With regard to (_a_), it is of course common for the mind to ‘wander,’ and for all sorts of phantoms and hallucinations to obsess and cloud it in the last stages of illness; and these vagaries of the mind are no doubt due to or connected with excess or deficiency of circulation in the brain, and morbid physical conditions of one kind or another. But it is possible that a wider and more general view than that may be taken concerning them. I have already referred the reader to the Note at the end of this chapter. All our desires and passions are psychical entities, having a life and consciousness of their own, though affiliated to the total soul within which they work. All our organs and functions are carried on by intelligences, similarly affiliated yet in degree independent. Under normal conditions “we” are unaware of these; entities and intelligences—it is only when they rebel that they come decisively to our notice. In disease, mental and physical, there is rebellion. We become painfully conscious of the independent and often undesired activity of our organs, and of our passions—and so, unfortunately for them, do our friends! In morbid states of mind and body certain functions, certain passions, take on an independent vitality to such a degree that at last they endue a kind of personality and give rise to strings of phantasms which we believe to be real. In dreams, though there is not exactly rebellion, the higher powers of the mental organism being at rest, the lesser functionaries similarly display an extraordinary and impish activity and present us with amazing masquerades of actual life.