26 Journal of Comparative Neurology. 



ward projection or objectivizing of a series of conceptual images 

 in consciousness during sleep, through which they attain an ap- 

 pearance of reality. In other words, it is, in a sense, a dramatiza- 

 tion of purely subjective processes of the soul during sleep. 



Nearly all modern authors except Wundt agree that dreams 

 are characterized by a special development of the feelings. We 

 may add that the most striking peculiarity of dreams is the 

 small number of elements associated in a concept. In this re- 

 spect the study of dreams promises much, but it must be crit- 

 ical study, no mere collection of anecdotes. Of this sort of 

 critical analysis we have as yet no illustration. The difficulty 

 lies chiefly in the impossibility of preventing a completion of 

 these incomplete concepts. Thus I dreamed of a person who 

 was not sensuously presented at all but simply the peculiarity 

 that he was a student of history ; this "isolate" alone seems to 

 have come into consciousness. Such an unclothed concept is 

 never tolerated in waking consciousness long enough to be ob- 

 served and when we reach the corresponding "abstraction" we 

 seem to have a composite element. An attentive study of 

 dreams will show that a certain variety of dreams consists 

 chiefly in this promenade of isolates. Properly understood we 

 believe that the same activity is also constantly at work in 

 waking thought. The formation ot abstractions is not so inex- 

 plicable as it seems if we grant that the elements of a concept 

 are not bound up into any such essential unity as we think but 

 first appear as concrete in every case. 



These isolates also exist in waking experience separated 

 from their concrete. For example, I was walking in a careless 

 state of mind down a street in Cincinnati and observed a par- 

 tially finished stone foundation. I thought nothing of it and 

 continued musing when I saw on the other side of the street an 

 incomplete brick building. As I looked I became conscious of 

 a peculiar recognition of a recent experience. My interest was 

 excited and I asked myself what is it which I seem to recognize 

 as familiar. It is not the house — that is entirely unfamiliar — 

 ah, it is the fact that it is incomplete, a concept of incomplete- 

 ness is in my mind. Where and what have I just seen which 



