actual hallucination. The hypnotised patient sees the absent object which
he is told to see, the sleeper sees things not really present.

Our primitive state, before the enormous competition of other memories and
new sensations set in, would thus be a state of hallucination. Our normal
present condition, in which hallucination is checked by competing memories
and new sensations, is a suppression of our original, primitive, natural
tendencies. Hallucination represents 'the main trunk of our psychical
existence.'[15] In Dr. Dessoir's theory this condition of hallucination
is man's original and most primitive condition, but it is not a _higher_,
rather a lower state of spiritual activity than the everyday practical
unhallucinated consciousness.

This is also the opinion of Hegel, who supposes our primitive mental
condition to be capable of descrying objects remote in space and time. Mr.
Myers, as we saw, is of the opposite opinion, as to the relative dignity
and relative reality of the present everyday self, and the old original
fundamental Self. Dr. Dessoir refrains from pronouncing a decided opinion
as to whether the original, primitive, hallucinated self within us does
'preside over powers and actions at a distance,' such as clairvoyance; but
he believes in hypnotisation at a distance. His theory, like Hegel's, is
that of 'atavism,' or 'throwing back' to some very remote ancestral
condition. This will prove of interest later.

Hegel, at all events, believed in the fact of clairvoyance (though deeming
it of little practical use); he accepted telepathy ('the magic tie'); he
accepted interchange of sensations between the hypnotiser and the
hypnotised; he believed in the divining rod, and, unlike Kant, even in
'Scottish second-sight.' 'The intuitive soul oversteps the conditions of
time and space; it beholds things remote, things long past, and things to