Page:Philosophical Review Volume 3.djvu/114

98 idea its force. When, as in sleep, our moral and rational nature is inoperative, ideas can work together with an energy due to their content alone, unhampered by moral or rational considerations, and governed only by the laws of association. In support of this view it is asserted that in suggestion the voluntary element is always subordinated to the involuntary. De Sarlo criticises this theory as affording no real explanation and as involving questionable psychological conceptions. Finally, he draws attention to the fact that even in the state of suggestibility the mind is active, and that without the spontaneity of consciousness suggestion would be inoperative. Under exceptional and morbid conditions the psychological elements are not embraced under a single form and in a single act, but some are gathered into groups which function apart from the control of the rest. In suggestion, the intermediate links between the point of departure and the final result are unknown, because the total psychical content is not embraced in a single psychical form.

Paramnesia is an illusion consisting in the belief that one has a perception for the second time, when it is in reality completely novel, (1) The recognition in paramnesia is complete; there is no question of a partial resemblance. An unpleasant tone of feeling is attached to it. Sometimes the recognition is so absolute that the succession of events can be, or is thought to be, foreseen. (2) The phenomenon is of frequent occurrence. It is not always easily distinguishable from dream-experience.—Some to whose waking-life paramnesia is unknown are familiar with a similar phenomenon in dreams. But neither this nor the like illusion in insanity is true paramnesia. My investigations show, so far as they go, that 30 per cent of mankind have the paramnesic experience. This is in itself certainly not pathological. Sex, age, position, etc., are not the determining factors of its appearance. What are its conditions? One seems to be excitement. (3) Hypotheses? Recollection of a former life will hardly hold. The double hemisphere of Wigan and Mandsley? We know, as a matter of fact, ten times as much psychology as physiology. Better is Anjel's view: that sensation and perception, ordinarily so near together as to be fused, are separated by an unusually long time. The occurrence of paramnesia in fatigue tells