ive tendency to observe, to analyze, or
to criticise, reason, find fault. In order to take the decisive step and
become abnormal one condition more is necessary--intensity of the
representations.

2. Next, the interchange of place, indicated above, occurs. Weak states
(images) become strong; strong states (perceptions) become weak. The
impressions from without are powerless to fulfill their regular function
of inhibition. We find the simplest example of this state in the
exceptional persistence of certain dreams. Ordinarily, our nocturnal
imaginings vanish as empty phantasmagorias at the inrush of the
perceptions and habits of daily life--they seem like faraway phantoms,
without objective value. But, in the struggle occurring, on waking,
between images and perceptions, the latter are not always victorious.
There are dreams--i.e., imaginary creations--that remain firm in face
of reality, and for some time go along parallel with it. Taine was
perhaps the first to see the importance of this fact. He reports that
his relative, Dr. Baillarger, having dreamt that one of his friends had
been appointed editor of a journal, announced the news seriously to
several persons, and doubt arose in his mind only toward the end of the
afternoon. Since then contemporary psychologists have gathered various
observations of this kind.[151] The emotional persistence of certain
dreams is known. So-and-so, one of our neighbors, plays in a dream an
odious role; we may have a feeling of repulsion or spite toward him
persisting throughout the day. But this triumph of the image, accidental
and ephemeral in normal man, is frequent and stable in the imaginers of
the second class. Many among them have asserted that this internal world
is the only reality. Gerard de Nerval "had very early the conviction
that the majority is mistaken, that the material universe in which it
believes, because its eyes see it and its hands touch it, is nothing but
phantoms and appearances. For him the invisible world, on the contrary,
was the only one not chimerical." Likewise, Edgar Allan Poe: "The real
things of the world would affect me like visions, and only so; while the
wild ideas of the land of dreams became in turn not only the feeding
ground of my daily existence but positively the sole and entire
existence itself." Others describe their life as "a permanent dream."
We could multiply examples. Aside from the poets and artists, the
mystics would furnish copious exa