ABSTRACT
The automatic activity of the cerebral cells reveals itself also, in a very distinct manner, at night in the form of persistent impressions—dreams. It naturally follows, from what we have already explained, that, in reality, dreams are nothing but the persistent vibration of certain groups of cells in a condition of erethism, when the greater number of their fellows are already plunged into the collapse of sleep. Certain feeble characters are even more or less depressed by them, and preserve a painful impression, which they sometimes consider a true presentiment of what may happen to them. In certain forms of mental maladies that the power of dreams to persist during waking moments acquires the greatest degree of intensity. Thus we see a certain number of patients, paralytics, or victims of hallucination, change the character of their delirious conceptions and take up new ideas, which are nothing but persistent dreams that have been suddenly developed in their minds at night.
