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 plai