and familiar instances of the names of men or women given to
mountains, rocks, and crags, because they have some remote resemblance
to some human feature or limb. Every day we may be called upon to see a
face in some mountain, stone, or trunk of a tree, in the outline of the
landscape, a wreath of mist or cloud. We are told to observe the eyes,
nose, mouth, the arms and legs, and so on.[35] Every one must remember
to have often heard of such resemblances, even if he has not himself
observed them. All the facts and laws which we have observed explain why
the sudden appearance of some vague form in an uncertain light,
reminding us in a confused way of the human figure, instantly causes us
to trace a resemblance to man rather than to any thing else. It must be
noted, as my experiment has already proved, that in this first sketch
of a phantasm in human form, a general, though indefinite type of the
whole figure has spontaneously arisen, to which it is made to
correspond. This is the key to the ultimate perception of the
phenomenon. What may be called the prophetic type of the figure which
will afterwards appear to us in all its details, although it may seem to
be produced by external resemblance, is in fact the product of the mind,
which has been unconsciously exercised in its construction.

In fact, out of the immense variety in faces, and in the general form of
persons, of gestures, fashions of dress, attitudes in rest and motion,
which are indelibly impressed on the memory, every one constructs
general types for himself; types which are revealed in the allusions
made in our daily conversation to the resemblances which we are
continually observing. These remain in the memory, with all the manifold
resemblances, as well as the ideal of certain types in which the
numerous forms we have seen and compared are formulated. We know that
when the memory has been dormant, which is often the case, it may be
awakened by the stimulus of association, of analogy, or of will, so as
to reproduce the forgotten ideas and sensations which are thus again
presented to the consciousness. When, therefore, one or more objects are
seen in an uncertain light, so as to present a confused appearance of
the human form, its general lineaments are unconsciously made by us to
correspond with the human type already existing in the memory, and this
type presides in the subsequent composition of the reproducing artist
who observes the phantasm. The unconsc