Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 17.djvu/394

380 of somnambulism is not disagreeable, it is also without danger. I do not know that any accidents, either grave or light, have been noticed as consequences of it; and it is even possible that in certain cases it appeases the over-excited nervous system; but on this matter it is necessary to speak with much reserve, for decisive facts bearing on it have not yet been collected.

Let us now analyze the psychological phenomena of somnambulism. We all know what a dream is: when, tired with the labors of the day, we give up to sleep, our thoughts become confused and floating; the attention can no longer be held fixed upon any definite object; we gradually lose consciousness of the exterior world, and strange forms, the reality of which is in our conception only, impose themselves upon us. They pass and repass with marvelous facility, changing at every instant, and bewildering us with a moving and fantastic train. There are human faces with the forms of beasts, wonderful monsters, gardens, palaces, persons who had disappeared long ago, and who we thought had passed from memory. All this is in motion and passes before us, and the mind assists as a powerless spectator at a representation of which it has itself formed all the pieces. The imagination luxuriates in full license, for it is freed from the liability of being interrupted as in real scenes. by the intrusion of foreign objects, forcing themselves upon attention at every instant to excite precise sensations and recall us to reality. A fact which marks the difference between somnambulism and ordinary sleep is that the dream, which is only spontaneous in ordinary sleep, may be provoked in somnambulism. It would be very hard, for example, to make a man who is sleeping quietly in his bed dream of a lion. If we should say to him aloud, "Look at the lion!" one of two things would happen: he would not hear us, or he would wake up; but in either case he would not dream of a lion. On the other hand, I once said to one of my friends whom I had put into the condition of somnambulism, "Look at that lion!" He started at once, and his face expressed fright; "He is coming," he said, "he is coming nearer, let us run away—quick, quick!" and he almost had a nervous crisis under the influence of his terror.

It is well known that the magnetizers by profession pretend to cause their subjects to travel (in mind) through space, and to make them spectators at distant scenes. This is true. But it is not true, it is rather absolutely false, that these dreams partake of the reality, that the visions bear any relation to the truth. They are pure imaginations, and are neither more nor less fanciful than all the vague conceptions which are forged by every person during sleep. By way of example, I will relate a story of one of the somnambulist patients in the Hospital B. I said to her: "Come with me; we will go away and travel." She then described in succession the places we had to pass; the corridors of the hospital, the streets we had to go through to get to the railroad station; she arrived at the station, and, as she was