who was dead. 'It is thus impossible to make out whether what the
clairvoyants really see preponderates over what they deceive themselves
in.'

As long as the facts which Hegel accepted are not officially welcomed by
science, it may seem superfluous to dispute as to whether they are
attained by the lower or the higher stratum of our consciousness. But
perhaps the question here at issue may be elucidated by some remarks of
Dr. Max Dessoir. Psychology, he says, has proved that in every conception
and idea an image or group of images must be present. These mental images
are the recrudescence or recurrence of perceptions. We see a tree, or a
man, or a dog, and whenever we have before our minds the conception or
idea of any of these things the original perception of them returns,
though of course more faintly. But in Dr. Dessoir's opinion these revived
mental images would reach the height of actual hallucinations (so that the
man, dog, or tree would seem visibly present) if other memories and new
sensations did not compete with them and check their development.

Suppose, to use Mlle. Ferrand's metaphor, a human body, living, but with
all its channels of sensation hitherto unopened. Open the sense of sight
to receive a flash of green colour, and close it again. Apparently,
whenever the mind informing this body had the conception of green (and it
could have no other) it would also have an hallucination of green, thus

'Annihilating all that's made,
To a green thought in a green shade.'

Now, in sleep or hypnotic trance the competition of new sensations and
other memories is removed or diminished, and therefore the idea of a man,
dog, or tree once suggested to the hypnotised patient, does become an