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