Page:Mind (New Series) Volume 6.djvu/303

 NOTES. 287 III. In this brief Note I have tried to indicate the possibility that : (1) The hypnagogic state with its heightened liability to auto- suggestion is really allied to the pararnnesic state ; (2) enfeeblement of perception, due to the presence of a state of general psychic enfeeble- ment, whether in individuals of high or low intelligence, is the chief and possibly essential character of paramnesia, although 'there may be a subjective sensation of increased power ; (8) this enfeeblement may alone account for the paramnesia by bringing an externally aroused perception down to a lower and fainter stage in which it is on a level with an internally aroused perception a memory. Just as in hypnagogic. paramnesia the vivid and life-like dream or internal impression is raised to the class of memories and becomes the shadow of a real experience, so in waking paramnesia the external impression is lowered to the same class. Perception is alike dulled in each case, and the immediate experience follows the line of least resistance this time too carelessly or too prematurely to join the great bulk of our experiences. HAVBLOCK ELLIS. THE LATE PEOFESSOR WALLACE. Prof. Wallace was a striking figure and an individual force in the English philosophical revival. His position in the movement was unique, and his influence therefore invaluable. A philosopher with his whole heart and mind, an original thinker, trained to accurate scholarship and possessed of immense learning, he has not associated his name with any independent treatise on a philosophical subject. It is possible that, had his life continued to its natural term, we might have been made the richer by some direct creation of his mind, free from " the interposition of historical form and material, which cuts off a great majority of the world from any direct access to truth ". 1 Many reasons for his attitude might be suggested. He felt the influence, we may perhaps conjecture, and partly shared the critical reserve, of his predecessor, T. H. Green, and of the late Master of Balliol, to whom his most considerable work was dedicated. They worked, the former largely, the latter almost wholly, through criticism and commentary, and he followed their example, though in far other fields. His temperament, too, urged him in this direction. He loved great individualities ; he was happiest and most expansive when challenging the sympathy of an audience for some great man, decried or misunderstood. Epicurus and Schopenhauer in his delightful writings,. Epicurus, Eousseau, Wordsworth, even Nietsche, in his still more delightful popular lectures, were presented so that the reader or hearer was abashed at the meanness and triviality of his former conceptions of them. The lecture on Epicurus was reported verbatim and survives ; the others, so far as I know, are a lost music. His profession contributed to determine the character of his pub- lished work. He became in 1882 Whyte's Professor of Moral Philosophy in the University of Oxford, and the duties of his Chair, added to the labour of a College tutorship, were sufficient to make systematic original production all but impossible ; impossible, that is, for any one whose professorial lectures were, like his, the immediate deliverance of a full heart and mind, spoken, as a rule, without a single note. His main achievement, then, as matters actually stand, and without 1 Wallace, Life of Schopenhauer, p. 21.