certain Processes of the Human U?iderstanding. 105 



could so compress together in the mind ; and then it actually does perceive their 

 separate occurrence. Now I will not undertake to deny the possibility of this 

 mode of operation, because I do not think that any thing should be denied or 

 affirmed without proof; but I say the case is clearly different from the former 



• 



examples with which Mr. Stewart has attempted to illustrate and explain it. 

 The attention which follows and dilates into a history, the rapid phantasmagoria 

 of the dream, should, by the same power, separate the letters of a word, and the 

 components of all our perceptions. It is plain that any acceleration supposed in 

 the former cases, must involve some process different from the latter, and that the 

 result also is opposite. 



But it is needless to grapple with a theory which rests on nothing at all; the 

 difficulties inseparable from Mr. Stewart's solution, entirely disappear when the 

 process of habit is rightly comprehended, and directly applied. 



When a complex conception, formed, as I have already explained, by the or- 

 dinary law of habit, offers itself to the mind, it presents one undivided and simul- 

 taneous combination. I am now to apply this principle to that class of dreams 

 which can be considered instantaneous : to such alone the argument of this Essay 

 extends. 



I shall here for the present assume, for the assumption does not affect the argu- 

 ment, that there are two classes of dreams ; those which are instantaneous, and 

 those which are not. It is of the first I .am here to speak. The first and 

 greatest difficulty affects me in common with Mr. Stewart, for whether the 

 aggregate of ideas which passes during the explosion of a pistol shot is succes- 

 sive or simultaneous. It is equally hard to comprehend. They take place in the 

 time of a single act of thought, and I say, that they constitute but a single act ; 

 the nature of this I have fully explained, and it only remains to point out its 

 probable application to this case. 



In looking at a familiar combination of words, the intellect receives both the 

 ideas of their appearance and their sense, long before the eye could have noticed 

 all the separate letters, syllables, and words. In fact, only a part is looked at ; 

 but the mind, which is slow to analyze its own operations, is impressed with the 

 sense of having separately noted all. Now such is the case of the dreamer ; to 

 understand it, no more is necessary than to recollect the observed fact, of which 

 every one who dreams is aware, — I mean the tendency of the mind to realize its 



VOL. XIX. 



