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332 w. JAMES : sequence of some authority in such matters, standing by and dogmatically declaring the article to be different from what it is. In the matter of taste, it seems to me that most men are normally nearer to the trance-state than in respect of their other sensations. ' Suggestion ' influences them more easily. The trance-subject's peculiarity is that all sen- sations are falsified and overpowered by the imagination. In all men some sensations are. And between the two extremes there are exemplifications of every intermediate degree. As we approach the sense of Hearing, the conditions be- come even more like those of sight, and the deceptions which Keid's and Helmholtz's principle denies to be possible, abound. Everyone must recall some experience in which a sensation of sound altered its acoustic character as soon as the intellect referred it to a different source. The other day a friend was sitting in my room, when the clock, which has a rich low chime, began to strike : " Hollo ! " said he, " hear that hand-organ in the garden," and was surprised at finding the real source of the sound. I had myself some years ago a very striking illusion of the sort. Sitting read- ing late one night, I suddenly heard a most formidable noise proceeding from the upper part of the house, which it seemed to fill. It ceased, and in a moment renewed itself. I went into the hall to listen, but it came no more. Resuming my seat in the room, however, there it was again, low, mighty,, alarming, like a rising flood or the avant-courier of an awful gale. It came from all space. Quite startled, I again went into the hall, but it had already ceased once more. On returning a second time to the room, I discovered that it was. nothing but the breathing of a little Scotch terrier which lay asleep on the floor. The noteworthy thing is that as soon as I recognised what it was, I was compelled to think it a different sound, and could not then hear it as I had heard it a moment before. 1 1 In an anecdote given by M. Delboeuf to prove a different point, this was probably also the case, though it is not so stated. " The illustrious. P. J. van Beneden, senior, was walking one evening with a friend along a woody hill near Chaudfontaine. 'Don't you hear,' said the friend, 'the noise of a hunt on the mountain ? ' M. van Beneden listens and distin- guishes in fact the giving-tongue of the dogs. They listen some time,, expecting from one moment to another to see a deer "bound by; but the voice of the dogs seems neither to recede nor approach. At last a country- man conies by, and they ask him who it is that can be hunting at this late hour. But he, pointing to some puddles of water near their feet, replies : ' Yonder little animals are what you hear '. And there there were in fact a number of toads of the species Bombinator igneus. . . . This batrachian emits at the pairing season a silvery or rather crystalline note. . . . Sad and pure, it is a voice in nowise resembling that of hounds giving chase." (Examen Critique de la Loi Psychophysique, 1883, p. 61.)