466 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



would fain be rid of the thoughts and scenes pressed on its atten- 

 tion, not because they create a painful interest, but because they bore 

 it. On the other hand, dreams of the present, which are more directly 

 due to the general state of mind ]5i*eviously described, take an agoniz- 

 ing hold on the consciousness, and will not be shaken off, so that it 

 struggles to be free as in a state of mental nightmare. Dreams of the 

 present which are produced by a lethargic rather than an exhausted 

 state of the faculty that makes them, are characterized by the slow 

 progression of scenes and the tardy flow of thoughts rather than repe- 

 tition. The consciousness seems to be in a dreamy condition, while 

 some slow and stupid exhibitor is unfolding a story or panorama lazily. 

 The resulting feeling is one of simple fatigue from loss of rest, rather 

 than the head- and heart-aching, as from worry and prolonged irri- 

 tation, which follow on dreams of the present that have been pro- 

 duced in the ways already indicated. It may be set down as a rule, 

 that dreams of the present are of graver import as clews to the mind- 

 state than the other classes of dreams on which we must now bestow 

 a few moments' attention. 



Dreams of the past and future do not call for detailed considera- 

 tion, and may be most conveniently noticed together. When the 

 faculty which makes dreams dives deeply among the lumber for its 

 materials, it is either very active, and probably not sufficiently worked 

 in the waking hours, or it has not much interest in recent events, be- 

 cause these have not made a very strong impression on the mind. It 

 often happens that at a period of life when there is not any particu- 

 larly keen interest in the present, the dreams are of the past. When 

 a man is growing old, he dreams of his early life, not merely because 

 there is in all respects a tendency to revert to the beginnings of life 

 when the power of vitality is on the wane, but because there is a loss 

 of interest in the present. The heat of the struggle is over, and the 

 emotions are no longer as active as they were, so that self -conscious- 

 ness comes to be increasingly a retrospect of experience. Dreaming 

 only occasionally of the past may be the simple result of the associa- 

 tion of ideas, the dream really consisting in a present recollection of 

 records relating to the past : but I am now speaking of the habitual 

 reproduction of long-past and possibly forgotten pictures and records 

 of memory in dreams. Dreams of the future are, for the most part, 

 anticipations arising out of the affairs of the present. They are, 

 properly speaking, forebodings, or eager foretastes, of the dreaded 

 or desired issue of plans and experiences which belong to the present. 

 There is no reason to suppose that the mind is capable of prophesying 

 while the supreme cerebral centers sleep. Most of the so-called dreams 

 of the future are really vaticinations of the imagination while on its 

 way to sleep or slowly emerging from the state of self-forgetfulness. 



The inchoate dreams which approximate to paroxysms of delirium 

 constitute the fourth class into which I have divided these experiences. 



