a sleeper, since his soul is absent in dreams. The
Karens say that dreams are what the _la_ or soul sees during sleep. This
theory is also found among more civilized peoples, as for instance in
the Vedic philosophy and the Kabbala, and it has come down to our days
among the common people, and even among those of some culture.

One belief connected with dreams, generally diffused among all savage
and civilized peoples, is that of the appearance of dead men, or of
their ghosts. Of this all the traditions and popular myths in the world
are full. Such a belief, first excited by the vision of the dead in
dreams, is easily aroused in the savage or uneducated mind, even when he
recalls to memory while he is alone, and especially at night, the image
of one whom he loved in life. Affection, and the lively emotion of
sorrow and desire give such a life-like appearance to these images that
they become objectively present to the mind, to console the mourner, or,
on the other hand, to threaten the murderer. I have more than once heard
persons of all classes, after the death of children, of a husband or
wife, whom they have injured or imagine that they have injured, either
during life or by not fulfilling their last wishes, declare in all good
faith that the form of the dead is often present to their memory and
visible while they are awake; thus implying that the dead mercifully
appear to comfort their mourning friends, or else to reproach them for
not fulfilling their promises. In a word, these images did not seem to
them to be subjective, and an ordinary phenomenon of the memory, but
objective and personal apparitions within the soul. The cases are not
rare in certain dispositions of mind, in which the projection of these
images on the memory gradually produces madness. We must not forget that
psychical phenomena in general are very differently regarded by the
savage and the civilized man, since the latter is accustomed to
analysis, and to the real distinctions of things. If this canon is
forgotten we shall fall into grave errors in the attempt to interpret
the evolution and primitive history of thought and of humanity.

We shall more readily understand the nature and genesis of all these
hallucinations, and of normal and abnormal illusions, if we study
another phenomenon of frequent occurrence which I myself have often had
occasion to observe. I mean the illusion or hallucination which does not
consist in the absolute projection of