Note VI.

Is it not strange that the scientists, who analyze matter even down to its molecular elements and study all its transformations, have considered it unworthy of them to study these phenomena so common and yet so worthy of attention? Dreams, they say, are nothing but the product of the imagination and of memory, and, this being so, why should we concern ourselves with them? Yet, even admitting this explanation, which explains nothing, it would still remain to be known where and how such images are formed, often so clear and precise, that appear to us when we dream; the canvas of those things of which memory keeps not the least recollection, such as localities we have never seen and that we encounter later in life? As for natural somnambulism, whose existence no one can contest, it offers truly remarkable phenomena; nevertheless, it has never been part of the serious investigations of official science.