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THE HOLY TRINITY.
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awake - for then we live in a world of perceptions common to all men-and which reappear in sleep, when we live only for ourselves. Thus our faculty of sense perception, far from being narrowed during sleep at all points, is on the contrary extended, at least in certain directions, in its field of operations.... To sleep is to become disinterested. A mother who sleeps by the side of her child will not stir at the sound of thunder, but the sigh of the child will wake her. Does she really sleep in regard to the child ? We do not sleep in regard to what continues to interest us...... The formative power of the materials furnished to the drcam by the different senses, the power which converts into preciso, determined objects the vague and indistinct sensations that the dreamer receives from his eyes, his ears, and the whole surface of the interior of his body, is the memory.... These impressions are the materials of our dreams, but they are only the materials, they do not suffice to produce them...because they are vague and indeterminate .... The birth of a dream is...no mystery. It resembles the birth of all our perceptions. The mechanism of the dream is the samo, in general, as that of normal perception. When wo perceive a real object, what we actually see the sensible matter of perception-is very little in comparison with what our memory adds to it. When you read a book, when you look through your newspaper, do you suppose that all the printed letters really come into your consciousness? In that case, the whole day would hardly be long enough for you to read a paper. The truth is that you see in each word and even in cach member of a phrase only somo letters or even some characteristic marks, just enough to permit you to divino the rest...... 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 whole object. This sketch appeals to the complete memory, and this complete memory, which by itself was cither 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.
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