THE STUFF THAT DREAMS ARE MADE OF. 729 



nomenon. Gowers considers that a spontaneous contraction of the 

 stapedius muscle of the ear during sleep causes a sensation of fall- 

 ing. Stanley Hall, who has himself from childhood had dreams of 

 flying, boldly argues that we have here " some faint reminiscent ata- 

 vistic echo from the primeval sea " ; and that such dreams are really 

 survivals — psychic vestigial remains — taking us back to the far past, 

 in which man's ancestors needed no feet to swim or float. Such a 

 theory may accord with the profound conviction of reality that ac- 

 companies such dreams, though this may be more simply accounted 

 for, even by mere repetition, as with dreams of the dead; but it is 

 rather a hazardous theory, and it seems to me infinitely more probable 

 that such dreams are a misinterpretation of actual internal sensations. 

 My own explanation was immediately suggested by the follow- 

 ing dream. I dreamed that I was watching a girl acrobat, in appro- 

 priate costume, who was rhythmically rising to a great height in the 

 air and then falling, without touching the floor, though each time she 

 approached quite close to it. At last she ceased, exhausted and per- 

 spiring, and had to be led away. Her movements were not controlled 

 by mechanism, and apparently I did not regard mechanism as neces- 

 sary. It was a vivid dream, and I awoke with a distinct sensation of 

 oppression in the chest. In trying to account for this dream, which 

 was not founded on any memory, it occurred to me that probably I 

 had here the key to a great group of dreams. The rhythmic rising 

 and falling of the acrobat was simply the objectivation of the rhyth- 

 mic rising and falling of my own respiratory muscles under the in- 

 fluence of some slight and unknown physical oppression, and this op- 

 pression was further translated into a condition of perspiring ex- 

 haustion in the girl, just as it is recorded that a man with heart dis- 

 ease dreamed habitually of sweating and panting horses climbing 

 up hill. We may recall also the curious sensation as of the body being 

 transformed into a vast bellows which is often the last sensation felt 

 before the unconsciousness produced by nitrous oxide gas. When we 

 are lying down there is a real rhythmic rising and falling of the chest 

 and abdomen, centering in the diaphragm, a series of oscillations 

 which at both extremes are only limited by the air. Moreover, in this 

 position we have to recognize that the whole internal organism — the 

 circulatory, nervous, and other systems — are differently balanced from 

 what they are in the upright position, and that a disturbance of in- 

 ternal equilibrium always accompanies falling. Further, it is pos- 

 sible that the misinterpretation is confirmed to sleeping consciousness 

 by sensations from without, by the absence of the tactile pressure pro- 



to these sleeping experiences of floating on the air, confesses that they are so convincing 

 that he has jumped out of bed on awaking and attempted to repeat the experience. " I 

 need not tell you," he adds, " that I have never been able to succeed." 



