Whatsoever thus
innervated our activity, or "made our flesh creep"--our senses
are what do so oftenest--might then appear real and present, even
though it were but an abstract idea. But with such vague
conjectures we have no concern at present, for our interest lies
with the faculty rather than with its organic seat.
Like all positive affections of consciousness, the sense of
reality has its negative counterpart in the shape of a feeling of
unreality by which persons may be haunted, and of which one
sometimes hears complaint:--
"When I reflect on the fact that I have made my appearance by
accident upon a globe itself whirled through space as the sport
of the catastrophes of the heavens," says Madame Ackermann; "when
I see myself surrounded by beings as ephemeral and
incomprehensible as I am myself, and all excitedly pursuing pure
chimeras, I experience a strange feeling of being in a dream. It
seems to me as if I have loved and suffered and that erelong I
shall die, in a dream. My last word will be, 'I have been
dreaming.'"[26]
[26] Pensees d'un Solitaire, p. 66.
In another lecture we shall see how in morbid melancholy this
sense of the unreality of things may become a carking pain, and
even lead to suicide.
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