attention, and you will distinguish, little by little, manythings. First, in general, a black background. Upon thisblack background occasionally brilliant points whichcome and go, rising and descending, slowly andsedately. More often, spots of many colors, sometimesvery dull, sometimes, on the contrary, with certainpeople, so brilliant that reality cannot compare with it. These spots spread and shrink, changing form and color,constantly displacing one another. Sometimes thechange is slow and gradual, sometimes again it is awhirlwind of vertiginous rapidity. Whence comes all thisphantasmagoria? The physiologists and thepsychologists have studied this play of colors. "Ocularspectra," "colored spots," "phosphenes," such are thenames that they have given to the phenomenon. Theyexplain it either by the slight modifications which occurceaselessly in the retinal circulation, or by the pressurethat the closed lid exerts upon the eyeball, causing amechanical excitation of the optic nerve. But theexplanation of the phenomenon and the name that isgiven to it matters little. It occurs universally and itconstitutes--I may say at once--the principal material of which we shape our dreams, "such stuff as dreams aremade on." Thirty or forty years ago, M. Alfred Maury and, about thesame time, M. d'Hervey, of St. Denis, had observed thatat the moment of falling asleep these colored spots andmoving forms consolidate, fix themselves, take ondefinite outlines, the outlines of the objects and of thepersons which people our dreams. But this is anobservation to be accepted with caution, since itemanates from psychologists already half asleep. Morerecently an American psychologist, Professor Ladd, of Yale, has devised a more rigorous method, but of difficultapplication, because it requires a sort of training. Itconsists in acquiring the habit on awakening in the
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