mples. Let us take an exaggerated
instance: This permanent dream is, indeed, only a part of their
existence; it is above all active through its intensity; but, while it
lasts, it absorbs them so completely that they enter the external world
only with a sudden, violent and painful shock.

(3) If the changing of images into strong states preponderating in
consciousness is no longer an episode but a lasting disposition, then
the imaginative life undergoes a partial systematization that approaches
insanity. Everyone may be "absorbed" for a moment; the above-mentioned
authors are so frequently. On a higher level this invading supremacy of
the internal life becomes a habit. This third degree is but the second
carried to excess.

Some cases of double personality (those of Azam, Reynolds) are known in
which the second state is at first embryonic and of short duration; then
its appearances are repeated, its sphere becomes extended. Little by
little it engrosses the greater part of life; it may even entirely
supplant the earlier self. The growing working of the imagination is
similar to this. Thanks to two causes acting in unison, temperament and
habit, the imaginative and internal life tends to become systematized
and to encroach more and more on the real, external life. In an account
by Fere[152] one may follow step by step this work of systematization
which we abridge here to its chief characteristics.

The subject, M......, a man thirty-seven years old, had from childhood a
decided taste for solitude. Seated in an out-of-the-way corner of the
house or out of doors, "he commenced from that time on to build castles
in Spain that little by little took on a considerable importance in his
life. His constructions were at first ephemeral, replaced every day by
new ones. They became progressively more consistent.... When he had well
entered into his imaginary role, he often succeeded in continuing his
musing in the presence of other people. At college, whole hours would be
spent in this way; often he would see and hear nothing." Married, the
head of a prosperous business house, he had some respite; then he
returned to his former constructions. "They commenced by being, as
before, not very durable or absorbing; but gradually they acquired more
intensity and duration, and lastly became fixed in a definite form."

"To sum up, here is what this ideal life, lasting almost from his fourth
year, meant: M...... had built at Chaville, on t