to a defect in their memory or to the imperfection of their language. In fact, all civilized and barbarous peoples in the world have without exception believed, and still believe, in the reality of images seen in dreams, and their personification has been the source of an immense number of myths. Even now, with all our civilization and advanced science, not only the common people, but many of those in fashionable and tolerably cultivated society, believe in the reality of dreams and in their hallucinations, and derive from them fears, hopes, and warnings for their future life.

I will give one instance in a thousand to prove the innate tendency even in the act of dreaming to transform the image into a real object. It appeared to me that I was in a large room filled with acquaintances and strangers, who discussed an event which had really occurred in the city a few days before. All at once I raised my eyes to the wall of the room, and saw a large picture, representing a landscape with distant mountains, streams, cottages, and animals. As I looked, the picture was gradually transformed into a real object, and I found myself, together with the company before mentioned, in the midst of the fields, on the bank of the river, and within one of the cottages.

In another dream, I appeared to be conversing with an old soldier on the shores of a lake; after some incoherent talk, he began to describe a bloody battle in which he had taken part; he had not gone far before the narrative was changed for an actual occurrence, and I was in the midst of a real battle, such as the soldier had undertaken to describe. Another night I dreamed that I was reading a tragic poem, relating terrible deeds of blood and rapine, and suddenly I seemed to have become an actor or real spectator of that which I had at first read in a book. In another strange dream I was going over a difficult pass in a hired carriage, and I seemed to see before me a friend from whom I had parted on the previous day, when he got into an omnibus to return to the country. I soon saw in the distance a large coach-builder's establishment, a vast enclosure with sheds and carriages, and in the piazza I saw the manager, a man I knew, who had really some appointment in a carriage manufactory; the building recalled by association the familiar appearance of the high chimneys which rose above the roof, and while thinking of those chimneys with my eyes fixed on the manager, he appeared to me to be changed into a very high chimney, still bearing a human face. Finally, not to multiply examples, I remember a dream in which I was present at a popular disturbance, where one woman, more furious than the rest, came to blows with her husband, and called him a dog. Suddenly the scene changed, and I was transported to a courtyard in which there were poultry, pigs, and a fine dog of my acquaintance, called Lightning. Again the scene changed, and I found myself in a country district with some friends, exposed to a violent storm of thunder and lightning.

We clearly see from these facts that whatever may be presented to the imagination is transformed into a real object in the dream itself, so that it might be called a dream within a dream, and in the last instance the transmutation passes through three images and consecutive objects. This transmutation not only consists in the transition from our waking thoughts to the image of our dreams, but it takes place in the act of dreaming; such is the power of the faculty of perception, in which we find the first origin of myth in man, and its roots also in the animal kingdom. Thus the genesis of myth, as far as the entification of the image is concerned, is the same as that of dreams.

The normal illusions of the senses, which are believed to be real by primitive men, and by those ignorant of physical laws, have a similar origin. The objection of such phenomena as a mirage, or the tremulous effect produced in tropical regions by the refraction and reflection of light on trees, rocks, and mountains, so well described by Humboldt, is due to ignorance of the laws of nature, and this is in fact an entification of the phenomenon, occasioned by the innate tendency to animation which is proper to the perception. In this it is easy to trace the genesis both of myth and dreams. The fact of hallucination is more complex, even in its normal state, that is, in those general conditions of mind and body in which reason has complete command over us.

Without entering into any analysis of the various forms of hallucination of which many able psychologists and physicians of the insane have treated, let us turn to the more ordinary cases in which an image of the mind is projected on the external world so as to appear real. The roots of such a phenomenon are strictly organic, and belong to the centres in which the image is formed, as we have already observed; this image sometimes stands out in such vivid relief on the psychical space that it seems to be an external, not, as it usually appears in less vivid form, an internal intuition. The hallucinations which Nicolai describes himself to have experienced may be taken as a classical example. When Andral was returning from an autopsy, he clearly saw the corpse stretched before him as he entered his room. Goethe, Byron, and many others, have been affected in the same way. I myself have occasionally had hallucinations of the kind when in a perfectly healthy condition of mind and body; one, in particular, of a very vivid character, occurred when I awoke one morning and seemed to see a tall and venerable priest entering my chamber. It is needless to multiply examples; similar facts abound in classic books in English, French, German, and other languages. Let us rather study the phenomenon and trace its origin.

It is clear on the one side that the images of the hallucinations of sight or hearing appear to have a real existence, so that they may be observed and studied with ease; and it is also certain that this image has no external existence, and is simply a cerebral fact, due to the organs adapted for perception. Without considering the cause of the external projection, to which I have already alluded, since perhaps its physiological and psychical genesis is not yet fully understood, we must consider the image, so far as it is believed to be real.

In cases of normal hallucination the reason is intact, and the observer is conscious of the illusion, yet notwithstanding this positive judgment the image has an appearance of complete reality. The cause of this illusion is evidently the same as that of the illusions of dreams, and of the origin of myth; namely, that everywhere and always the mental or natural phenomenon and its image are respectively entified. In the normal waking state, habit and other causes on which we have touched render our ideas of things altogether immaterial, as merely psychical forms and representative signs, but when the excitement of the organs increases, so as to present them to the consciousness as objective images, then, owing to the interruption of the ordinary process, they are suddenly entified, and appear as an external phenomenon. Hallucinations are therefore explained by our theory, and it is further confirmed by the hallucinations of animals, and especially by the delirium of dogs and other animals affected by hydrophobia, or by cerebral excitement artificially produced by alcoholic and exhilarating drugs.

If a man is habitually subject to many and various hallucinations, and his sane judgment esteems them to be such, they are undoubtedly unusual phenomena, but they do not in any way injure the rational exercise of the mind. It is only when he believes the images to be real that the abnormal state begins, termed delirium if it is of short duration, and madness if it is permanent. We must examine hallucination under these new conditions.