It is a poor reverie which invites a nap. One must even wonder whether, in this "failing asleep", the subconscious itself does not undergo a decline in being.

The best proof of the specificity of the book is that it is at once a reality of the virtual and a virtuality of the real.

Sometimes the house of the future is better built, lighter and larger than all the houses of the past, so that the image of the dream house is opposed to that of the childhood home. Late in life, with indomitable courage, we continue to say that we are going to do what we have not yet done: we are going to build a house. This dream house may be merely a dream of ownership, the embodiment of everything that is considered convenient, comfortable, healthy, sound, desirable, by other people. It must therefore satisfy both pride and reason, two irreconcilable terms.

We comfort ourselves by reliving memories of protection

The psychology of the alchemist is that of reveries trying to constitute themselves in experiments on the exterior world. A double vocabulary must be established between reverie and experiment. The exaltation of the names of substances is the preamble to experiments on the "exalted" substances.

In our view any awareness is an increment to consciousness, an added light, a reinforcement of psychic coherence. Its swiftness or instantaneity can hide this growth from us. But there is a growth of being in every instance of awareness. Consciousness is in itself an act, the human act.

When we are children, people show us so many things that we lose the profound sense of seeing... And just how could adults show us the world they have lost! They know; they think they know; they say they know.