dreamer, not to speak of the somnambulist, is often conscious of voluntarily going through a series of actions. This exercise of volition is shown unmistakably in the well-known recorded instances of extraordinary intellectual achievements in dreams, as Condillac's composition of a part of his Cours d'Etudes. No one would maintain that such a process was possible in the absence of intellectual action carefully directed by the will. And something of this same control shows itself in all our more fully developed dreams.

The active side of the mind manifests itself unmistakably in our dream-life in the form of attention. Although sleep involves the withdrawal of attention from the external channels of knowledge, it does not hinder its being concentrated on the internal processes of imaginative representation. In truth all who can recall their dreams know that they are frequently aware of having exercised their attention on the images presented to them in sleep. I frequently have a feeling on waking that I have been striving to see a beautiful object which threatened to escape my perceptions, or to catch faint and receding sounds of preternatural sweetness, and in some cases dreamers retain a recollection of the feeling of strain connected with the exercise of attention during dreaming.

Now this exercise of attention may either be a purely reflex action or may approximate to a properly voluntary operation. It is reflex when excited by the mere impressiveness of the image which happens to reveal itself to consciousness. In this case its effect is to fix and hold the image, and so to give it greater intensity, distinctness, and persistence. In other instances, this exercise of attention may bear a closer 'resemblance to the voluntary processes, properly so called. This is the case when it serves to select one from among a crowd of competing images, on account of some relation of fitness to preceding stages of the dream. This selection is carried on rapidly and with the minimum of consciousness in the case of every creative poet, and its presence in dream construction helps to account for that measure of coherence which certainly marks our most striking dreams.

this selective action of attention. The first is the impulse to seek unity and consistency among the heterogeneous elements of dream-consciousness; the second the instinct for an emotional harmony. A word or two will be sufficient to explain the operation of each of these forces.

Whenever we are attentively watching. a scene or incident in waking life, we are continually looking on and anticipating the order of events; and this concentration of attention under the stimulating force of a more or less definite expectation has an appreciable effect on the subsequent perceptions. If, for example, a lover is eagerly expecting his mistress at some sylvan trysting-place, he will be very apt to see a lady's robe or face in any object which happens to have but the faintest resemblance to these things, such as a patch of tree stripped of its bark.* When our reasoning faculties are fully active, these momentary illusions are at once corrected by a new and more exact observation of the reality. But when sleeping the case is different. The image that happens to present itself to consciousness is not, like an external impression, something fixed and unchangeable so far as we are concerned. It is itself the product of internal imagination, and is therefore highly modifiable by any mental force brought to bear on it. This fact throws light on the influence of attention and expectation. The dreamer's mind is absorbed, we will suppose, in watching some shifting scene, as a 'procession or a battle. New images crowd in from the two sources of peripheral and central stimulation. The pre-existing group of images gives a certain bent to attention, disposing the mind to see in every new dream-object a connected element, an integral factor of the vision. Thus the degree of coherence which we commonly observe in our dreams, may be referred to the reciprocal modification of images by their respective associative forces, both definite and special and indefinite

and general, under the controlling influence of attention, which again is stimulated by a semi-conscious impulse to secure unity. In this way whole scenes and chains of events are built up. When these aggregates reach a certain fulness and distinctness, they become dominant influences; so that any fresh intruding image is at once transformed and attached more or less closely to the previous group.

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This process is clearly illustrated in a curious dream recorded by Professor Wundt. Before the house is a funeral procession it is the burial of a friend, who has in reality been dead for some time past. The wife of the deceased bids him and a friend go to the other side of the street and join the procession. After she had gone away, his acquaintance remarks to him: She only said that because the cholera rages over yonder, and she wants to keep this side of the street for herself." Then comes an attempt to flee from the region of the cholera. Returning to his house, he finds the procession gone, but the street strewn with rich nosegays, and there are crowds of men who seem to be funeral attendants, and who, like himself, are hastening to join the procession. These are, oddly enough, dressed in red. When hurrying on, it occurs to him that he has forgotten to take a wreath for the coffin. Then he wakes up with beating of the heart.

The sources of this dream are, according to Wundt, as follows:-First of all, he had, on the previous day, met the funeral procession of an acquaintance. Again, he had read of cholera breaking out in a certain town. Once more, he had spoken about the particular lady with this friend, who had narrated facts which proved the selfishness of the former. The hastening to flee from the infected neighborhood and to overtake the procession was prompted by the sensation of heart-beating. Finally, the crowd of red bier-followers, and the profusion of nosegays, owed their origin to subjective visual sensations-the "light-chaos" which often appears in the dark.

Let us now see for a moment how these various elements became fused into a connected chain of events. First of all, we may suppose the image of the procession occupies the dreamer's mind.

From quite another source the image of the lady enters consciousness, bringing with it that of her deceased husband and of the friend who has recently been talking about her. These new elements adapt themselves to the scene, through the play of the reciprocal modifications already spoken of. Thus the idea of the lady's husband recalls the fact of his death, and the pre-existing scene easily suggests the idea that he is now the person buried. The next step is very interesting. The image of the lady is associated with the idea of selfish motives; this would tend to suggest a variety of actions, but the one which becomes a factor of the dream is that which is adapted to the other existing images, namely the procession on the further side of the street, and a vague representation of cholera (which last, like the image of the funeral, is due to an independent central excitation). That is to say, the request of the lady, and its interpretation, are a resultant of a number of reciprocal actions, under the sway of a lively internal attention. Once more, the feeling of oppression of the heart, and the subjective stimulation of the optic nerve might suggest numberless images besides those of anxious flight and of red-clad men and nosegays; they suggest these, and not others, in this case, through the force of the pre-existing mental images, which, acting through attention, select from among many tendencies of reproduction those which are congruous with themselves.

It may be added that this process of adaptation and fusion is sometimes pursued with a fuller degree of conscious purpose. I am often able upon waking to recall a feeling of being confused by a crowd of incongruous images, and of striving to see their proper relations. And this endeavor probably includes the selection and powerful modification of the images according to the mutual attractions which they derive from the order of our past waking experiences.

Let us now glance at the second force, which contributes so greatly to the unity and coherence of our dream pictures, the impulse to emotional harmony. If any emotion, whether of a pleasurable or a painful character, gets a certain footing in consciousness, it begins to play the tyrant in relation to our ideas and

even our perceptions, by predisposing attention towards those mental images which harmonise with the state of feeling. This is not, strictly speaking, a case of the voluntary exercise of attention, since we often feel the result to be painful, and strive to turn our thoughts to other objects. Yet it is carried on in much the same way as though there were a deliberate resolve to select images of a certain emotional character. It is a common observation that a man carried away by fear can only represent to himself as probable or actual that which is terrible and which consequently nourishes the dominant emotion. The same is true in a less striking degree of the pleasurable emotions, as love. In the most ardent moments of affection, we are incapacitated for seeing what is not beautiful and lovable in the object of the affection. In this way a dominant feeling gives an emotional unity to the images of the brain; and this is the unity which holds together the many otherwise disconnected ideas of a lyric poem. Now, a state of feeling is so frequently at the foundation of our dreams that one might plausibly argue that there are no dreams which are not profoundly colored in this way. For my own part, at least, I find in all my recollected dreams the unmistakable traces of such a controlling influence. In the dream of Professor Wundt, already narrated, one may detect a certain thread of emotional unity. The influence of anxiety and fear, traceable probably to the sensations of the heart, binds together the images of the funeral, the cholera, the crafty design of the lady, the flight, and the omission to bring a wreath. In this way a further selective and adaptative force is brought into play, which crosses and complicates the action of the others.

It is to be remarked that this emotional thread of unity does not necessarily consist of only one definite variety of feeling, such as love or terror. Feelings have certain affinities among themselves, apart from the common characters of the pleasurable and painful, by reason of which they easily pass the one into the other. Thus, the so-called bodily "feelings" have their analogous counterparts in "mental emotions." A state of bodily irritation is, as Mr. Darwin has remarked, very like the feeling of mental

perplexity. The pleasurable elation. which arises from the relief of bodily pressure, or the obstruction of an organic process, is closely akin to an emotion of liberty, or the joyous sense of success after difficulty and doubtful endeavor. Hence, if a certain state of feeling is anyhow excited, it may become the central point for a whole circle of variegated images. And this is what very frequently happens in dreams. An emotion of grief, caused by the recent death of a friend, may call up images of other distressing events, such as failure in some ambitious project, loss of property, and so on. The most common source of these emotional states during sleep is the region of bodily sensations, more particularly those of the painful class. Through their analogies with mental emotions these organic sensations excite or attract groups of widely-unlike images, agreeing only in their fitness to sustain one common tone of feeling. Every reflective dreamer will be able to trace these connecting threads in dreams which would otherwise seem to lack all coherence.

There is only one other aspect of dream-fancy which need occupy us here, and of this it will suffice to say very little. I refer to the tendency of dreamconsciousness to magnify and exaggerate the feelings and images which present themselves. One side of this exaggeration has already been dealt with in accounting for the objective reality ascribed to dream ideas. We have now to consider, not why these ideas should be taken for realities, but why they should be so disproportionate to the sensations and other feelings which are their exciting causes, and to the experiences of waking life which serve as their source and prototype. This characteristic of dream-fancy has frequently been dwelt on, and has been fully illustrated by Herr Volkelt in the work already referred to. To give an example or two: -In interpreting bodily sensations, there is often the most grotesque exaggeration. A movement of the foot is taken for a fall of the whole body down some terrible abyss. In M. Maury's experiments, as I have already remarked, when the sleeper's lips were tickled the sensation transformed itself into an imagination of some excruciating torture. Again, the objects of our waking emotions seem to grow

and expand in our dreams. The sick friend who causes us a solicitude becomes to our dream-fancy overwhelmed with the most terrible sufferings, or the classic city in which we lately lingered returns to us in sleep, with its warm tints and picturesque outlines, beautiful above all earthly reality. To our frequent dream-terror forms appear of so vast a size and dire a mien, that we try in vain, perhaps, to connect them with any waking perceptions. In many dreams, as Herr Volkelt observes, we may clearly observe the process of exaggeration going on. In dreams of terror, to which, like many other children, I was greatly liable, I frequently saw forms which gradually swelled out into unearthly proportions. Another form of this process is illustrated in De Quincey's dreams, in which space seemed to swell before his eyes, through a crowding in of multitudes of objects on his vision. This crowding of images is frequently referable to the subjective stimulation of the optic nerve, which produces the semblance of a number of points of light, called by the Germans the "light-dust." It is very common, too, in dreams, to have a succession of images, of which each new member is more imposing or more impressive than the preceding. Here is an example from Volkelt. He dreamt he gave up his hat and overcoat to an official at the cloak-room of a place of amusement, and noticed that the recipient instantly changed the hat for another. This process of substitution went on till he completely lost sight of his own articles. Thereupon somebody carried a heap of articles of attire out of the cloak-room. He inferred that there was an organized body of thieves at the back, and turned to a policeman. Immediately he became involved in a hand-to-hand conflict with the thieves, and finally was stabbed in the abdomen. Here there is a clear ascending gradation in respect of the terrifying character of the dream.

These various forms of the exaggerating tendency in dreams are to be accounted for by more than one consideration. First of all, since in sleep the area of distinct consciousness or of attention is so greatly circumscribed, the few sensations which happen to penetrate it naturally become exaggerated.

Just as the click of a window is magnified at night when we are seeking the quiet of sleep and our attention is not diverted by other impressions, so any bodily sensation or emotion which enters into the dreamer's consciousness and wholly engages his attention becomes larger, deeper, and intenser than it would be in a waking condition of the mind.

But again, our sensations and other feelings are estimated during our waking states by comparison with one another, and when this comparison is wanting the sensation assumes an undefined and large aspect. Thus sensations of pressure received through parts of the bodily surface which are not habituated to such impressions invariably appear too large. So the cavity formed by the loss of a tooth seems too large to the tongue at first, because its discriminative sensibility in the estimation of distance is but feebly developed. Once more, when under the momentary excitement of a pleasurable or painful emotion, and incapable of judging the feeling by a recollection of previous like emotions, we invariably over-estimate its magnitude. The present sunset always seems more wonderful and more splendid than all its predecessors. Now in dreams sensations and emotions are in a pre-eminent degree isolated feelings, which are incapable of being measured by the play of those ideal or reproductive elements which render our waking impressions distinct and sharp, and hence they tend to appear too large through being undefined. As a consequence of this they assume a greatly transformed aspect, presenting themselves through images which are absurdly disproportionate to their real

causes.

Finally, one of the principal exaggerating forces in dream-fancy is the action of a persistent emotional state. We have already seen how such a state serves to single out and to unite the images of the brain. Now this process necessarily involves accumulation and exaggeration. Each new image attracted by a dominant feeling reacts on this feeling, intensifying it, and this enables it to go on piling image on image. Since this process in dream-life is generally quite unchecked by any sense of probability or rational congruity, the result is a scene or an action which far transcends those of our

real experience. It should be observed, too, that the high degree of fusibility which belongs to our dream-images contributes to this effect of preternatural exaggeration, since through the blending of a number of images of a certain emotional color composite images arise which greatly transcend in impressiveness those of our waking experience.

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These considerations help to explain what some writers call the symbolic" nature of dream images. This idea has, no doubt, been greatly exaggerated, as when a German writer, Scherner, contends that the various bodily sources of sensations in dreams reveal themselves to consciousness under the symbol of a house or series of buildings, so that a pain in the head calls up an image of hideous spiders on the ceiling, and sensations associated with the intestinal canal symbolize themselves through the image of a narrow alley, and so on. Such theories are too fanciful, and do not appear to correspond to most persons' experience. On the other hand, there is undoubtedly a tendency for certain feelings, more particularly bodily sensations, to present themselves uniformly under the guise of one kind of image. With myself, for example, a sensation of pressure in the heart or lungs very frequently translates itself into an imagination of hastening for a train. This fancy exactly corresponds to one of the most frequent and certainly most intense forms of mental agitation in my waking life. In a similar way one suspects all kinds of sensations during sleep are apt to clothe themselves in fancies which represent the most intense form of that particular mode of feeling. People who strongly dislike contention will often dream that they are involved in some noisy quarrel with their dearest friends. Thus a bodily sensation will tend to symbolise itself under some one form of fancy, varying with the individual's temperament and daily experience.

We are now, perhaps, in a position to explain, in part at least, how it is that the dreams which are excited by bodily sensations so seldom contain any inkling as to the real bodily source of those feelings. For one thing, they present themselves as greatly exaggerated in degree, and consequently in many cases have to be interpreted as feelings of an

other order. This accounts to some extent for the transformation of pleasurable and painful bodily sensations into the more intense mental emotions. But this is not all. Even in our waking life, we have but a faint consciousness of the bodily seat of the various organic sensations. Distinct localisation of sensation depends on sight and touch. Of these, sight probably does most to give distinctness and permanence to the idea of bodily locality.

The internal parts of the body are wholly inaccessible to sight and touch, whilst even many parts of the bodily surface are rarely if ever seen or touched. Moreover, owing to the slight part played by ideas of touch in dreams as compared with those of sight, there is little scope for the representation of those parts, such as certain regions of the back, which are known to touch but not to sight. Hence the frequent remark that in dreams the mind is withdrawn from the body, which means first of all that most of its vague waking knowledge of its bodily organism now fails it, and, secondly, that its imaginative representations are mainly derived from impressions of the eye and of the ear; that is to say, of the senses whose activity is normally accompanied by the least degree of consciousness of the bodily organ concerned, but is concentrated in the perception of some object external to the organ.

In all these processes we see something like a suspension of those higher intellectual activities which serve to regulate our waking perceptions and actions. There is nothing like recognition, inference, or rational interpretation in most of our dreams. It seems almost as if during sleep we returned to the undeveloped mental condition of infancy, with the single difference that our emotions are more various and our images are furnished by a larger field of experience. It has been urged by more than one writer, with a good deal of plausibility, that dreams are representations of a primordial state of intelligence and mental development, as we see it now in children and some of the lower animals. The suspension of the higher intellectual functions and the absence, for the most part, of the higher emotions give support to this theory. Yet this is too wide a subject to be entered into here. My ob