perceived in the clear sensations of the waking state is placed outside of myself, but the focus imaginarius of the fantasies entertained during the same state is placed inside of myself, I cannot fail, as long as I am awake, to distinguish from the sense-impressions these imaginations as fantasies.
If so much is admitted, it seems to me that I can adduce some reasonable cause for that kind of mind-disturbance called insanity, and, in its higher degree, trance. The peculiarity of this disease is that the confused individual places mere objects of his imagination outside of himself, and considers them to be real and present objects. Now I have stated that, according to the common order of things, the lines indicating the direction of the movement, and accompanying the fantasies in the brain as their material auxiliaries, must meet inside the brain, and that, consequently, the location of the picture in the subject's consciousness in the waking state must be placed inside of himself. If, therefore, I suppose that, by any accident or disease, certain organs of the brain are distorted or thrown out of their equilibrium in such a manner that the nerve movements, vibrating harmoniously with certain fantasies, occur according to such lines of direction as, continued, would meet outside of the brain, then the focus imaginarius would be placed outside of the thinking subject,[1] and the image produced
- ↑ Remotely resembling the above-mentioned accident is the state of drunken people, who see things double, because the swelling of the blood-vessels prevents the axes of the eyes from being adjusted
