DREAMS AND THE MAKING OF DREAMS. 465 



is something to say, but it must be said briefly, and rather by way of 

 suggesting inferences to other minds than in argumentative support of 

 my own conclusions. 



First, as to dreams of the present it is important to note that, 

 though these are seldom precisely what they seem, when there is a 

 tendency to employ very recent mental pictures, records, and impres- 

 sions as the material of dreams, the faculty engaged in dream-making 

 is either jaded or lethargic. Thus we get the same result, as regards 

 the constituents of the dream, from two opposite causes. When that 

 part of the brain which performs the function of re-collecting the 

 records of memory is very weary perhaps too distressed by excessive 

 or disorderly work to sleep it worries the mind with the subjects of 

 immediately previous attention, being unable to leave them, and busy- 

 ing itself with them in a purposeless and distressful way, as a somnam- 

 bulist or very sleepy person labors at a task he is unable to leave. 

 The result will be a dream consisting of thoughts and scenes and im- 

 pressions of the scenes which, as it were, cling to the mind and will 

 not be dismissed. There are, doubtless, especial states of the mind, 

 or its organ, the brain, which may be loosely described as " sticky," 

 and which create a strong tendency to dally with objects of thought, 

 and hold impressions of the senses before the consciousness longer 

 than is necessary, instead of putting them away promptly in the mem- 

 ory. We know how the clumsy-fingered or bewildered workman 

 clutches his tools and hangs over his task instead of using each tool 

 deftly, doing each stroke of work cleanly, and passing on to something 

 else. The same faults of method are to be recognized in the opera- 

 tion of many of our mental faculties, and this is one cause of dreams 

 constructed of recent materials. Dreams of this class, as would nat- 

 urally be expected, are deficient in that characteristic which is due to 

 an active play of the dream-making faculty with the materials it em- 

 ploys, namely, the quality of " originality." They are apt to be little 

 more than worrying recitals of the words spoken, the books or letters 

 read, and reproductions of the scenes and impressions of the previous 

 day, without much modification or embellishment. When reminis- 

 cences of this nature occur at night in the false sleep that mocks real 

 rest, they are likely to be exaggerated and intensified in an extraordi- 

 nary and generally painful degree, simply because the mind is isolated 

 by sleep from its immediate external surroundings, and all the energy 

 of consciousness it evolves is, so to say, turned in on itself. Dreams 

 of the present, produced by lethargy or exhaustion of the faculty 

 which collects and reproduces the pictures and records of memory, are 

 generally distinguishable by their tumultuous or oppressive character. 

 The faculty is, as it were, overburdened by the subjects it strives to 

 manipulate. It can neither bring them fully and clearly before the 

 consciousness, nor can it remove them at pleasure. The mind does 

 not so much itself hold them as feel oppressed by their presence. It 

 VOL. xx. 30 



