Editorial. 25 



the last mentioned fact I may mention that one day as I sat in 

 Prof. Ebbinghaus' lecture room following a discussion, I caught 

 sight of the back of a man's head, who reminded me of General 

 C, whom I had not seen for nearly a year. A second glance 

 showed that there was no resemblance except in the position of 

 the head and the gray hair, but I then became aware of a dream 

 of the previous night in which I had conducted a party of 

 children to the rooms of the general in an American city where 

 the latter exhibited his interesting collection of microscopic ob- 

 jects. It appeared that I had conducted the children at the in- 

 stance of a lady who might have been the principal of a school 

 or head of a pension and who, as it proved, had presumed to 

 send the children without invitation. While embarassed by 

 this information, General C. reassured me by saying that it was 

 a pleasure to serve in this way as it was the only service he was 

 now capable of in his failing health. The whole dream was 

 vivid and affecting. It was a composite of which most elements 

 were clear on reflection. The evening before I had thought of 

 General C, had planned to write him in explanation of an ap- 

 parent neglect. I had been to Urania, a popular Berlin scien- 

 tific institute, and had been reminded of General C. 's collection, 

 had seen a teacher conducting a squad of boys of say fourteen 

 years, had recalled a social obligation respecting a certain lady 

 at the head of a pension in Berlin and had felt some uneasiness 

 as to my health. That a dream of this vivid sort did not remain 

 in memory in the morning when, as was my habit, I lay with 

 closed eyes ransacking my consciousness tor any evidence of 

 dream activity may serve to indicate that a vast deal goes on 

 every night the burden of which we are not forced to carry in 

 memory during the day. 



This is a question which has usually been settled as 

 Descartes settled it by deduction from the systematic stand- 

 point : ' 'As the light always shines, and heat always warms, 

 so the soul constantly thinks." 



But we pass to the nature of dreams and the lessons we 

 may learn from it. 



Spitta defines dreaming as the process of unconscious out- 



