The Rev. James Wills on Dreams. 15 



manner, or according to what laws, the excitement so conveyed would be likely 

 to operate. 



During the suspension of the ordinary corrections and interferences of sen- 

 sation and waking purpose, it would, as I have said, be conformable with a wide 

 analogy to assume that the brain, or whatever may fulfil the office ascribed to it, 

 should, like every organization adapted for any end in nature, when excited, 

 act according to its main law of action or tendency. Now, this proposition, 

 which is evident enough to sound like a truism, will lead to a highly probable 

 train of consequences, which can be verified as facts of observation. The next 

 step, then, is to ascertain this law. 



When all the grosser excitements from without have subsided, and the 

 mind may, by any such means as may consist with sleep, have been excited to 

 a partial resumption of its activity, it will follow from the foregoing rule that 

 the resulting operation is likely to be directed and governed by whatever may 

 be its most constant and prompt law of action. Now, in the first section of this 

 inquiry, published in your nineteenth volume, I have shown the primary law of 

 human thought, ever framing and governing our ideas and their succession, to be 

 that combining tendency to which I there traced Mr. Locke's law of Association. 

 And in the same Essay I have already traced its very observable operation in 

 the instance of dreams. I am now to follow out the consequences ; — but first 

 let me call jovx attention to a very interesting confirmation of this law. 



In dreams, as in the waking state, everybody must be aware tliat tliere are 

 two very distinct classes of combinations, — the fixed and the transient. Of 

 these, the first-named are our permanent complex ideas, as, man, horse, &c.; the 

 second, those local and accidental associations which arise and pass with all the 

 changes of circumstances. Now, the curious peculiarity which I wish to explain 

 is this: — In dreams, however monstrous and unlike reality may be the succes- 

 sion or concurrence of ideas, still the objects of fixed combination are exempt 

 from this confusion, and retain the indissoluble unity which belongs to our wak- 

 ing experience. One thing may pass for another, — the coincidences of time, 

 place, and incident, may be impossible ; ideas vague and incongruous beyond 

 insanity may pass through the brain, but the law of form is undisturbed. The 

 human head will appear on human shoulders, according to the Roman critic's 

 rule. The fixed idea, of which the components are simultaneous, and beyond 



