The Rev. James Wills on Dreams. 17 



element is capable of every degree of increase or diminution, the occasional 

 exceptions can be explained by supposing a more than usual presence of the 

 nervous activity. As, however, will more fully appear further on, these excep- 

 tional instances are mostly unreal, and to be otherwise explained. For the 

 most part the suspension of the active processes of thought is entire; the proper 

 course or process of dreaming is a train of ideas, not operations; a distinction 

 the better to be apprehended by observing that the acts of discrimination, atten- 

 tion, reasoning, will, contriving, are not ideas, but exertions of active power. 

 The general absence of discrimination in dreams is verified by universal expe- 

 rience. Most persons are aware that the most monstrous and impossible coin- 

 cidents excite in the dreamer neither wonder nor doubt ; and that the most 

 inconsequent inferences appear quite reasonable and true, — how wholly the 

 sense of identity and diversity is lost. One person, by some unnoticed transi- 

 tion, becomes converted into another; and it is not until the dream has recurred 

 to waking memory that its absurd confusion of ideas becomes exposed. 



And here, before I go further, it may be well to guard against what may be 

 considered as contrary instances. There is no operation of any active power 

 that may not in some particular instances become the habit of the mind, and 

 pass as a component into its permanent forms and constant combinations. Some 

 opinion involving-comparative merits, some familiar line of professional inquiry, 

 will seem to occupy the reasoning faculty by reproducing the inextricable form 

 which it contains. There is some act of judgment, some presence of will 

 and piurpose, connected with all action ; and thus, when action becomes in any 

 way represented, the shadows of will, reason, and judgment will seem to mingle 

 with the shadows of our dreams. A lawyer may dream that he is applying 

 some rule of court, or some familiar precedent. A mathematician may enjoy 

 a momentary triumph over some slippery solution that has eluded the grasp of 

 waking reason. But in such instances it will mostly occur that the morning's 

 recollection will present the matter under the formless aspect of some strange 

 inconsequence. The rule oi reason may be correct, but it will have stumbled in 

 the conclusion. This explanation will appear the more satisfactory if it be 

 observed that the simultaneous occurrence of the glaring absence of any function, 

 together with its seeming presence, plainly indicates the substitution of some 

 other mode of operation by which two apparently opposite conditions may be 

 VOL. XXIII. "^ 



