16 The Eev. James Wills on Dreams. 



the scope of any change provided for in the habitual operations of thought, or in 

 any way but by the most dehberate exertions of waking will, cannot be decom- 

 posed in the inadvertent and passive wanderings of the mind in sleep. The 

 force of this law may be illustrated yet further by an incident of frequent ob- 

 servation. It is often remarked, that persons seem to those who dream of them, 

 to act and speak in character; that is, according to the dreamer's notion. The 

 familiar habits and known characteristics must enter into the conception of indi- 

 viduality, as much as any outward attribute by which a person is to be known. 



But while the fixed combinations will thus, by a fundamental law of mind, 

 maintain their integrity ; and while also the spontaneous combinations of the 

 mind will, though somewhat vaguely, follow the habitual standards of con- 

 struction, as formerly explained,* the large class of accidental ideas, which are 

 wholly contingent in their shiftings tad concurrences, and without constant 

 relation among themselves, will in dreams come together in violation of all the 

 laws of possible or probable order. 



To explain, so far as they may be explained, the law by which these devia- 

 tions are governed, we must, in addition to the elementary principle of associa- 

 tion, take into account two conditions which are easily identifiable. First, the 

 total or nearly total absence of the discriminative faculty by which, while awake, 

 we can discern and estimate the real relations of our ideas on present objects, — 

 the true or false, probable or improbable, fit or unfit. Secondly, the generally 

 visible character of the ideal phenomena of the dream. Of these conditions, 

 which are the most common and characteristic peculiarities of the state of dream- 

 ing, most persons must be aware. They must, from their nature, be mainly 

 stated as facts of experience. 



Of these, the first mentioned is very probably but an instance of the general 

 depression of the more active voluntary power of the mind, caused by the abate- 

 ment of the nervous sensibility, and not caused by essential change in the opera- 

 tions of the mind. It seems, indeed, evident, and is, I think, of some importance 

 for the explanation of much in this theory, to keep in view the nearly self-evi- 

 dent presumption, that a far higher amount of nervous life may be reqiiisite for 

 the more strenuous operations of thought. And thus, as the depression of this 



• Transactions, VoL xxii.. Part 2. 



