About Dreaming, Laughing and Blushing

Sir Arthur Mitchell (1826-1909) was an antiquary and a commissioner in lunacy for Scotland. He wrote About Dreaming, Laughing and Blushing in 1905. "In ordinary circumstances we are made aware of the existence of such things as chairs and tables through the sense of sight; but chairs and tables may, in certain conditions, be accepted by the mind as existing where they have no existence. They do not, in that case, reach the mind through the eye. They may be said to be seen directly by the mind itself without being imaged on the retina. The eye plays no part in this kind of vision. The mind, in other words, may be said, in certain conditions, to see without the aid of the eye. But the things so seen have no reality. "