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 NOTES. 285 The hypnagogic state is a transition between waking and sleeping. It is thus a condition of mental feebleness and suggestibility doubtless correlated with a condition of irregular brain anaemia. A plausible suggestion under such conditions is too readily accepted. Does ordinary paramnesia occur under similar conditions of mental feeble- ness and suggestibility ? It is rare to find descriptions of param- nesic experiences by scientific observers who are alive to the im- portance of accurately recording all the conditions, but there is some reason to think that paramnesia does occur in states produced by ex- haustion and allied causes. It seems to be fairly frequent in languid and anaemic persons, 1 in the suggestible, in those given to day-dreaming. Bonatelli, it may be added, has found a special connexion between paramuesia and conditions of nervous irritability, and Anjel between paramnesia and fatigue. 2 As Dugas has pointed out, it is also well known to writers and others who, while possessing unusual mental capacity, strain that capacity to the utmost. The earliest case of paramnesia recorded in detail by a trained observer is that described by Wigan as occurring to himself at the funeral of the Princess Charlotte. He had passed several disturbed nights previous to the ceremony, with, almost complete deprivation of rest on the night immediately preceding ; he was suffering from grief as well as from exhaustion from want of food ; he had been standing for four hours, and would have fainted on taking his place by the coffin if it had not been for the excitement of the occasion. When the music ceased the coffin slowly sank in absolute silence, broken by an outburst of grief from the bereaved husband. " In an instant," Wigan proceeds, " I felt not merely animpression, but a convic- tion, that I had seen the whole scene before on some former occasion." Such a condition on the verge of syncope, it is evident, closely resembles the hypnagogic state. The frequency of paramnesia in the prodromal experience have been experienced before. I frequently read a new poem with a vague sense of familiarity, but such an experience never puts on a really paramnesic character, and I quickly realise that it is explainable by the fact that the writer of the poem has fallen under the influence of Heine, or Tennyson, or Rosetti, as the case may be. One may have similar experiences with regard to new psychological theories. The only experience I can personally speak of as approaching true paramnesia occurred on visiting the ruins of Pevensey Castle some ten years ago. On going up the slope towards the ivy-covered ruins, bathed in bright sunlight, I experienced a strange and abiding sense of familiarity with the scene. Three theories might account for this experience : (1) that it was a case of true paramnesia ; (2) that I had been taken to the spot as a child ; (3) that the view was included among a series of coloured stereoscopic pictures with which I was familiar as a child, and which certainly contained similar scenes. I incline to this last explanation. Here as elsewhere there are no keys which will unlock all doors. 1 In this connexion it is interesting to note that Dr. Marie de Mana- ceine, in her very extended series of observations, has found that anae- mia, and especially chlorosis, constitute a powerful factor in producing predisposition to the phenomena of the hypnagogic state. 2 Burnham, "Paramnesia," Am. Jour. Psychology, May, 1889. I should add that Anjel's view of paramnesia, as very briefly outlined by Burnham, seems to have some relation to that which has independently commended itself to me.