Your travels, your babies, and your dreams,--these, it is said, you may
talk of only at your peril. And yet I am emboldened in this instance to
defy the adage, though in general I believe it to be nearly
incontestable, because I think I may excite a certain curiosity by
recounting a kind of dream that comes to me occasionally, a dream not
wonderful in substance but one that raises a question in psychology, or
in common sense, to which I know no answer. I may say at once that there
is nothing preternatural about the dream, nor anything, I think, that
Freudian analysts will revel in. But there is none the less a puzzle
which for me and for the persons whom I have consulted has remained
completely baffling. What the puzzle is had best be stated at the
outset.
Everybody is familiar with the kind of story that depends for its effect
upon a surprising "point" that comes at the end, unanticipated by the
hearer and amusing to him largely in proportion as it is unexpected.
Stories of this kind are frequently elaborate; a great deal of detail is
introduced, as artfully as possible, every bit of which must
tantalizingly lead towards the point that is coming, but no word of
which must really divulge that point until the moment when the
_raconteur_ is ready to "spring" it, as we say, with a sudden burst.
Obviously the listener must not guess the point before that moment, or
the story will fall flat, and just as obviously the narrator must have
it in mind continually, or he could not tell the story. He could hardly
recount a tale of this variety unless he knew how it was "coming out."
Especially if it were considerably involved, he could scarcely pick his
way through it step by step towards an end that he did not himself
foresee, arranging in their places dozens of details leading he knew not
where, and then come nicely to a climax that he himself did not
anticipate--a climax which, in this hardly conceivable case, would
obviously surprise him as much as it could his listener. The waking
mind, unless by the rarest of accidents, cannot work in such a fashion.
And my puzzle is, how can the dreaming mind do so? For I, at least, do
dream occasionally in just this manner. I make up a story of this
species in my dream, and usually a complicated story. In it I proceed
from point to point without having any notion of my destination; I
string together a small host of details, though I remain ignorant of
their meaning and unsuspicious of any climax that is coming later to
explain them; and when finally I reach that climax, and see the joke
that I have plotted so unwittingly, I am myself ingenuously amused by
it. And how I manage to do this is my enigma. For obviously I either do
foresee the point of the story or I do not. If I do, how can I be
surprised when it arrives? If I do not, how can I prepare for it so
carefully? Either case supposes a manner of mentation hardly
comprehensible.
Two dreams of this species I should like to offer for consideration. I
have had not less than twenty others, widely different in substance
though all alike in principle; but the memory of most of them is vague
if not entirely obliterated. Of the first dream here related I may say
that I am repeating it from a fresh memory and am following the notes I
made of it in full immediately upon awakening from it. The account here
given is therefore as accurate as I can make it. I may further explain
that the setting of the dream is a very natural one for me. I happen to
be a college professor, and lecturing to classes is my daily round. Also
I have lived in France, and have studied and written about the
educational system of that country; and I number among my friends a
distinguished French professor now visiting America. The bearing of
these facts upon the dream will be clear in a moment.
I dreamt that I was lecturing to one of my regular classes in college.
In the class, upon my entrance, I was surprised to find my friend the
French professor, of whom I spoke a moment ago. With him there was an
impressive individual whom I somehow recognized as a French inspector of
schools--one of those officials whose visits to provincial schools and
whose consequent reports to the minister at Paris are the chief hope and
dread of the French pedagogue. How these gentlemen should have come to
be visiting my class, I could not imagine, but I do not think I was much
worried in the dream over that question. I do remember telling myself
that as a mere American professor I had nothing to fear from the
inspector's formidable authority, though perhaps with this reflection
there went also a resolution to put my best foot forward in such
distinguished company. But I had not much time to ponder these matters
before proceeding upon my lecture.
It was then that a real surprise began. So far as I could tell, my
opening sentences were sufficiently conventional, but the way the class
was affected by them was singular to a degree. Hardly had I reached the
middle of the first one before all the students had their eyes fixed on
me in a way that might possibly have been complimentary had not their
expressions been so various and so peculiar. A few students wore a look
of great relief--for all the world as if they had expected to find me
dumb on that day, and were agreeably surprised to be disillusioned. A
considerably larger number frowned displeasure, just as if I had
disturbed them in the pursuit of something that was no affair of mine.
But the large majority showed mere astonishment, and of that emotion,
indeed, a good measure was written on the faces of all. I had no notion
what to make of these unusual appearances. Inevitably my first thought
was to glance furtively down at my clothes and shoes to see if
everything was well in those departments. Also I raised my hand as
unobtrusively as possible to discover whether perchance I had left my
hair uncombed. In the absence of the mirror's final test I had to
conclude that all was about as it should be.
Naturally my next sentences hardly came trippingly from the tongue, nor
did any alteration occur in my listeners to facilitate my labors. On the
contrary, what had at first been mainly mere surprise upon their faces
was growing rapidly to obvious merriment with about half of the class,
and to evident disapprobation with the others. "The explanation of what
we call the Enlightenment of the eighteenth century," I remember hurling
at them with a fine generality of dream-eloquence, "is to be sought not
so much in the influence of the doctrines of Descartes proper, or of
those who could call themselves consistent Cartesians, as in the general
dependence upon the guidance of human ratiocination, of which dependence
he was only an illustrious example." This remarkable statement did not
seem to offend any of my hearers, but neither did it mollify them. By a
considerable effort, however, I was regaining a measure of composure, as
I proceeded into my subject, in spite of all the frowners and all the
titterers in the class. There was nothing to do, I felt, but to brave
both parties, and in some degree, as the minutes dragged on, I seemed to
be succeeding in the effort. At least there was less staring at me, and
one after another the faces of my students were turned down to the
desks, and pens began to course across pages in what appeared to me to
be good note-taking fashion.
But I was soon to find that my troubles had only begun. The class had
indeed ceased to perform like one man in astonishment, but various
individuals now began to act in fashions unaccountably extraordinary.
Not only did resentment at my lecture keep lingering, and growing, on
many countenances, and not only did laughter keep bubbling up in others,
but now certain more specific eccentricities began exhibiting
themselves. A mild instance was the action of one of my most devoted
note-takers, a woman who sat on the front row. She had always taken too
many notes, as I had observed; she never missed anything important, and
she frequently copied down much that was far from important. And now I
noticed that in the middle of certain cardinal statements I was making,
and even making slowly in order that every one who wanted them in a
note-book might have time to get them fully, she took her pen from the
paper, and meditatively putting the end of it in her mouth, proceeded to
gaze out of the window into vacancy as if trying to think what on earth
to write next.
But this, as I say, was mild. That particular student was too well-bred
to be ruder. So was another girl on the front row who, a little later,
laid aside her pen and paper and sank her head for several minutes into
her hands in such a way as to make me wonder whether she was suffering
from headache or whether she was politely veiling an outbreak of
laughter such as certain other members of the class were at no such
pains to conceal. Certainly when her face emerged it was clear that she
had not even been smiling. She looked at me fixedly for a minute, with
such an inquiring though guarded glance as one might give a stranger
whom one half suspected of mild lunacy, and then resumed work with her
pen. There were numerous examples of similarly harmless but abnormal
conduct, and I had no choice but to endure them in wondering patience.
But when one sedate and trusted student, also a woman, who sat in the
rear of the class, deliberately caught my eye and then impressively laid
her finger tightly over her closed lips, thus giving me the unmistakable
signal for silence, my astonishment and bewilderment grew amain. What on
earth could be wrong with me, I asked myself, that I should be
bedevilling my students in this fashion? What absurdity was at the
bottom of all this? Had everybody in my class gone crazy? Or had I?
Somehow I went on lecturing. As I remember it now, the lecture seemed
orthodox enough, in spite of the strange events that it inspired. I felt
that I was acquitting myself moderately well, though I remember that I
mopped my brow repeatedly, and longed for the end of the period as I had
never longed for time to pass before. What would my visitors think of
me, or of this precious class of mine? I alone had seen that mute sign
for silence, to be sure, but no one could fail to notice the other
preposterous things that were coming to pass. For now three men toward
the rear of the class began, seemingly by agreement between them, to
shake their heads at me in a solemn and unequivocal signal that I would
do better to leave off my lecture. This, I thought, would be the worst;
but no, in a moment one man actually stepped up to my desk, and when I
paused, whispered a very apologetic request that I would not trouble the
class further by lecturing on this particular day. He had listened with
great interest to my former lectures, he was pleased to say, but he felt
that he was speaking for the whole class in intimating that to-day I
could not but disturb them, and in fact endanger them, if I continued. I
told him that he could save himself from further danger by quitting the
room; and this he did forthwith, his reluctance exceeded only by his
apparent amazement.
The others seemed to understand what had passed between us, though I was
sure that they could not have overheard a word we said. Four or five of
them, indeed, rose and followed their departing brother from their room,
with faces as full of bewilderment as his. But I was past wondering at
anything by this time. Endeavoring to seem indifferent to their
departure, I ploughed on, with a pertinacity far beyond anything I
possess in a waking state, through the middle of my lecture. I had come
to Rousseau and his battle with the apostles of the Enlightenment. And
about this point the craziest of all the occurrences of this remarkable
hour began. A man on the front row picked up a card-board box from the
floor near his feet. Opening it, he produced a roll of absorbent cotton.
With bits of this he deliberately set about stopping up his ears as
tightly as he could. When he had stuffed them full he resumed work with
his pen, but passed the cotton, with a wink, on to his neighbor, who
repeated the performance. A third student filled his organs of audition
and handed the box on to a fourth. I watched that blessed roll of cotton
make its round of the students. One and all of them, men and women,
stuffed their ears with it!
How I managed to keep on talking is rather more than I can tell. I can
only say that I continued automatically, and paid the slightest possible
attention to the antics with which my auditors were pleased to amuse
themselves. I was but little surprised when, after a while, they began
to leave. Not concertedly, but one by one, they rose and passed out,
still lowering, giggling, trembling, looking askance at me, or
exhibiting some other inexplicable emotion as they departed. Each one,
with whatever mien, took pains to leave a record in the form of a few
sheets of paper deposited on my desk as he passed out, but I was too
callous or too distraught by this time to do more than barely notice the
circumstance. As for my visitors from France, they had long since
disappeared--not by walking out, like the students, but simply by
vanishing, as people in a dream occasionally do. I kept lecturing,
doggedly, until I had only three students left. But when two of these
arose together and took their departure, I knew nothing to do but cease.
The one auditor remaining, for that matter, was even now about to rise
from his seat. I paused. I waited as he came slowly forward, with wonder
and distress written on his features--he was easily the best scholar in
the class. As I eyed him I could see that he, like so many of the rest,
seemed to be half afraid that I had lost my mind. We shall see about
that, I thought, as I addressed him.
"Will you kindly tell me, sir," I asked him, with some warmth, "Will you
kindly tell me what I have done to deserve such conduct as I have seen
this last hour? Have all my students gone mad, or have I?"
Evidently I had, he thought, as was obvious in his face. But he was too
cautious to say so. Instead, he manifestly did his best to placate what
to him was arrant lunacy.
"Well, professor," he faltered, "I've no doubt we've been behaving
rather badly. But, you see, we--well, we simply couldn't make out why
you should want to lecture all through the examination hour!"
So that, of all things, was the explanation! I had simply lectured
straight through their examination, and small wonder they took it
strangely. How I had managed to make such a fool of myself, I did not
know; but at once all their queer actions of the last hour were
explained to me. And what a joke on me! How like the absent-minded,
umbrella-carrying professor of the caricaturists--I protest I am not
that kind--to have forgotten that I had set the examination for that
day, had even sent a secretary into the class five minutes ahead of me
to distribute the question-papers, and to have gone in then and insisted
on haranguing the class, in spite of all protest, through the whole
session!
And thus laughing at my exploit, I awoke. Needless to say, my amusement
continued into the waking state, though it was somewhat less
whole-hearted. But it was soon cut short by my jumping out of bed to put
down the notes of the dream that I have here expanded.
I fear it is not a very interesting dream in itself, but that I did not
promise. Surely it is one that answers the description given at the
outset, and illustrates the species somewhat elaborately. Can any one
imagine a person when awake making up such a story, planning so many
details of it so carefully, without an inkling in his mind of the
explanation that was to come to clear up all the mystery in the end? I
do not believe so. But if not, how can one do in a dream a thing so
impossible in a wakeful state? I, the dreamer, involve myself in a story
in which I fabricate a series of occurrences incomprehensible to me
unless I have the key that explains them, a series that nobody could
well string together unless he had that key. One would say that I must
have had the key in my possession as I pieced together the occurrences.
Well, then, how could I be totally perplexed at those occurrences as
they were happening, and how could I be astounded and provoked to
laughter when I produced my own explanation of them? This is surely too
much like believing that a magician will be amazed at his own trick.
Let me recount one other dream of this variety, a shorter one but
possibly even more pointed. As it occurred to me some months ago, and as
it comprises only an after-dinner speech, I cannot now pretend to report
the words of it with literal accuracy. But that is not necessary if the
reader will take my assurance that though I do not give the precise
words of the speech as I heard it in the dream, I offer a version
similar enough to be quite as satisfactory for the present purpose, and
differing in no point of principle from the original. The very vacuity
of the present version will be sufficient evidence, I hope, of my
endeavor to be as faithful as possible to the original. I even feel that
I must request the reader not to be disdainful of the puns that
embellish the oration, since it is something other than the art of
rhetoric that is here in question.
"Ladies and gentlemen," said the speaker, a man who by the way is
celebrated as a post-prandial artist, but who need not be blamed in
person for this coruscation, "we have with us this evening a man who
bears an honorable and formidable name, a name which, in at least one
person who possessed it, is enrolled on the tablets of immortality. It
is a bellicose name, and therefore timely enough. But it need make no
one tremble, since its most illustrious possessor loved to make the
world shake with laughter as well as wince before the levelled spear of
his sarcasm. I will not say that our guest of the evening has all the
talents of what a tipsy man might call his great 'name-shake;' but I
will answer for it that he can himself give a good imitation of what our
school-boys sometimes call the 'music of the spears.' However, I will
'no be speiring,' as the Scotch say, into their further similarities; I
prefer simply to present to you, ladies and gentlemen, Mr. Shakespeare."
And then all the audience laughed, and I laughed with them. I laughed
because I was taken by surprise when the name came and explained all the
puns that had preceded it. Not by the slightest suspicion had I
anticipated the name; on the contrary, I had been genuinely puzzled by
the queer locutions introductory to it, for I did not even realize that
they were puns upon a name that was to be pronounced later. No doubt the
puns are vapid enough (though vastly amusing in a dream) but they are
also fairly elaborate, and in the dream I think they were considerably
more so than in the transcript here set down from memory. The question
is, how can one dream a thing of this kind? For I, the dreamer, made up
all those puns, since I, of course, concocted the speech I dreamed. And
either I knew the name that I was punning on, or else I did not know it.
If I knew it, how could I be astonished into laughter when it came to
light in the dream? And if I did not know it, how could I invent a lot
of puns on it? What process of cerebration was I guilty of?
I know no answer to this question, and therefore I submit it to the
public. In the literature of dreams that I have perused I have found
neither a solution of the present problem nor any instance of the kind
of dream here mentioned. Informally I have consulted two or three
psychologists of my acquaintance, but though they have been interested
in the question, they have been unable to suggest an explanation. Only
one other person that I know experiences such dreams as these, and he is
as much interested in them as I am; but although he is himself a bit of
a psychologist, he has no answer to the question here propounded. Can
any one do better?
* * * * *
As has been said before in these pages, considerable attention to the
topics covered by "Psychical Research" has given us a very strong
suspicion that the autonomy of each mind is telepathically shared by
other minds, and farther that this is due to a degree of identity of all
mind somewhat similar to the identity of all force and all matter--this
identity of force and matter being now well recognized, despite the
individual manifestations of all three in our personalities.
Between minds a degree of identity--or at least of telepathic connection
or intermingling, is abundantly manifested by the appearance of several
personalities, or seeming personalities, through the sensitive persons
generally called mediums, and this whether the personalities additional
to the medium's ordinary one are incarnate or apparently postcarnate.
From these indications follows very directly the guess that such dreams
as our contributor recounts are not really of his construction, but are
constructed outside of him, and not necessarily by excarnate agencies,
or even by deliberate agencies. How or where or by whom must be left for
future knowledge to indicate.
We have had dreams of the nature of those described by our contributor,
and have correlated them with others entirely beyond construction by our
own capacities.--EDITOR.