Rev. James WILLS on accidental Association. 101 
ence between both paroxysms, in which the diseased subject may travel in memory 
from one to the other; the same field of view will be restored, and with it the 
same virtual perception of identity. 
I forbear from the complicated consideration of the difficulties which seem to 
me to arise from the fact, that numerous cases of insanity plainly involve a com- 
bination of the sane together with the deranged operations of the mind. This 
involves nice questions as regards insanity, but does not affect my present state- 
ment. I only speak of such cases as come under the description on which I have 
reasoned. 
The phenomena of dreaming may perhaps afford the most available cases for 
my purpose ; they lie within the scope of general experience ; they are also sub- 
ject to various’ and considerable modifications, from the gradation of transitions 
which seem to occur in the act of falling asleep, and, it may be presumed, in 
waking. Most persons may, I presume, have experienced the curious transition 
which sometimes affects the thoughts in passing from one state to the other ; how 
the reasonings wander into inconclusive and mysterious results, and the concep- 
tions drop the form of waking reality, and take monstrous forms, or enter into 
successive changes of fantastic combination. Mr. Stewart supposes a successive 
change of the faculties, in the respective transitions between sleeping and waking. 
I do not think it necessary to adopt this theory, but I may observe that it is very 
agreeable to the actual phenomena, and may at least be useful as an illustrative 
assumption. I think it nearly evident, from the observable transitions I have men- 
tioned, confirmed by Mr. Stewart’s observation, that in sleep there are changes in 
which the mind makes approaches to the waking state, such as might be justly 
described by Mr. Stewart’s language; and thus there is incidental to dreams a 
mixture of the effects of both states. Thus may arise cases most adapted to test 
the present statement, as it is evident how the actual associations of waking reality 
may offer a clue to memory in some cases, while in others there may occur no 
element of reality. Now, in the one class, a dream may be recalled by real 
incidents, in the other, it will recur only in a renewal of the same state : and such 
is the actual description of the facts, so far as I have been enabled to observe them. 
It will, I think, be easily ascertained, that when a dream is remembered, it is 
mostly by the intervention of some association common to the state of waking. I 
say mostly, because there is a different tendency of the mind, by which it retains 
its existing state during some interval of time: from this it is that the sleeper 
