THE STUFF THAT BREAMS ARE MADE OF. 723 



cism, it may be, but, as many people do not seem to recognize, a real 

 skepticism — that the impressive emotional effects of dreams are often 

 displayed. It sometimes happens that two irreconcilable groups of 

 impressions reach sleeping consciousness, one flowing from a recent 

 stratum of memories, the other from an older stratum. A typical 

 form of this phenomenon often occurs in our dreams of dead friends. 

 Professor Sully remarks that in dreams of the dead " awareness of the 

 fact of death wholly disappears, or reduces itself to a vague feeling 

 of something delightfully wonderful in the restored presence." 

 That, however, as I have elsewhere shown,* is not the typical process 

 in dreaming of the dead; although in the later dreams of those who 

 often see their dead friends during sleep, the process is abbreviated, 

 and the friend's presence is accepted without a struggle — a very inter- 

 esting point, for it tends to show that in dreams, as in the hypnotic 

 state, the recollection of previous similar states of consciousness per- 

 sists, and the illusion is strengthened by repetition. 



In typical dreams of a dead friend there is a struggle between 

 that stream of recent memories which represents him as dead and 

 that older stream which represents him as living. These two streams 

 are inevitably caused by the fact of death, which sets up a barrier be- 

 tween them and renders one set of memories incongruous with the 

 other set. In dreams we are not able to arrange our memories chrono- 

 logically, but we are perpetually reasoning and striving to be logical. 

 Consequently the two conflicting streams of memories break against 

 each other in restless conflict, and sleeping consciousness endeavors 

 to propound some theory which will reconcile them. The most fre- 

 quent theories are, as I have found, either that the news of the friend's 

 death was altogether false, or that he had been buried alive by mis- 

 take, or else that having really died his soul has returned to earth for 

 a brief space. The mental and emotional conflict which such dreams 

 involve renders them very vivid. They make a profound impression 

 even after awakening, and for some sensitive persons are too sacred to 

 speak of. Even so cautious and skeptical a thinker as Renan, when, 

 after the death of his beloved sister Henriette, he dreamed more than 

 once that she had been buried alive, and that he heard her voice call- 

 ing to him from her grave, had to still his horrible suspicions by the 

 consideration that she had been tended by experienced doctors. On 

 less well-balanced minds, and more especially in primitive stages of 



* On Dreaming of the Dead. Psychological Review, September, 1895. In this paper I 

 reported several cases showing the nature and evolution of dreams concerning dead friends. 

 I have since received evidence from various friends and correspondents, scientific and unsci- 

 entific, of both sexes, confirming my belief in a frequency of this type of dream. Professor 

 Binet (L'Annee Psychologique, 1896) has also furnished a case in support of my view, and 

 is seeking for further evidence. 



