[1] Suggested by _Physiologie cérébrale: Le Subconscient chez les artistes, les savants, et les écrivains_, by Dr. Paul Chabaneix, Paris, J.-B. Baillière. This study was already written when M. Ribot's masterly work, _L'Imagination créatrice_ (July, 1900), appeared. [2] See in a dream related by Maury (_Le Sommeil et les Rêves_) the word _jardin_ causing the dreamer to visit Persia, then to read _L'Ane mort_ (Jardin, Chardin, Janin); and in another dream, the syllable lo conducting the mind from the word _kilomètre_ to _loto_, viâ _Gilolo, lobélia, Lopez_. However, the poet (by reason of rhyme or alliteration) experiences similar associations, but he must have the ability to render them logical, a thing which rarely happens in dreams pure and simple. Victor Hugo, a veritable incarnation of the Subconscious, rioted in these associations, which were at first involuntary. [3] With regard to dreams, M. Chabaneix says (p. 17) that those who often think in visual images are subject to dreams in which the images are objectified in amplified form. A personal observation contradicts this, but in mentioning it I am only opposing a single observation to many observations. I refer to a writer who, although besieged, when awake, by internal visual images, sees images but rarely in dreams and never has any characteristic hallucinations. Recently, having reread Maury's book during the day, he experienced that night, for the first time, two or three vague hypnotic hallucinations, caused doubtless by the desire or fear of knowing this state.... This case may serve to explain the contagion of hallucination by books.--He saw kaleidoscopic flashes, then grinning heads, finally a figure clad in green, of life size, of whom the dreamer, looking out of the corner of his right eye, saw only one-half. At this moment, he was awaking. The figure evidently came from an illustrated history of Italian painting, which he had glanced at in the forenoon. [4] _Le Subconscient_, p. 11. [5] Letter to W. von Humboldt, 17 March, 1832 (_Le Subconscient_, p. 16). Goethe was then eighty-three; he died five days later. The whole letter is quoted by Eckermann. [6] _Le Subconscient_, p. 24. [7] Preface to _Le Subconscient_. [8] Jahm, quoted in _Le Subconscient_, p. 93. [9] _Psychologie des Sentiments_.--W. von Humboldt said: "Reason combines, modifies and directs; it cannot create, because the vital principle is not in it" (_Ideas on the New French Constitution_). THE ROOTS OF IDEALISM I Since writing, in _Physique de l'Amour_, the chapter on "The Tyranny of the Nervous System," with its criticism of Lamarck's saying, "the environment creates the organ," I have come to conceive some doubts on the legitimacy of my ideas. I am going to state them without definitely taking sides either against myself or against subjective idealism, to which in the last analysis I remain in large part faithful.