Dreams | Page 9

observer could not perceive
more than eight or ten letters, for example, of the thirty or forty letters
composing the formula. Usually, however, he read the entire phrase
without difficulty. But that is not for us the most instructive point of
this experiment.
If the observer is asked what are the letters that he is sure of having
seen, these may be, of course, the letters really written, but there may
be also absent letters, either letters that we replaced by others or that
have simply been omitted. Thus an observer will see quite distinctly in
full light a letter which does not exist, if this letter, on account of the
general sense, ought to enter into the phrase. The characters which have
really affected the eye have been utilized only to serve as an indication
to the unconscious memory of the observer. This memory, discovering
the appropriate remembrance, i.e., finding the formula to which these
characters give a start toward realization, projects the remembrance
externally in an hallucinatory form. It is this remembrance, and not the
words themselves, that the observer has seen. It is thus demonstrated
that rapid reading is in great part a work of divination, but not of
abstract divination. It is an externalization of memories which take
advantage, to a certain extent, of the partial realization that they find
here and there in order to completely realize themselves.
Thus, in the waking state and in the knowledge that we get of the real
objects which surround us, an operation is continually going on which
is of quite the same nature as that of the dream. We perceive merely a
sketch of the object. This sketch appeals to the complete memory, and

this complete memory, which by itself was either unconscious or
simply in the thought state, profits by the occasion to come out. It is
this kind of hallucination, inserted and fitted into a real frame, that we
perceive. It is a shorter process: it is very much quicker done than to
see the thing itself. Besides, there are many interesting observations to
be made upon the conduct and attitude of the memory images during
this operation. It is not necessary to suppose that they are in our
memory in a state of inert impressions. They are like the steam in a
boiler, under more or less tension.
At the moment when the perceived sketch calls them forth, it is as if
they were then grouped in families according to their relationship and
resemblances. There are experiments of Münsterberg, earlier than those
of Goldscheider and Müller, which appear to me to confirm this
hypothesis, although they were made for a very different purpose.
Münsterberg wrote the words correctly; they were, besides, not
common phrases; they were isolated words taken by chance. Here again
the word was exposed during the time too short for it to be entirely
perceived. Now, while the observer was looking at the written word,
some one spoke in his ear another word of a very different significance.
This is what happened: the observer declared that he had seen a word
which was not the written word, but which resembled it in its general
form, and which besides recalled, by its meaning, the word which was
spoken in his ear. For example, the word written was "tumult" and the
word spoken was "railroad." The observer read "tunnel." The written
word was "Trieste" and the spoken word was the German
"Verzweiflung" (despair). The observer read "Trost," which signifies
"consolation." It is as if the word "railroad," pronounced in the ear,
wakened, without our knowing it, hopes of conscious realization in a
crowd of memories which have some relationship with the idea of
"railroad" (car, rail, trip, etc.). But this is only a hope, and the memory
which succeeds in coming into consciousness is that which the actually
present sensation had already begun to realize.
Such is the mechanism of true perception, and such is that of the dream.
In both cases there are, on one hand, real impressions made upon the
organs of sense, and upon the other memories which encase themselves

in the impression and profit by its vitality to return again to life.
But, then, what is the essential difference between perceiving and
dreaming? What is sleep? I do not ask, of course, how sleep can be
explained physiologically. That is a special question, and besides is far
from being settled. I ask what is sleep psychologically; for our mind
continues to exercise itself when we are asleep, and it exercises itself as
we have just seen on elements analogous to those of waking, on
sensations and memories; and also in an analogous manner combines
them. Nevertheless we have on the one hand normal perception, and on
the other the dream. What is