110 Rev. J. Wills on certain Processes of the Human Understanding. 



tinent ; or not being very hospitably disposed, asks him by what road he means to 

 go home. Instantly at the word, a rush of waters, and the wind roaring in the 

 shrouds, salutes his ear ; or he is hurled away on the Liverpool railroad ; and if 

 he had the ill luck to have looked into any of the public journals that evening, 

 he is startled into a terrified consciousness by the explosion of a boiler, or the shock 

 of trains rushing into collision. Such is the fantastic chainwork, in which the 

 same laws which contribute to maintain the coherence of our waking thoughts, 

 operate to disarrange and confuse them into the obscure phantasmagoria of 

 dreams. 



CONCLUSION. 



The subject of dreams has led me somewhat beyond the strict argument of 

 this Essay. There is, perhaps, no class of affections to which the mind is liable, 

 so adapted for the purpose of investigation on the elementary laws of association. 

 Mr. Stewart's chapter on the subject of dreams offers also a singularly pleas- 

 ing and Instructive example of that just method of philosophical induction, of 

 which there is generally so lamentable a dearth in all inquiries respecting the 

 intellectual faculties. 



But Mr. Stewart set out with a notion, which was not merely adapted to lead 

 him into some important errors, but altogether to shut from his view the actual 

 law which regulates the succession of thoughts in dreaming. 



I regret this the more, because. If I am not very much mistaken, I shall here- 

 after show, that the elementary facts illustrated In this Essay would have other- 

 wise offered to this sound-minded Inquirer, a simpler and better evidenced foun- 

 dation for the whole structure and action of human reason, than has yet been 

 fully noticed by any of those who have turned their thoughts to the subject : this 

 1 trust to be enabled to explain satisfactorily hereafter. 



