CHAPTER VII.

DREAMS.

The phenomena of dreams may well seem at first sight to form a world of

their own, having no discoverable links of connection with the other

facts of human experience. First of all, there is the mystery of sleep,

which quietly shuts all the avenues of sense and so isolates the mind

from contact with the world outside. To gaze at the motionless face of a

sleeper temporarily rapt from the life of sight, sound, and

movement--which, being common to all, binds us together in mutual

recognition and social action--has always something awe-inspiring. This

external inaction, this torpor of sense and muscle, how unlike to the

familiar waking life, with its quick responsiveness and its overflowing

energy! And then, if we look at dreams from the inside, we seem to find

but the reverse face of the mystery. How inexpressibly strange does the

late night-dream seem to a person on waking! He feels he has been seeing

and hearing things no less real than those of waking life; but things

which belong to an unfamiliar world, an order of sights and a sequence

of events quite unlike those of waking experience; and he asks himself

in his perplexity where that once-visited region really lies, or by what

magic power it was suddenly and for a moment created for his vision. In

truth, the very name of dream suggests something remote and mysterious,

and when we want to characterize some impression or scene which by its

passing strangeness filled us with wonder, we naturally call it

dream-like.

_Theories of Dreams._

The earliest theories respecting dreams illustrate very clearly this

perception of the remoteness of dream-life from waking experience. By

the simple mind of primitive man this dream-world is regarded as similar

in its nature or structure to our common world, only lying remote from

this. The savage conceives that when he falls asleep, his second self

leaves his familiar body and journeys forth to unfamiliar regions, where

it meets the departed second selves of his dead ancestors, and so on.

From this point of view, the experience of the night, though equal in

reality to that of the day, is passed in a wholly disconnected

region.[69]

A second and more thoughtful view of dreams, marking a higher grade of

intellectual culture, is that these visions of the night are symbolic

pictures unfolded to the inner eye of the soul by some supernatural

being. The dream-experience is now, in a sense, less real than it was

before, since the phantasms that wear the guise of objective realities

are simply images spread out to the spirit's gaze, or the direct

utterance of a divine message. Still, this mysterious contact of the

mind with the supernatural is regarded as a fact, and so the dream

assumes the appearance of a higher order of experience. Its one point of

attachment to the experience of waking life lies in its symbolic

function; for the common form which this supernatural view assumes is

that the dream is a dim prevision of coming events. Artemidorus, the

great authority on dream interpretation (_oneirocritics_) for the

ancient world, actually defines a dream as "a motion or fiction of the

soul in a diverse form signifying either good or evil to come;" and even

a logician like Porphyry ascribes dreams to the influence of a good

demon, who thereby warns us of the evils which another and bad demon is

preparing for us. The same mode of viewing dreams is quite common

to-day, and many who pride themselves on a certain intellectual culture,

and who imagine themselves to be free from the weakness of superstition,

are apt to talk of dreams as of something mysterious, if not distinctly

ominous. Nor is it surprising that phenomena which at first sight look

so wild and lawless, should still pass for miraculous interruptions of

the natural order of events.[70]

Yet, in spite of this obvious and impressive element of the mysterious

in dream-life, the scientific impulse to illuminate the less known by

the better known has long since begun to play on this obscure subject.

Even in the ancient world a writer might here and there be found, like

Democritus or Aristotle, who was bold enough to put forward a natural

and physical explanation of dreams. But it has been the work of modern

science to provide something like an approximate solution of the

problem. The careful study of mental life in its intimate union with

bodily operations, and the comparison of dream-combinations with other

products of the imagination, normal as well as morbid, have gradually

helped to dissolve a good part of the mystery which once hung like an

opaque mist about the subject. In this way, our dream-operations have

been found to have a much closer connection with our waking experiences

than could be supposed on a superficial view. The materials of our

dreams are seen, when closely examined, to be drawn from our waking

experience. Our waking consciousness acts in numberless ways on our

dreams, and these again in unsuspected ways influence our waking mental

life.[71] Not only so, it is found that the quaint chaotic play of

images in dreams illustrates mental processes and laws which are

distinctly observable in waking thought. Thus, for example, the apparent

objective reality of these visions has been accounted for, without the

need of resorting to any supernatural agency, in the light of a vast

assemblage of facts gathered from the by-ways, so to speak, of waking

mental life. I need hardly add that I refer to the illusions of sense

dealt with in the foregoing chapters.

Dreams are to a large extent the semblance of external perceptions.

Other psychical phenomena, as self-reflection, emotional activity, and

so on, appear in dream-life, but they do so in close connection with

these quasi-perceptions. The name "vision," given by old writers to

dreams, sufficiently points out this close affinity of the mental

phenomena to sense-perception; and so far as science is concerned, they

must be regarded as a peculiar variety of sense-illusion. Hence the

appropriateness of studying them in close connection with the illusions

of perception of the waking state. Though marked off by the presence of

very exceptional physiological conditions, they are largely intelligible

by help of these physiological and psychological principles which we

have just been considering.

_The State of Sleep._

The physiological explanation of dreams must, it is plain, set out with

an account of the condition of the organism known as sleep. While there

is here much that is uncertain, there are some things which are fairly

well known. Recent physiological observation has gone to prove that

during sleep all the activities of the organism are appreciably lowered.

Thus, for example, according to Testa, the pulse falls by about

one-fifth. This lowering of the organic functions appears, under

ordinary circumstances, to increase towards midnight, after which there

is a gradual rising.

The nervous system shares in this general depression of the vital

activities. The circulation being slower, the process of reparation and

nutrition of the nerves is retarded, and so their degree of excitability

diminished. This is clearly seen in the condition of the peripheral

regions of the nervous system, including the sense-organs, which appear

to be but very slightly acted on by their customary stimuli.

The nervous centres must participate in this lethargy of the system. In

other words, the activity of the central substance is lowered, and the

result of this is plainly seen in what is usually thought of as the

characteristic feature of sleep, namely, a transition from vigorous

mental activity or intense and clear consciousness, to comparative

inactivity or faint and obscure consciousness. The cause of this

condition of the centres is supposed to be the same as that of the

torpidity of all the other organs in sleep, namely, the retardation of

the circulation. But, though there is no doubt as to this, the question

of the proximate physiological conditions of sleep is still far from

being settled. Whether during sleep the blood-vessels of the brain are

fuller or less full than during waking, is still a moot point. Also the

qualitative condition of the blood in the cerebral vessels is still a

matter of discussion.[72]

Since the effect of sleep is to lower central activity, the question

naturally occurs whether the nervous centres are ever rendered inactive

to such an extent as to interrupt the continuity of our conscious life.

This question has been discussed from the point of view of the

metaphysician, of the psychologist, and of the physiologist, and in no

case is perfect unanimity to be found. The metaphysical question,

whether the soul as a spiritual substance is capable of being wholly

inactive, or whether it is not in what seem the moments of profoundest

unconsciousness partially awake--the question so warmly discussed by the

Cartesians, Leibnitz, etc.--need not detain us here.

Of more interest to us are the psychological and the physiological

discussions. The former seeks to settle the question by help of

introspection and memory. On the one side, it is urged against the

theory of unbroken mental activity, that we remember so little of the

lowered consciousness of sleep.[73] To this it is replied that our

forgetfulness of the contents of dream-consciousness, even if this were

unbroken, would be fully accounted for by the great dissimilarity

between dreaming and waking mental life. It is urged, moreover, on this

side that a sudden rousing of a man from sleep always discovers him in

the act of dreaming, and that this goes to prove the uniform connection

of dreaming and sleeping. This argument, again, may be met by the

assertion that our sense of the duration of our dreams is found to be

grossly erroneous; that, owing to the rapid succession of the images,

the _realization_ of which would involve a long duration, we enormously

exaggerate the length of dreams in retrospection.[74] From this it is

argued that the dream which is recalled on our being suddenly awakened

may have had its whole course during the transition state of waking.

Again, the fact that a man may resolve, on going to sleep, to wake at a

certain hour, has often been cited in proof of the persistence of a

degree of mental activity even in perfectly sound sleep. The force of

this consideration, however, has been explained away by saying that the

anticipation of rising at an unusual hour necessarily produces a slight

amount of mental disquietude, which is quite sufficient to prevent sound

sleep, and therefore to expose the sleeper to the rousing action of

faint external stimuli.

While the purely psychological method is thus wholly inadequate to solve

the question, physiological reasoning appears also to be not perfectly

conclusive. Many physiologists, not unnaturally desirous of upsetting

what they regard as a gratuitous metaphysical hypothesis, have

pronounced in favour of an absolutely dreamless or unconscious sleep.

From the physiological point of view, there is no mystery in a totally

suspended mental activity. On the other hand, there is much to be said

on the opposite side, and perhaps it may be contended that the purely

physiological evidence rather points to the conclusion that central

activity, however diminished during sleep, always retains a minimum

degree of intensity. At least, one would be disposed to argue in this

way from the analogy of the condition of the other functions of the

organism during sleep. Possibly this modicum of positive evidence may

more than outweigh any slight presumption against the doctrine of

unbroken mental activity drawn from the negative circumstance that we

remember so little of our dream-life.[75]

Such being the state of physiological knowledge respecting the

immediate conditions of sleep, we cannot look for any certain

information on the nature of that residual mode of cerebral activity

which manifests itself subjectively in dreams. It is evident, indeed,

that this question can only be fully answered when the condition of the

brain as a whole during sleep is understood. Meanwhile we must be

content with vague hypotheses.

It may be said, for one thing, that during sleep the nervous substance

as a whole is less irritable than during waking hours. That is to say, a

greater amount of stimulus is needed to produce any conscious

result.[76] This appears plainly enough in the case of the peripheral

sense-organs. Although these are not, as it is often supposed, wholly

inactive during sleep, they certainly require a more potent external

stimulus to rouse them to action. And what applies to the peripheral

regions applies to the centres. In truth, it is clearly impossible to

distinguish between the diminished irritability of the peripheral and

that of the central structures.

At first sight it seems contradictory to the above to say that stimuli

which have little effect on the centres of consciousness during waking

life produce an appreciable result in sleep. Nevertheless, it will be

found that this is the case. Thus organic processes which scarcely make

themselves known to the mind in a waking state, may be shown to be the

originators of many of our dreams. This fact can only be explained on

the physical side by saying that the special cerebral activities

engaged in an act of attention are greatly liberated during sleep by the

comparative quiescence of the external senses. These activities, by

co-operating with the faint results of the stimuli coming from the

internal organs, serve very materially to increase their effect.

Finally, it is to be observed that, while the centres thus respond with

diminished energy to peripheral stimuli, external and internal, they

undergo a direct, or "automatic," mode of excitation, being roused into

activity independently of an incoming nervous impulse. This automatic

stimulation has been plausibly referred to the action of the products of

decomposition accumulating in the cerebral blood-vessels.[77] It is

possible that there is something in the nature of this stimulation to

account for the force and vividness of its conscious results, that is to

say, of dreams.

_The Dream State._

Let us now turn to the psychic side of these conditions, that is to say,

to the general character of the mental states known as dreams. It is

plain that the closing of the avenues of the external senses, which is

the accompaniment of sleep, will make an immense difference in the

mental events of the time. Instead of drawing its knowledge from

without, noting its bearings in relation to the environment, the mind

will now be given over to the play of internal imagination. The activity

of fancy will, it is plain, be unrestricted by collision with external

fact. The internal mental life will expand in free picturesque

movement.

To say that in sleep the mind is given over to its own imaginings, is to

say that the mental life in these circumstances will reflect the

individual temperament and mental history. For the play of imagination

at any time follows the lines of our past experience more closely than

would at first appear, and being coloured with emotion, will reflect the

predominant emotional impulses of the individual mind. Hence the saying

of Heraclitus, that, while in waking we all have a common world, in

sleep we have each a world of our own.

This play of imagination in sleep is furthered by the peculiar attitude

of attention. When asleep the voluntary guidance of attention ceases;

its direction is to a large extent determined by the contents of the

mind at the moment. Instead of holding the images and ideas, and

combining them according to some rational end, the attention relaxes its

energies and succumbs to the force of imagination. And thus, in sleep,

just as in the condition of reverie or day-dreaming, there is an

abandonment of the fancy to its own wild ways.

It follows that the dream-state will not appear to the mind as one of

fancy, but as one of actual perception, and of contact with present

reality. Dreams are clearly illusory, and, unlike the illusions of

waking life, are complete and persistent.[78] And the reason of this

ought now to be clear. First of all, the mind during sleep wants what M.

Taine calls the corrective of a present sensation. When awake under

ordinary circumstances, any momentary illusion is at once set right by a

new act of orientation. The superior vividness of the external

impression cannot leave us in any doubt, when calm and self-possessed,

whether our mental images answer to present realities or not. On the

other hand, when asleep, this reference to a fixed objective standard is

clearly impossible. Secondly, we may fairly argue that the mental images

of sleep approximate in character to external impressions. This they do

to some extent in point of intensity, for, in spite of the diminished

excitability of the centres, the mode of stimulation which occurs in

sleep may, as I have hinted, involve an energetic cerebral action. And,

however this be, it is plain that the image will gain a preternatural

force through the greatly narrowed range of attention. When the mind of

the sleeper is wholly possessed by an image or group of images, and the

attention kept tied down to these, there is a maximum reinforcement of

the images. But this is not all. When the attention is thus held captive

by the image, it approximates in character to an external impression in

another way. In our waking state, when our powers of volition are

intact, the external impression is characterized by its fixity or its

obdurate resistance to our wishes. On the other hand, the mental image

is fluent, accommodating, and disappears and reappears according to the

direction of our volitions. In sleep, through the suspension of the

higher voluntary power of attention, the mental image seems to lord it

over our minds just as the actual impression of waking life.

This much may suffice, perhaps, by way of a general description of the

sleeping and dreaming state. Other points will make themselves known

after we have studied the contents and structure of dreams in detail.

Dreams are commonly classified (_e.g._ by Wundt) with hallucinations,

and this rightly, since, as their common appellation of "vision"

suggests, they are for the most part the semblance of percepts in the

absence of external impressions. At the same time, recent research goes

to show that in many dreams something answering to the "external

impression" in waking perception is the starting-point. Consequently, in

order to be as accurate as possible, I shall divide dreams into

illusions (in the narrow sense) and hallucinations.

_Dream-Illusions._

By dream-illusions I mean those dreams which set out from some

peripheral nervous stimulation, internal or external. That the organic

processes of digestion, respiration, etc., act as stimuli to the centres

in sleep is well known. Thus, David Hartley assigns as the second great

source of dreams "states of the body."[79] But it is not so well known

to what an extent our dreams may be influenced by stimuli acting on the

exterior sense-organs. Let us first glance at the action of such

external stimuli.

_Action of External Stimuli._

During sleep the eyes are closed, and consequently the action of

external light on the retina impeded. Yet it is found that even under

these circumstances any very bright light suddenly introduced is capable

of stimulating the optic fibres, and of affecting consciousness. The

most common form of this is the effect of bright moonlight, and of the

early sun's rays. Krauss tells a funny story of his having once, when

twenty-six years old, caught himself, on waking, in the act of

stretching out his arms towards what his dream-fancy had pictured as the

image of his mistress. When fully awake, this image resolved itself into

the full moon.[80] It is not improbable, as Radestock remarks, that the

rays of the sun or moon are answerable for many of the dreams of

celestial glory which persons of a highly religious temperament are said

to experience.

External sounds, when not sufficient to rouse the sleeper, easily

incorporate themselves into his dreams. The ticking of a watch, the

stroke of a clock, the hum of an insect, the song of a bird, the patter

of rain, are common stimuli to the dream-phantasy. M. Alf. Maury tells

us, in his interesting account of the series of experiments to which he

submitted himself in order to ascertain the result of external

stimulation on the mind during sleep, that when a pair of tweezers was

made to vibrate near his ear, he dreamt of bells, the tocsin, and the

events of June, 1848.[81] Most of us, probably, have gone through the

experience of impolitely falling asleep when some one was reading to us,

and of having dream-images suggested by the sounds that were still

indistinctly heard. Scherner gives an amusing case of a youth who was

permitted to whisper his name into the ear of his obdurate mistress,

the consequence of which was that the lady contracted a habit of

dreaming about him, which led to a felicitous change of feeling on her

part.[82]

The two lower senses, smell and taste, seem to play a less-important

part in the production of dream-illusions. Radestock says that the odour

of flowers in a room easily leads to visual images of hot-houses,

perfumery shops, and so on; and it is probable that the contents of the

mouth may occasionally act as a stimulus to the organ of taste, and so

give rise to corresponding dreams. As Radestock observes, these lower

sensations do not commonly make known their quality to the sleeper's

mind. They become transformed at once into visual, instead of into

olfactory or gustatory percepts. That is to say, the dreamer does not

imagine himself smelling or tasting, but seeing an object.

The contact of objects with the tactual organ is one of the best

recognized causes of dreams. M. Maury found that when his lips were

tickled, his dream-fancy interpreted the impression as of a pitch

plaster being torn off his face. An unusual pressure on any part of the

body, as, for example, from contact with a fellow-sleeper, is known to

give rise to a well-marked variety of dream. Our own limbs may even

appear as foreign bodies to our dream-imagination, when through pressure

they become partly paralyzed. Thus, on one occasion, I awoke from a

miserable dream, in which I felt sure I was grasping somebody's hand in

bed, and I was racked by terrifying conjectures as to who it might be.

When fully awake, I discovered that I had been lying on my right side,

and clasping the wrist of the right arm (which had been rendered

insensible by the pressure of the body) with the left hand.

In close connection with these stimuli of pressure are those of muscular

movement, whether unimpeded or impeded. We need not enter into the

difficult question how far the "muscular sense" is connected with the

activity of the motor nerves, and how far with sensory fibres attached

to the muscular or the adjacent tissues. Suffice it to say that an

actual movement, a resistance to an attempted movement, or a mere

disposition to movement, whether consequent on a surplus of motor energy

or on a sensation of discomfort or fatigue in the part to be moved,

somehow or other makes itself known to our minds, even when we are

deprived of the assistance of vision. And these feelings of movement,

impeded or unimpeded, are common initial impulses in our

dream-experiences. It is quite a mistake to suppose that dreams are

built up out of the purely passive sensations of sight and hearing. A

close observation will show that in nearly every dream we imagine

ourselves either moving among the objects we perceive or striving to

move when some weighty obstacle obstructs us. All of us are familiar

with the common forms of nightmare, in which we strive hopelessly to

flee from some menacing evil, and this dream-experience, it may be

presumed, frequently comes from a feeling of strain in the muscles, due

to an awkward disposition of the limbs during sleep. The common

dream-illusion of falling down a vast abyss is plausibly referred by

Wundt to an involuntary extension of the foot of the sleeper.

_Action of Internal Stimuli._

Let us now pass from the action of stimuli lying outside the organism,

to that of stimuli lying within the peripheral regions of the

sense-organs. I have already spoken of the influence of subjective

sensations of sight, hearing, etc., on the illusions of waking life, and

it is now to be added that these sensations play an important part in

our dream-life. Johannes Müller lays great prominence on the part taken

by ocular spectra in the production of dreams. As he observes, the

apparent rays of light, light-patches, mists of light, and so on, due to

changes of blood-pressure in the retina, only manifest themselves

clearly when the eyes are closed and the more powerful effect of the

external stimulus cut off. These subjective spectra come into prominence

in the sleepy condition, giving rise to what M. Maury calls

"hallucinations hypnagogiques," and which he regards (after Gruithuisen)

as the chaos out of which the dream-cosmos is evolved.[83] They are

pretty certainly the starting-point in those picturesque dreams in which

figure a number of bright objects, such as beautiful birds, butterflies,

flowers, or angels.

That the visual images of our sleep do often involve the peripheral

regions of the organ of sight, seems to be proved by the singular fact

that they sometimes persist after waking. Spinoza and Jean Paul Richter

both experienced this survival of dream-images. Still more pertinent is

the fact that the effects of retinal fatigue are producible by

dream-images. The physiologist Gruithuisen had a dream, in which the

principal feature was a violet flame, and which left behind it, _after

waking_, for an appreciable duration, a complementary image of a yellow

spot.[84]

Subjective auditory sensations appear to be much less frequent causes of

dream-illusions than corresponding visual sensations. Yet the rushing,

roaring sound caused by the circulation of the blood in the ear is,

probably, a not uncommon starting-point in dreams. With respect to

subjective sensations of smell and taste, there is little to be said. On

the other hand, subjective sensations due to varying conditions in the

skin are a very frequent exciting cause of dreams. Variations in the

state of tension of the skin, brought about by alteration of position,

changes in the character of the circulation, the irradiation of heat to

the skin or the loss of the same, chemical changes,--these are known to

give rise to a number of familiar sensations, including those of

tickling, itching, burning, creeping, and so on; and the effects of

these sensations are distinctly traceable in our dreams. For example,

the exposure of a part of the body through a loss of the bed-clothes is

a frequent excitant of distressing dreams. A cold foot suggests that the

sleeper is walking over snow or ice. On the other hand, if the cold foot

happens to touch a warm part of the body, the dream-fancy constructs

images of walking on burning lava, and so on.

These sensations of the skin naturally conduct us to the organic

sensations as a whole; that is to say, the feelings connected with the

varying condition of the bodily organs. These include the feelings which

arise in connection with the processes of digestion, respiration, and

circulation, and the condition of various organs according to their

state of nutrition, etc. During our waking life these organic feelings

coalesce for the most part, forming as the "vital sense" an obscure

background for our clear discriminative consciousness, and only come

forward into this region when very exceptional in character, as when

respiration or digestion is impeded, or when we make a special effort of

attention to single them out.[85] When we are asleep, however, and the

avenues of external perception are closed, they assume greater

prominence and distinctness. The centres, no longer called upon to react

on stimuli coming from without the organism, are free to react on

stimuli coming from its hidden recesses. So important a part, indeed, do

these organic feelings take in the dream-drama, that some writers are

disposed to regard them as the great, if not the exclusive, cause of

dreams. Thus, Schopenhauer held that the excitants of dreams are

impressions received from the internal regions of the organism through

the sympathetic nervous system.[86]

It is hardly necessary, perhaps, to give many illustrations of the

effect of such organic sensations on our dreams. Among the most common

provocatives of dreams are sensations connected with a difficulty in

breathing, due to the closeness of the air or to the pressure of the

bed-clothes on the mouth. J. Börner investigated the influence of these

circumstances by covering with the bed-clothes the mouth and a part of

the nostrils of persons who were sound asleep. This was followed by a

protraction of the act of breathing, a reddening of the face, efforts to

throw off the clothes, etc. On being roused, the sleeper testified that

he had experienced a nightmare, in which a horrid animal seemed to be

weighing him down.[87] Irregularity of the heart's action is also a

frequent cause of dreams. It is not improbable that the familiar

dream-experience of flying arises from disturbances of the respiratory

and circulatory movements.

Again, the effects of indigestion, and more particularly stomachic

derangement, on dreams are too well known to require illustration. It

may be enough to allude to the famous dream which Hood traces to an

excessive indulgence at supper. It is known that the varying condition

of the organs of secretion influences our dream-fancy in a number of

ways.

Finally, it is to be observed that an injury done to any part of the

organism is apt to give rise to appropriate dream-images. In this way,

very slight disturbances which would hardly affect waking consciousness

may make themselves felt during sleep. Thus, for example, an incipient

toothache has been known to suggest that the teeth are being

extracted.[88]

It is worth observing that the interpretation of these various orders of

sensations by the imagination of the dreamer takes very different forms

according to the person's character, previous experience, ruling

emotions, and so on. This is what is meant by saying that during sleep

every man has a world of his own, whereas, when awake, he shares in the

common world of perception.

_Dream-Exaggeration._

It is to be noticed, further, that this interpretation of sensation

during sleep is uniformly a process of exaggeration.[89] The exciting

causes of the feeling of discomfort, for example, are always absurdly

magnified. The reason of this seems to be that, owing to the condition

of the mind during sleep, the nature of the sensation is not clearly

recognizable. Even in the case of familiar external impressions, such as

the sound of the striking of a clock, there appears to be wanting that

simple process of reaction by which, in a waking condition of the

attention, a sense-impression is instantly discriminated and classed. In

sleep, as in the artificially induced hypnotic condition, the slighter

differences of quality among sensations are not clearly recognized. The

activity of the higher centres, which are concerned in the finer

processes of discrimination and classification, being greatly reduced,

the impression may be said to come before consciousness as something

novel and unfamiliar. And just as we saw that in waking life novel

sensations agitate the mind, and so lead to an exaggerated mode of

interpretation; so here we see that what is unfamiliar disturbs the

mind, rendering it incapable of calm attention and just interpretation.

This failure to recognize the real nature of an impression is seen most

conspicuously in the case of the organic sensations. As I have remarked,

these constitute for the most part, in waking life, an undiscriminated

mass of obscure feeling, of which we are only conscious as the mental

tone of the hour. And in the few instances in which we do attend to them

separately, whether through their exceptional intensity or in

consequence of an extraordinary effort of discriminative attention, we

can only be said to perceive them, that is, recognize their local

origin, very vaguely. Hence, when asleep, these sensations get very

oddly misinterpreted.

The localization of a bodily sensation in waking life means the

combination of a tactual and a visual image with the sensation. Thus, my

recognition of a twinge of toothache as coming from a certain tooth,

involves representations of the active and passive sensations which

touching and looking at the tooth would yield me. That is to say, the

feeling instantly calls up a compound mental image exactly answering to

a visual percept. This holds good in dream-interpretation too; the

interpretation is effected by means of a visual image. But since the

feeling is only very vaguely recognized, this visual image does not

answer to the bodily part concerned. Instead of this, the fancy of the

dreamer constructs some visual image which bears a vague resemblance to

the proper one, and is generally, if not always, an exaggeration of this

in point of extensive magnitude, etc. For example, a sensation arising

from pressure on the bladder, being dimly connected with the presence of

a fluid, calls up an image of a flood, and so on.

This mode of dream-interpretation has by some writers been erected into

the typical mode, under the name of dream-symbolism. Thus Scherner, in

his interesting though somewhat fanciful work, _Das Leben des Traumes_,

contends that the various regions of the body regularly disclose

themselves to the dream-fancy under the symbol of a building or group of

buildings; a pain in the head calling up, for example, the image of

spiders on the ceiling, intestinal sensations exciting an image of a

narrow alley, and so on. Such theories are clearly an exaggeration of

the fact that the localization of our bodily sensations during sleep is

necessarily imperfect.[90]

In many cases the image called up bears on its objective side no

discoverable resemblance to that of the bodily region or the exciting

cause of the sensation. Here the explanation must be looked for in the

subjective side of the sensation and mental image, that is to say, in

their emotional quality, as pleasurable or painful, distressing,

quieting, etc. It is to be observed, indeed, that in natural sleep, as

in the condition known as hypnotism, while differences of specific

quality in the sense-impressions are lost, the broad difference of the

pleasurable and the painful is never lost. It is, in fact, the

subjective emotional side of the sensation that uniformly forces itself

into consciousness. This being so, it follows that, speaking generally,

the sensations of sleep, both external and internal, or organic, will be

interpreted by what G.H. Lewes has called "an analogy of feeling;" that

is to say, by means of a mental image having some kindred emotional

character or colouring.

Now, the analogy between the higher emotional and the bodily states is a

very close one. A sensation of obstruction in breathing has its exact

analogue in a state of mental embarrassment, a sensation of itching its

counterpart in mental impatience, and so on. And since these emotional

experiences are deeper and fuller than the sensations, the tendency to

exaggerate the nature and causes of these last would naturally lead to

an interpretation of them by help of these experiences. In addition to

this, the predominance of visual imagery in sleep would aid this

transformation of a bodily sensation into an emotional experience, since

visual perceptions have, as their accompaniments of pleasure and pain,

not sensations, but emotions.[91]

Since in this vague interpretation of bodily sensation the actual

impression is obscured, and not taken up as an integral part into the

percept, it is evident that we cannot, strictly speaking, call the

process an imitation of an act of perception, that is to say, an

illusion. And since, moreover, the visual image by which the sensation

is thus displaced appears as a present object, it would, of course, be

allowable to speak of this as an hallucination. This substitution of a

more or less analogous visual image for that appropriate to the

sensation forms, indeed, a transition from dream-illusion, properly so

called, to dream-hallucination.

_Dream-Hallucinations._

On the physical side, these hallucinations answer to cerebral

excitations which are central or automatic, not depending on movements

transmitted from the periphery of the nervous system. Of these

stimulations some appear to be direct, and due to unknown influences

exerted by the state of nutrition of the cerebral elements, or the

action of the contents of the blood-vessels on these elements.

_Effects of Direct Central Stimulation._

That such action does prompt a large number of dream-images may be

regarded as fairly certain. First of all, it seems impossible to account

for all the images of dream-fancy as secondary phenomena connected by

links of association with the foregoing classes of sensation. However

fine and invisible many of the threads which hold together our ideas may

be, they will hardly explain the profusion and picturesque variety of

dream-imagery. Secondly, we are able in certain cases to infer with a

fair amount of certainty that a dream-image is due to such central

stimulation. The common occurrence that we dream of the more stirring

events, the anxieties and enjoyments of the preceding day, appears to

show that when the cerebral elements are predisposed to a certain kind

of activity, as they are after having been engaged for some time in this

particular work, they are liable to be excited by some stimulus brought

directly to bear on them during sleep. And if this is so, it is not

improbable that many of the apparently forgotten images of persons and

places which return with such vividness in dreams are excited by a mode

of stimulation which is for the greater part confined to sleep. I say

"for the greater part," because even in our indolent, listless moments

of waking existence such seemingly forgotten ideas sometimes return as

though by a spontaneous movement of their own and by no discoverable

play of association.

It may be well to add that this immediate revival of impressions

previously received by the brain includes not only the actual

perceptions of waking life, but also the ideas derived from others, the

ideal fancies supplied by works of fiction, and even the images which

our unaided waking fancy is wont to shape for itself. Our daily

conjectures as to the future, the communications to us by others of

their thoughts, hopes, and fears,--these give rise to numberless vague

fugitive images, any one of which may become distinctly revived in

sleep.[92] This throws light on the curious fact that we often dream of

experiences and events quite unlike those of our individual life. Thus,

for example, the common construction by the dream-fancy of the

experience of flight in mid-air, and the creation of those weird forms

which the terror of a nightmare is wont to bring in its train, seem to

point to the past action of waking fancy. To imagine one's self flying

when looking at a bird is probably a common action with all persons, at

least in their earlier years, and images of preternaturally horrible

beings are apt to be supplied to most of us some time during life by

nurses or by books.

_Indirect Central Stimulation._

Besides these direct central stimulations, there are others which, in

contradistinction, may be called indirect, depending on some previous

excitation. These are, no doubt, the conditions of a very large number

of our dream-images. There must, of course, be some primary cerebral

excitation, whether that of a present peripheral stimulation, or that

which has been termed central and spontaneous; but when once this first

link of the imaginative chain is supplied, other links may be added in

large numbers through the operation of the forces of association. One

may, indeed, safely say that the large proportion of the contents of

every dream arise in this way.

The very simplest type of dream excited by a present sensation contains

these elements. To take an example, I once dreamt, as a consequence of

the loud barking of a dog, that a dog approached me when lying down, and

began to lick my face. Here the play of the associative forces was

apparent: a mere sensation of sound called up the appropriate visual

image, this again the representation of a characteristic action, and so

on. So it is with the dreams whose first impulse is some central or

spontaneous excitation. A momentary sight of a face or even the mention

of a name during the preceding day may give the start to dream-activity;

but all subsequent members of the series of images owe their revival to

a tension, so to speak, in the fine threads which bind together, in so

complicated a way, our impressions and ideas.

Among the psychic accompaniments of these central excitations visual

images, as already hinted, fill the most conspicuous place. Even

auditory images, though by no means absent, are much less numerous than

visual. Indeed, when there are the conditions for the former, it

sometimes happens that the auditory effect transforms itself into a

visual effect. An illustration of this occurred in my own experience.

Trying to fall asleep by means of the well-known device of counting, I

suddenly found myself losing my hold on the faint auditory effects, my

imagination transforming them into a visual spectacle, under the form of

a path of light stretching away from me, in which the numbers appeared

under the grotesque form of visible objects, tumbling along in glorious

confusion.

Next to these visual phantasms, certain motor hallucinations seem to be

most prominent in dreams. By a motor hallucination, I mean the illusion

that we are actually moving when there is no peripheral excitation of

the motor organ. Just as the centres concerned in passive sensation are

susceptible of central stimulation, so are the centres concerned in

muscular sensation. A mere impulse in the centres of motor innervation

(if we assume these to be the central seat of the muscular feelings) may

suffice to give rise to a complete representation of a fully executed

movement. And thus in our sleep we seem to walk, ride, float, or fly.

The most common form of motor hallucination is probably the vocal. In

the social encounters which make up so much of our sleep-experience, we

are wont to be very talkative. Now, perhaps, we find ourselves zealously

advocating some cause, now very fierce in denunciation, now very amusing

in witty repartee, and so on. This imagination of ourselves as speaking,

as distinguished from that of hearing others talking, must, it is clear,

involve the excitation of the structures engaged in the production of

the muscular feelings which accompany vocal action, as much as, if not

more than, the auditory centres. And the frequency of this kind of

dream-experience may be explained, like that of visual imagery, by the

habits of waking life. The speech impulse is one of the most deeply

rooted of all our impulses, and one which has been most frequently

exercised in waking life.

_Combination of Dream-Elements._

It is commonly said that dreams are a grotesque dissolution of all

order, a very chaos and whirl of images without any discoverable

connection. On the other hand, a few writers claim for the mind in sleep

a power of arranging and grouping its incongruous elements in definite

and even life-like pictures. Each of these views is correct within

certain limits; that is to say, there are dreams in which the strangest

disorder seems to prevail, and others in which one detects the action of

a central control. Yet, speaking generally, sequences of dream-images

will be found to be determined by certain circumstances and laws, and so

far not to be haphazard or wholly chaotic. We have now to inquire into

the laws of these successions; and, first of all, we may ask how far the

known laws of association, together with the peculiar conditions of the

sleeping state, are able to account for the various modes of

dream-combination. We have already regarded mental association as

furnishing a large additional store of dream-imagery; we have now to

consider it as explaining the sequences and concatenations of our

dream-elements.

_Incoherence of Dreams._

First of all, then, let us look at the chaotic and apparently lawless

side of dreaming, and see whether any clue is discoverable to the centre

of this labyrinth. In the case of all the less elaborately ordered

dreams, in which sights and sounds appear to succeed one another in the

wildest dance (which class of dreams probably belongs to the deeper

stages of sleep), the mind may with certainty be regarded as purely

passive, and the mode of sequence may be referred to the action of

association complicated by the ever-recurring introduction of new

initial impulses, both peripheral and central. These are the dreams in

which we are conscious of being perfectly passive, either as spectators

of a strange pageant, or as borne away by some apparently extraneous

force through a series of the most diverse experiences. The flux of

images in these dreams is very much the same as that in certain waking

conditions, in which we relax attention, both external and internal, and

yield ourselves wholly to the spontaneous play of memory and fancy.

It is plain at a glance that the simultaneous concurrence of wholly

disconnected initial impulses will serve to impress a measure of

disconnectedness on our dream-images. From widely remote parts of the

organism there come impressions which excite each its peculiar visual or

other image according as its local origin or its emotional tone is the

more distinctly present to consciousness. Now it is a subjective ocular

sensation suggesting a bouquet of lovely flowers, and close on its heels

comes an impression from the organs of digestion suggesting all manner

of obstacles, and so our dream-fancy plunges from a vision of flowers to

one of dreadful demons.

Let us now look at the way in which the laws of association working on

the incongruous elements thus cast up into our dream-consciousness, will

serve to give a yet greater appearance of disorder and confusion to our

dream-combinations. According to these laws, any idea may, under

certain circumstances, call up another, if the corresponding impressions

have only once occurred together, or if the ideas have any degree of

resemblance, or, finally, if only they stand in marked contrast with one

another. Any accidental coincidence of events, such as meeting a person

at a particular foreign resort, and any insignificant resemblance

between objects, sounds, etc., may thus supply a path, so to speak, from

fact to dream-fancy.

In our waking states these innumerable paths of association are

practically closed by the supreme energy of the coherent groups of

impressions furnished us from the world without through our organs of

sense, and also by the volitional control of internal thought in

obedience to the pressure of practical needs and desires. In dream-life

both of these influences are withdrawn, so that delicate threads of

association, which have no chance of exerting their pull, so to speak,

in our waking states, now make known their hidden force. Little wonder,

then, that the filaments which bind together these dream-successions

should escape detection, since even in our waking thought we so often

fail to see the connection which makes us pass in recollection from a

name to a visible scene or perhaps to an emotional vibration.

It is worth noting that the origin of an association is often to be

looked for in one of those momentary half-conscious acts of waking

imagination to which reference has already been made. A friend, for

example, has been speaking to us of some common acquaintance, remarking

on his poor health. The language calls up, vaguely, a visual

representation of the person sinking in health and dying. An

association will thus be formed between this person and the idea of

death. A night or two after, the image of this person somehow recurs to

our dream-fancy, and we straightway dream that we are looking at his

corpse, watching his funeral, and so on. The links of the chain which

holds together these dream-images were really forged, in part, in our

waking hours, though the process was so rapid as to escape our

attention. It may be added, that in many cases where a juxtaposition of

dream-images seems to have no basis in waking life, careful reflection

will occasionally bring to light some actual conjunction of impressions

so momentary as to have faded from our recollection.

We must remember, further, how great an apparent disorder will invade

our imaginative dream-life when the binding force of resemblance has

unchecked play. In waking thought we have to connect things according to

their essential resemblances, classifying objects and events for

purposes of knowledge or action, according to their widest or their most

important points of similarity. In sleep, on the contrary, the slightest

touch of resemblance may engage the mind and affect the direction of

fancy. In a sense we may be said, when dreaming, to discover mental

affinities between impressions and feelings, including those subtle

links of emotional analogy of which I have already spoken. This effect

is well illustrated in a dream recorded by M. Maury, in which he passed

from one set of images to another through some similarity of names, as

that between _corps_ and _cor_. Such a movement of fancy would, of

course, be prevented in full waking consciousness by a predominant

attention to the meaning of the sounds.

It will be possible, I think, after a habit of analyzing one's dreams in

the light of preceding experience has been formed, to discover in a good

proportion of cases some hidden force of association which draws

together the seemingly fortuitous concourse of our dream-atoms. That we

should expect to do so in every case is unreasonable, since, owing to

the numberless fine ramifications which belong to our familiar images,

many of the paths of association followed by our dream-fancy cannot be

afterwards retraced.

To illustrate the odd way in which our images get tumbled together

through the action of occult association forces, I will record a dream

of my own. I fancied I was at the house of a distinguished literary

acquaintance, at her usual reception hour. I expected the friends I was

in the habit of meeting there. Instead of this, I saw a number of

commonly dressed people having tea. My hostess came up and apologized

for having asked me into this room. It was, she said, a tea-party which

she prepared for poor people at sixpence a head. After puzzling over

this dream, I came to the conclusion that the missing link was a verbal

one. A lady who is a connection of my friend, and bears the same name,

assists her sister in a large kind of benevolent scheme. I may add that

I had not, so far as I could recollect, had occasion very recently to

think of this benevolent friend, but I had been thinking of my literary

friend in connection with her anticipated return to town.

In thus seeking to trace, amid the superficial chaos of dream-fancy,

its hidden connections, I make no pretence to explain why in any given

case these particular paths of association should be followed, and more

particularly why a slender thread of association should exert a pull

where a stronger cord fails to do so. To account for this, it would be

necessary to call in the physiological hypothesis that among the nervous

elements connected with a particular element, _a_, already excited,

some, as _m_ and _n_, are at the moment, owing to the state of their

nutrition or their surrounding influences, more powerfully predisposed

to activity than other elements, as _b_ and _c_.

The subject of association naturally conducts us to the second great

problem in the theory of dreams--the explanation of the order in which

the various images group themselves in all our more elaborate dreams.

_Coherence of Dreams._

A fully developed dream is a complex of many distinct illusory

sense-presentations: in this respect it differs from the illusions of

normal waking life, which are for the most part single and isolated. And

this complex of quasi-presentations appears somehow or other to fall

together into one whole scene or series of events, which, though it may

be very incongruous and absurdly impossible from a waking point of view,

nevertheless makes a single object for the dreamer's internal vision,

and has a certain degree of artistic unity. This plastic force, which

selects and binds together our unconnected dream-images, has frequently

been referred to as a mysterious spiritual faculty, under the name of

"creative fancy." Thus Cudworth remarks, in his _Treatise concerning

Eternal and Immutable Morality_: "That dreams are many times begotten by

the phantastical power of the soul itself ... is evident from the

orderly connection and coherence of imaginations which many times are

continued in a long chain or series." One may find a good deal of

mystical writing on the nature and activity of this faculty, especially

in German literature. The explanation of this element of organic unity

in dreams is, it may be safely said, the crux in the science of dreams.

That the laws of psychology help us to understand the sequences of

dream-images, we have seen. What we have now to ask is whether these

laws throw any light on the orderly grouping of the elements so brought

up in consciousness in the form of a connected experience.

It is to be remarked at the outset that a singular kind of unity is

sometimes given to our dream-combinations by a total or partial

coalescence of different images. The conditions of such coalescence have

been referred to already.[93] Simultaneous impressions or images will

always tend to coalesce with a force which varies directly as the degree

of their similarity. Sometimes this coalescence is instantaneous and not

made known to consciousness. Thus, Radestock suggests that if the mind

of the sleeper is simultaneously invaded by an unpleasant sensation

arising out of some disturbance of the functions of the skin, and a

subjective visual sensation, the resulting mental image may be a

combination of the two, under the form of a caterpillar creeping over

the bodily surface. And the coalescence may even be prepared by

sub-conscious operations of waking imagination. Thus, for example, I

once spoke about the cheapness of hares to a member of my family, who

somewhat grimly suggested that they were London cats. I did not dwell on

the idea, but the following night I dreamt that I saw a big hybrid

creature, half hare, half cat, sniffing about a cottage. As it stood on

its hind legs and took a piece of food from a window-ledge, I became

sure that it was a cat. Here it is plain that the cynical observation of

my relative had, at the moment, partially excited an image of this

feline hare. In some dreams, again, we may become aware of the process

of coalescence, as when persons who at one moment were seen to be

distinct appear to our dream-fancy to run together in some third person.

A very similar kind of unification takes place between sequent images

under the form of transformation. When two images follow one another

closely, and have anything in common, they readily assume the form of a

transmutation. There is a sort of overlapping of the mental images, and

so an appearance of continuity produced in some respects analogous to

that which arises in the wheel-of-life (thaumatrope) class of

sense-illusions. This would seem to account for the odd transformations

of personality which not unfrequently occur in dreams, in which a person

appears, by a kind of metempsychosis, to transfer his physical ego to

another, and in which the dreamer's own bodily phantom plays similar

freaks. And the same principle probably explains those dissolving-view

effects which are so familiar an accompaniment of dream-scenery.[94]

But passing from this exceptional kind of unity in dreams, let us

inquire how the heterogeneous elements of our dream-fancy become ordered

and arranged when they preserve their separate existence. If we look

closely at the structure of our more finished dreams, we find that the

appearance of harmony, connectedness, or order, may be given in one of

two ways. There may, first of all, be a subjective harmony, the various

images being held together by an emotional thread. Or there may,

secondly, be an objective harmony, the parts of the dream, though

answering to no particular experiences of waking life, bearing a certain

resemblance to our habitual modes of experience. Let us inquire into the

way in which each kind of order is brought about.

_Lyrical Element in Dreams._

The only unity that belongs to many of our dreams is a subjective

emotional unity. This is the basis of harmony in lyrical poetry, where

the succession of images turns mainly on their emotional colouring.

Thus, the images that float before the mind of the Poet Laureate, in his

_In Memoriam_, clearly have their link of connection in their common

emotional tone, rather than in any logical continuity. Dreaming has been

likened to poetic composition, and certainly many of our dreams are

built upon a groundwork of lyrical feeling. They might be marked off,

perhaps, as our lyrical dreams.

The way in which this emotional force acts in these cases has already

been hinted at. We have seen that the analogy of feeling is a common

link between dream-images. Now, if any shade of feeling becomes fixed

and dominant in the mind, it will tend to control all the images of the

time, allowing certain congruous ones to enter, and excluding

others.[95] If, for example, a feeling of distress occupies the mind,

distressing images will have the advantage in the struggle for existence

which goes on in the world of mind as well as in that of matter. We may

say that attention, which is here wholly a passive process, is

controlled by the emotion of the time, and bent in the direction of

congruent or harmonious images.

Now, a ground-tone of feeling of a certain complexion, answering to the

sum of sensations arising in connection with the different organic

processes of the time, is a very frequent foundation of our

dream-structure. So frequent is it, indeed, that one might almost say

there is no dream in which it is not one great determining factor. The

analysis of a very large number of dreams has convinced me that traces

of this influence are discoverable in a great majority.

I will give a simple illustration of this lyrical type of dream. A

little girl of about four years and three-quarters went with her parents

to Switzerland. On their way she was taken to the cathedral at

Strasburg, and saw the celebrated clock strike, and the figures of the

Apostles come out, etc. In Switzerland she stayed at Gimmelwald, near

Mürren, opposite a fine mass of snowy mountains. One morning she told

her father that she had had "such a lovely dream." She fancied she was

on the snow-peaks with her nurse, and walked on to the sky. There came

out of the sky "such beautiful things," just like the figures of the

clock. This vision of celestial things was clearly due to the fact that

both the clock and the snow-peaks touching the blue sky had powerfully

excited her imagination, filling her with much the same kind of emotion,

namely, wonder, admiration, and longing to reach an inaccessible height.

Our feelings commonly have a gradual rise and fall, and the organic

sensations which so often constitute the emotional basis of our lyrical

dreams generally have stages of increasing intensity. Moreover, such a

persistent ground-feeling becomes reinforced by the images which it

sustains in consciousness. Hence a certain _crescendo_ character in our

emotional dreams, or a gradual rise to some culminating point or climax.

This phase of dream can be illustrated from the experience of the same

little girl. When just five years old, she was staying at Hampstead,

near a church which struck the hours somewhat loudly. One morning she

related the following dream to her father (I use her own language). The

biggest bells in the world were ringing; when this was over the earth

and houses began to tumble to pieces; all the seas, rivers, and ponds

flowed together, and covered all the land with black water, as deep as

in the sea where the ships sail; people were drowned; she herself flew

above the water, rising and falling, fearing to fall in; she then saw

her mamma drowned, and at last flew home to tell her papa. The gradual

increase of alarm and distress expressed in this dream, having its

probable cause in the cumulative effect of the disturbing sound of the

church bells, must be patent to all.

The following rather comical dream illustrates quite as clearly the

growth of a feeling of irritation and vexation, probably connected with

the development of some slightly discomposing organic sensation. I

dreamt I was unexpectedly called on to lecture to a class of young

women, on Herder. I began hesitatingly, with some vague generalities

about the Augustan age of German literature, referring to the three

well-known names of Lessing, Schiller, and Goethe. Immediately my

sister, who suddenly appeared in the class, took me up, and said she

thought there was a fourth distinguished name belonging to this period.

I was annoyed at the interruption, but said, with a feeling of triumph,

"I suppose you mean Wieland?" and then appealed to the class whether

there were not twenty persons who knew the names I had mentioned to one

who knew Wieland's name. Then the class became generally disorderly. My

feeling of embarrassment gained in depth. Finally, as a climax, several

quite young girls, about ten years and less, came and joined the class.

The dream broke off abruptly as I was in the act of taking these

children to the wife of an old college tutor, to protest against their

admission.

It is worth noting, perhaps, that in this evolution of feeling in

dreaming the quality of the emotion may vary within certain limits. One

shade of feeling may be followed by another and kindred shade, so that

the whole dream still preserves a degree, though a less obvious degree,

of emotional unity. Thus, for example, a lady friend of mine once dreamt

that she was in church, listening to a well-known novelist of the more

earnest sort, preaching. A wounded soldier was brought in to be shot,

because he was mortally wounded, and had distinguished himself by his

bravery. He was then shot, but not killed, and, rolling over in agony,

exclaimed, "How long!" The development of an extreme emotion of horror

out of the vague feeling of awe which is associated with a church, gives

a curious interest to this dream.

_Verisimilitude in Dreams._

I must not dwell longer on this emotional basis of dreams, but pass to

the consideration of the second and objective kind of unity which

characterizes many of our more elaborate dream-performances. In spite of

all that is fitful and grotesque in dream-combination, it still

preserves a distant resemblance to our actual experience. Though no

dream reproduces a particular incident or chain of incidents in this

experience, though the dream-fancy invariably transforms the particular

objects, relations, and events of waking life, it still makes the order

of our daily experience its prototype. It fashions its imaginary world

on the model of the real. Thus, objects group themselves in space, and

act on one another conformably to these perceived space-relations;

events succeed one another in time, and are often seen to be connected;

men act from more or less intelligible motives, and so on. In this way,

though the dream-fancy sets at nought the particular relations of our

experience, it respects the general and constant relations. How are we

to account for this?

It is said by certain philosophers that this superposition of the

relations of space, time, causation, etc., on the products of our

dream-fancy is due to the fact that all experience arises by a synthesis

of mental forms with the chaotic matter of sense-impressions. These

philosophers allow, however, that all particular connections are

determined by experience. Accordingly, what we have to do here is to

inquire how far this scientific method of explaining mental connections

by facts of experience will carry us. In other words, we have to ask

what light can be thrown on these tendencies of dream-imagination by

ascertained psychological laws, and more particularly by what are known

as the laws of association.

These laws tell us that of two mental phenomena which occur together,

each will tend to recall the other whenever it happens to be revived. On

the physiological side, this means that any two parts of the nervous

structures which have acted together become in some way connected, so

that when one part begins to work the other will tend to work also. But

it is highly probable that a particular structure acts in a great many

different ways. Thus, it may be stimulated by unlike modes of stimuli,

or it may enter into very various connections with other structures.

What will follow from this? One consequence would appear to be that

there will be developed an organic connection between the two

structures, of such a kind that whenever one is excited the other will

be disposed to act somehow and anyhow, even when there is nothing in the

present mode of activity of the first structure to determine the second

to act in some one definite way, in other words, when this mode of

activity is, roughly speaking, novel.

Let me illustrate this effect in one of the simplest cases, that of the

visual organ. If, when walking out on a dark night, a few points in my

retina are suddenly stimulated by rays of light, and I recognize some

luminous object in a corresponding direction, I am prepared to see

something above and below, to the right and to the left of this object.

Why is this? There may from the first have been a kind of innate

understanding among contiguous optic fibres, predisposing them to such

concerted action. But however this be, this disposition would seem to

have been largely promoted by the fact that, throughout my experience,

the stimulation of any retinal point has been connected with that of

adjoining points, either simultaneously by some second object, or

successively by the same object as the eye moves over it, or as the

object itself moves across the field of vision.

When, therefore, in sleep any part of the optic centres is excited in a

particular way, and the images thus arising have their corresponding

loci in space assigned to them, there will be a disposition to refer any

other visual images which happen at the moment to arise in consciousness

to adjacent parts of space. The character of these other images will be

determined by other special conditions of the moment; their locality or

position in space will be determined by this organic connection. We may,

perhaps, call these tendencies to concerted action of some kind general

associative dispositions.

Just as there are such dispositions to united action among various parts

of one organ of sense, so there may be among different organs, which are

either connected originally in the infant organism, or have

communications opened up by frequent coexcitation of the two. Such links

there certainly are between the organs of taste and smell, and between

the ear and the muscular system in general, and more particularly the

vocal organ.[96] A new odour often sets us asking how the object would

taste, and a series of sounds commonly disposes us to movement of some

kind or another. How far there may be finer threads of connection

between other organs, such as the eye and the ear, which do not betray

themselves amid the stronger forces of waking mental life, one cannot

say. Whatever their number, it is plain that they will exert their

influence within the comparatively narrow limits of dream-life, serving

to impress a certain character on the images which happen to be called

up by special circumstances, and giving to the combination a slight

measure of congruity. Thus, if I were dreaming that I heard some lively

music, and at the same time an image of a friend was anyhow excited, my

dream-fancy might not improbably represent this person as performing a

sequence of rhythmic movements, such as those of riding, dancing, etc.

A narrower field for these general associative dispositions may be found

in the tendency, on the reception of an impression of a given character,

to look for a certain kind of second impression; though the exact nature

of this is unknown. Thus, for example, the form and colour of a new

flower suggest a scent, and the perception of a human form is

accompanied by a vague representation of vocal utterances. These general

tendencies of association appear to me to be most potent influences in

our dream-life. The many strange human forms which float before our

dream-fancy are apt to talk, move, and behave like men and women in

general, however little they resemble their actual prototypes, and

however little individual consistency of character is preserved by each

of them. Special conditions determine what they shall say or do; the

general associative disposition accounts for their saying or doing

something.

We thus seem to find in the purely passive processes of association some

ground for that degree of natural coherence and rational order which our

more mature dreams commonly possess. These processes go far to explain,

too, that odd mixture of rationality with improbability, of natural

order and incongruity, which characterizes our dream-combinations.

_Rational Construction in Dreams._

Nevertheless, I quite agree with Herr Volkelt that association, even in

the most extended meaning, cannot explain all in the shaping of our

dream-pictures. The "phantastical power" which Cudworth talks about

clearly includes something besides. It is an erroneous supposition that

when we are dreaming there is a complete suspension of the voluntary

powers, and consequently an absence of all direction of the intellectual

processes. This supposition, which has been maintained by numerous

writers, from Dugald Stewart downwards, seems to be based on the fact

that we frequently find ourselves in dreams striving in vain to move the

whole body or a limb. But this only shows, as M. Maury remarks in the

work already referred to, that our volitions are frustrated through the

inertia of our bodily organs, not that these volitions do not take

place. In point of fact, the 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

instances of extraordinary intellectual achievements in dreams, as

Condillac's composition of a part of his _Cours d'Études_. No one would

maintain that a result of this kind was possible in the total absence of

intellectual action carefully directed by the will. And something of

this same control shows itself in all our more fully developed dreams.

One manifestation of this voluntary activity in sleep is to be found in

those efforts of attention which not unfrequently occur. I have remarked

that, speaking roughly and in relation to the waking condition, the

state of sleep is marked by a subjection of the powers of attention to

the force of the mental images present to consciousness. Yet something

resembling an exercise of voluntary attention sometimes happens in

sleep. The intellectual feats just spoken of, unless, indeed, they are

referred to some mysterious unconscious mental operations, clearly

involve a measure of volitional guidance. All who dream frequently are

occasionally aware on awaking of having greatly exercised their

attention on the images presented to them during sleep. I myself am

often able to recall an effort to see beautiful objects, which

threatened to disappear from my field of vision, or to catch faint

receding tones of preternatural sweetness; and some dreamers allege that

they are able to retain a recollection of the feeling of strain

connected with such exercise of attention in sleep.

The main function of this voluntary attention in dream-life is seen in

the selection of those images which are to pass the threshold of clear

consciousness. I have already spoken of a selective action brought about

by the ruling emotion. In this case, the attention is held captive by

the particular feeling of the moment. Also a selective process goes on

in the case of the action of those associative dispositions just

referred to. But in each of these cases the action of selective

attention is comparatively involuntary, passive, and even unconscious,

not having anything of the character of a conscious striving to compass

some end. Besides this comparatively passive play of selective

attention, there is an active play, in which there is a conscious wish

to gain an end; in other words, the operation of a definite motive. This

motive may be described as an intellectual impulse to connect and

harmonize what is present to the mind. The voluntary kind of selection

includes and transcends each of the involuntary kinds. It has as its

result an imitation of that order which is brought about by what I have

called the associative dispositions, only it consciously aims at this

result. And it is a process controlled by a feeling, namely, the

intellectual sentiment of consistency, which is not a mode of emotional

excitement enthralling the will, but a calm motive, guiding the

activities of attention. It thus bears somewhat the same relation to the

emotional selection already spoken of, as dramatic creation bears to

lyrical composition.

This process of striving to seize some connecting link, or thread of

order, is illustrated whenever, in waking life, we are suddenly brought

face to face with an unfamiliar scene. When taken into a factory, we

strive to arrange the bewildering chaos of visual impressions under some

scheme, by help of which we are said to understand the scene. So, if on

entering a room we are plunged in _medias res_ of a lively conversation,

we strive to find a clue to the discussion. Whenever the meaning of a

scene is not at once clear, and especially whenever there is an

appearance of confusion in it, we are conscious of a painful feeling of

perplexity, which acts as a strong motive to ever-renewed attention.[97]

In touching on this intellectual impulse to connect the disconnected, we

are, it is plain, approaching the question of the very foundations of

our intellectual structure. That there is this impulse firmly rooted in

the mature mind nobody can doubt; and that it manifests itself in early

life in the child's recurring "Why?" is equally clear. But how we are to

account for it, whether it is to be viewed as a mere result of the play

of associated fragments of experience, or as something involved in the

very process of the association of ideas itself, is a question into

which I cannot here enter.

What I am here concerned to show is that the search for consistency and

connection in the manifold impressions of the moment is a deeply rooted

habit of the mind, and one which is retained in a measure during sleep.

When, in this state, our minds are invaded by a motley crowd of

unrelated images, there results a disagreeable sense of confusion; and

this feeling acts as a motive to the attention to sift out those

products of the dream-fancy which may be made to cohere. When once the

foundations of a dream-action are laid, new images must to some extent

fit in with this; and here there is room for the exercise of a distinct

impulse to order the chaotic elements of dream-fancy in certain forms.

The perception of any possible relation between one of the crowd of new

images ever surging above the level of obscure consciousness, and the

old group at once serves to detain it. The concentration of attention on

it, in obedience to this impulse to seek for an intelligible order, at

once intensifies it and fixes it, incorporating it into the series of

dream-pictures.

Here is a dream which appears to illustrate this impulse to seek an

intelligible order in the confused and disorderly. After being occupied

with correcting the proofs of my volume on _Pessimism_, I dreamt that my

book was handed to me by my publisher, fully illustrated with coloured

pictures. The frontispiece represented the fantastic figure of a man

gesticulating in front of a ship, from which he appeared to have just

stepped. My publisher told me it was meant for Hamlet, and I immediately

reflected that this character had been selected as a concrete example of

the pessimistic tendency. I may add that, on awaking, I was distinctly

aware of having felt puzzled when dreaming, and of having striven to

read a meaning into the dream.

The _rationale_ of this dream seems to me to be somewhat as follows. The

image of the completed volume represented, of course, a recurring

anticipatory image of waking life. The coloured plates were due probably

to subjective optical sensations simultaneously excited, which were made

to fit in (with or without an effort of voluntary attention) with the

image of the book under the form of illustrations. But this stage of

coherency did not satisfy the mind, which, still partly confused by the

incongruity of coloured plates in a philosophic work, looked for a

closer connection. The image of Hamlet was naturally suggested in

connection with pessimism. The effort to discover a meaning in the

pictures led to the fusion of this image with one of the subjective

spectra, and in this way the idea of a Hamlet frontispiece probably

arose.

The whole process of dream-construction is clearly illustrated in a

curious dream recorded by Professor Wundt.[98] 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 an

acquaintance who happens to be with him go to the other side of the

street and join the procession. After she has gone away, his companion

remarks to him, "She only said that because the cholera rages over

yonder, and she wants to keep this side of the street to 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 he further observes 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 talked about the particular lady with this

friend, who had narrated facts which clearly proved her selfishness. The

hastening to flee from the infected neighbourhood 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 may have become

fused into a connected chain of events. First of all, it is clear that

this dream is built up on a foundation of a gloomy tone of feeling,

arising, as it would seem, from an irregularity of the heart's action.

Secondly, it owes its special structure and its air of a connected

sequence of events, to those tendencies, passive and active, to order

the chaotic of which I have been speaking. Let us try to trace this out

in detail.

To begin with, we may suppose that 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, partly by the passive mechanism

of associative dispositions, and partly, perhaps, by the activity of

voluntary selection. Thus, the idea of the lady's husband would

naturally recall the fact of his death, and this would fall in with the

pre-existing scene under the form of the idea that he is the person who

is now being 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 specially adapted to the pre-existing

representations, namely, of the procession on the further side of the

street, and the cholera (which last, like the image of the funeral, is,

we may suppose, 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 adaptative or assimilative actions, under the sway of a

strong desire to connect the disconnected, and a lively activity of

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 particular case, because of

the co-operation of the impulse of consistency, which, setting out with

the pre-existing mental images, selects from among many tendencies of

reproduction those which happen to chime in with the scene.

_The Nature of Dream-Intelligence._

It must not be supposed that this process of welding together the

chaotic materials of our dreams is ever carried out with anything like

the clear rational purpose of which we are conscious when seeking, in

waking life, to comprehend some bewildering spectacle. At best it is a

vague longing, and this longing, it may be added, is soon satisfied.

There is, indeed, something, almost pathetic in the facility with which

the dreamer's mind can be pacified with the least appearance of a

connection. Just as a child's importunate "Why?" is often silenced by a

ridiculous caricature of an explanation, so the dreamer's intelligence

is freed from its distress by the least semblance of a uniting order.

It thus remains true with respect even to our most coherent dreams, that

there is a complete suspension, or at least a considerable retardation,

of the highest operations of judgment and thought; also a great

enfeeblement, to say the least of it, of those sentiments such as the

feeling of consistency and the sense of the absurd which are so

intimately connected with these higher intellectual operations.

In order to illustrate how oddly our seemingly rational dreams

caricature the operations of waking thought, I may, perhaps, be allowed

to record two of my own dreams, of which I took careful note at the

time.

On the first occasion I went "in my dream" to the "Stores" in August,

and found the place empty. A shopman brought me some large fowls. I

asked their price, and he answered, "Tenpence a pound." I then asked

their weight, so as to get an idea of their total cost, and he replied,

"Forty pounds." Not in the least surprised, I proceeded to calculate

their cost: 40x10=400÷12=33-1/3. But, oddly enough, I took this quotient

as pence, just as though I had not already divided by 12, and so made

the cost of a fowl to be 2s. 9d., which seemed to me a fair enough

price.

In my second dream I was at Cambridge, among a lot of undergraduates. I

saw a coach drive up with six horses. Three undergraduates got out of

the coach. I asked them why they had so many horses, and they said,

"Because of the luggage." I then said, "The luggage is much more than

the undergraduates. Can you tell me how to express this in mathematical

symbols? This is the way: if _x_ is the weight of an undergraduate, then

_x_ + _x_.n represents the weight of an undergraduate and his luggage

together." I noticed that this sally was received with evident

enjoyment.[99]

We may say, then, that the structure of our dreams, equally with the

fact of their completely illusory character, points to the conclusion

that during sleep, just as in the moments of illusion in waking life,

there is a deterioration of our intellectual life. The highest

intellectual activities answering to the least stable nervous

connections are impeded, and what of intellect remains corresponds to

the most deeply organized connections.

In this way, our dream-life touches that childish condition of the

intelligence which marks the decadence of old age and the encroachments

of mental disease. The parallelism between dreams and insanity has been

pointed out by most writers on the subject. Kant observed that the

madman is a dreamer awake, and more recently Wundt has remarked that,

when asleep, we "can experience nearly all the phenomena which meet us

in lunatic asylums." The grotesqueness of the combinations, the lack of

all judgment as to consistency, fitness, and probability, are common

characteristics of the short night-dream of the healthy and the long

day-dream of the insane.[100]

But one great difference marks off the two domains. When dreaming, we

are still sane, and shall soon prove our sanity. After all, the dream of

the sleeper is corrected, if not so rapidly as the illusion of the

healthy waker. As soon as the familiar stimuli of light and sound set

the peripheral sense-organs in activity, and call back the nervous

system to its complete round of healthy action, the illusion disappears,

and we smile at our alarms and agonies, saying, "Behold, it was a

dream!"

On the practical side, the illusions and hallucinations of sleep must be

regarded as comparatively harmless. The sleeper, in healthy conditions

of sleep, ceases to be an agent, and the illusions which enthral his

brain have no evil practical consequences. They may, no doubt, as we

shall see in a future chapter, occasionally lead to a subsequent

confusion of fiction and reality in waking recollection. But with the

exception of this, their worst effect is probably the lingering sense of

discomfort which a "nasty dream" sometimes leaves with us, though this

may be balanced by the reverberations of happy dream-emotions which

sometimes follow us through the day. And however this be, it is plain

that any disadvantages thus arising are more than made good by the

consideration that our liability to these nocturnal illusions is

connected with the need of that periodic recuperation of the higher

nervous structures which is a prime condition of a vigorous intellectual

activity, and so of a triumph over illusion during waking life.

For these reasons dreams may properly be classed with the illusions of

normal or healthy life, rather than with those of disease. They

certainly lie nearer this region than the very similar illusions of the

somnambulist, which with respect to their origin appear to be more

distinctly connected with a pathological condition of the nervous

system, and which, with respect to their practical consequences may

easily prove so disastrous.

_After-Dreams._

In concluding this account of dreams, I would call attention to the

importance of the transition states between sleeping and waking, in

relation to the production of sense-illusion. And this point may be

touched on here all the more appropriately, since it helps to bring out

the close relation between waking and sleeping illusion. The mind does

not pass suddenly and at a bound from the condition of dream-fancy to

that of waking perception. I have already had occasion to touch on the

"hypnagogic state," that condition of somnolence or "sleepiness" in

which external impressions cease to act, the internal attention is

relaxed, and the weird imagery of sleep begins to unfold itself. And

just as there is this anticipation of dream-hallucination in the

presomnial condition, so there is the survival of it in the postsomnial

condition. As I have observed, dreams sometimes leave behind them, for

an appreciable interval after waking, a vivid after-impression, and in

some cases even the semblance of a sense-perception.

If one reflects how many ghosts and other miraculous apparitions are

seen at night, and when the mind is in a more or less somnolent

condition, the idea is forcibly suggested that a good proportion of

these visions are the _débris_ of dreams. In some cases, indeed, as that

of Spinoza, already referred to, the hallucination (in Spinoza's case

that of "a scurvy black Brazilian") is recognized by the subject himself

as a dream-image.[101] I am indebted to Mr. W.H. Pollock for a fact

which curiously illustrates the position here adopted. A lady was

staying at a country house. During the night and immediately on waking

up she had an apparition of a strange-looking man in mediæval costume,

a figure by no means agreeable, and which seemed altogether unfamiliar

to her. The next morning, on rising, she recognized the original of her

hallucinatory image in a portrait hanging on the wall of her bedroom,

which must have impressed itself on her brain before the occurrence of

the apparition, though she had not attended to it. Oddly enough, she now

learnt for the first time that the house at which she was staying had

the reputation of being haunted, and by the very same somewhat

repulsive-looking mediæval personage that had troubled her

inter-somnolent moments. The case seems to me to be typical with respect

to the genesis of ghosts, and of the reputation of haunted houses.

* * * * *

NOTE.

THE HYPNOTIC CONDITION.

I have not in this chapter discussed the relation of dreaming to

hypnotism, or the state of artificially produced quasi-sleep, because

the nature of this last is still but very imperfectly understood. In

this condition, which is induced in a number of ways by keeping the

attention fixed on some non-exciting object, and by weak continuous and

monotonous stimulation, as stroking the skin, the patient can be made to

act conformably to the verbal or other suggestion of the operator, or to

the bodily position which he is made to assume. Thus, for example, if a

glass containing ink is given to him, with the command to drink, he

proceeds to drink. If his hands are folded, he proceeds to act as if he

were in church, and so on.

Braid, the writer who did so much to get at the facts of hypnotism, and

Dr. Carpenter who has helped to make known Braid's careful researches,

regard the actions of the hypnotized subject as analogous to ideomotor

movements; that is to say, the movements due to the tendency of an idea

to act itself out apart from volition. On the other hand, one of the

latest inquirers into the subject, Professor Heidenhain, of Breslau,

appears to regard these actions as the outcome of "unconscious

perceptions" (_Animal Magnetism_, English translation, p. 43, etc.).

In the absence of certain knowledge, it seems allowable to argue from

the analogy of natural sleep that the actions of the hypnotized patient

are accompanied with the lower forms of consciousness, including

sensation and perception, and that they involve dream-like

hallucinations respecting the external circumstances of the moment.

Regarding them in this light, the points of resemblance between

hypnotism and dreaming are numerous and striking. Thus, Dr. Heidenhain

tells us that the threshold or liminal value of stimulation is lowered

just as in ordinary sleep sense-activity as a whole is lowered.

According to Professor Weinhold, the hypnotic condition begins in a

gradual loss of taste, touch, and the sense of temperature; then sight

is gradually impaired, while hearing remains throughout the least

interfered with.[102] In this way, the mind of the patient is largely

cut off from the external world, as in sleep, and the power of

orientation is lost. Moreover, there are all the conditions present,

both positive and negative, for the hallucinatory transformation of

mental images into percepts just as in natural sleep. Thus, the higher

centres connected with the operations of reflection and reasoning are

thrown _hors de combat_ or, as Dr. Heidenhain has it, "inhibited."

The condition of hypnotism is marked off from that of natural sleep,

first of all, by the fact that the accompanying hallucinations are

wholly due to external suggestion (including the effects of bodily

posture). Dreams may, as we have seen, be very faintly modified by

external influences, but during sleep there is nothing answering to the

perfect control which the operator exercises over the hypnotized

subject. The largest quantity of our "dream-stuff" comes, as we have

seen, from within and not from without the organism. And this fact

accounts for the chief characteristic difference between the natural and

the hypnotic dream. The former is complex, consisting of crowds of

images, and continually changing: the latter is simple, limited, and

persistent. As Braid remarks, the peculiarity of hypnotism is that the

attention is concentrated on a remarkably narrow field of mental images

and ideas. So long as a particular bodily posture is assumed, so long

does the corresponding illusion endure. One result of this, in

connection with that impairing of sensibility already referred to, is

the scope for a curious overriding of sense-impressions by the dominant

illusory percept, a process that we have seen illustrated in the active

sense-illusions of waking life. Thus, if salt water is tasted and the

patient is _told_ that it is beer, he complains that it is sour.

In being thus in a certain rapport, though so limited and unintelligent

a rapport, with the external world, the mind of the hypnotized patient

would appear to be nearer the condition of waking illusion than is the

mind of the dreamer. It must be remembered, however, and this is the

second point of difference between dreaming and hypnotism, that the

hypnotized subject tends _to act out_ his hallucinations. His

quasi-percepts are wont to transform themselves into actions with a

degree of force of which we see no traces in ordinary sleep. Why there

should be this greater activity of the motor organs in the one condition

than in the other, seems to be a point as yet unexplained. All

sense-impressions and percepts are doubtless accompanied by some degree

of impulse to movement, though, for some reason or another, in natural

and healthy sleep these impulses are restricted to the stage of faint

nascent stirrings of motor activity which hardly betray themselves

externally. This difference, involving a great difference in the

possible practical consequences of the two conditions of natural and

hypnotic sleep, clearly serves to bring the latter condition nearer to

that of insanity than the former condition is brought. A strong

susceptibility to the hypnotic influence, such as Dr. Heidenhain

describes, might, indeed, easily prove a very serious want of

"adaptation of internal to external relations," whereas a tendency to

dreaming would hardly prove a maladaptation at all.