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All writers on dreaming have brought forward presentative 

 dreams, and there can be no doubt that impressions received during 

 sleep from any of the external senses may serve as a basis for dreams. 

 I need only record one example to illustrate this main and most obvi- 

 ous group of presentative dreams. I dreamed that I was listening to 

 a performance of Haydn's Creation, the chief orchestral part of the 

 performance seeming to consist chiefly of the very realistic repre- 

 sentation of the song of birds, though I could not identify the note 

 of any particular bird. Then followed solos by male singers, whom 

 I saw, especially one who attracted my attention by singing at the 

 close in a scarcely audible voice. On awakening the source of the 

 dream was not immediately obvious, but I soon realized that it was 

 the song of a canary in another room. I had never heard Haydn's 

 Creation, except in fragments, nor thought of it at any recent period ; 

 its reputation as regards the realistic representation of natural sounds 

 had evidently caused it to be put forward by sleeping consciousness 

 as a plausible explanation of the sounds heard, and the visual centers 

 had accepted the theory. 



It is a familiar fact that internal sensations also form a frequent 

 basis of dreams. All the internal organs, when disturbed or dis- 

 tended or excited, may induce dreams, and especially that aggra- 

 vated kind of dreaming which we call nightmare. This fact is so 

 well known that such dreams are usually dismissed without further 

 analysis. It is a mistake, however, so to dismiss them, for it seems 

 probable that it is precisely here that we may find the most instructive 

 field of dream psychology. On account of the profoundly emotional 

 effect of such dreams they are very interesting to study, but this very 

 element of emotion renders them somewhat obscure objects of study. 

 I do not venture to offer with absolute certainty one or two novel sug- 

 gestions which dream experiences have led me to regard as probable. 



Dreams of flying have so often been recorded — from the time of 

 St. Jerome, who mentions that he was subject to them — that they 

 may fairly be considered to constitute one of the commonest forms 

 of dreaming. All my life, it seems to me, I have at intervals had 

 such dreams in which I imagined myself rhythmically bounding into 

 the air and supported on the air. These dreams, in my case at all 

 events, are not generally remembered immediately on awakening 

 (seeming to indicate that they depend on a cause which does not usu- 

 ally come into action at the end of sleep), but they leave behind them 

 a vague but profound sense of belief in their reality and reasonable- 

 ness.* Several writers have attempted to explain this familiar phe- 



* Many saints (Saint Ida, of Louvain, for example) claimed the power of rising into the 

 air, and one asks one's self whether this faith may not be based on dream experiences mis- 

 translated by a disordered brain. M. Raffaelli, the eminent Fiench painter, who is subject 



