This waking dream is distinct from reverie, where, our thoughts wandering without connexion, the faint impressions are so evanescent as to occur without even being recollected.

A day of _reverie_ is beautifully painted by ROUSSEAU as distinct from a day of _thinking_: "J'ai des journees delicieuses, errant sans souci, sans projet, sans affaire, de bois en bois, et de rocher en rocher, _revant toujours et ne pensant point."_ Far different, however, is one closely-pursued act of meditation, carrying the enthusiast of genius beyond the precinct of actual existence.

The act of contemplation then creates the thing contemplated.

He is now the busy actor in a world which he himself only views; alone, he hears, he sees, he touches, he laughs, he weeps; his brows and lips, and his very limbs move.
Poets and even painters, who, as Lord Bacon describes witches, "are imaginative," have often involuntarily betrayed, in the act of composition, those gestures which accompany this enthusiasm.

Witness DOMENICHINO enraging himself that he might portray anger.