Page:Occult Japan - Lovell.djvu/364

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OCCULT JAPAN.

Conditions of brain torpor other than dream-states display similar phenomena. For a general tiring of the brain is not the only way, as we know, of bringing brain torpor about. Many drugs will do it, probably by directly numbing the molecules of the cortical cells. Chloroform, laughing-gas, flowers at a funeral, will all temporarily take a man out of the world—to say nothing of the every-day effect of wine. But side by side with the general torpor these things induce, goes a heightened consciousness along particular lines, if it be no more than a consciousness of one's emotions. This chiaroscuro of consciousness has all the unreal reality of the lights and shadows thrown by a carbon point. Opium, for example, is delectable, not more for the peculiar ideas it gives a man than for the poignancy of them. And we all know, by observation, at least, how loving or quarrelsome men grow in proportion as they grow unreasonable, under the influence of wine.

Some dreams we remember after waking. If we did not do so, to a minimal extent at least, we should not know that we had ever had them. Possibly, therefore, some vanish