18 The Eev. James Wills on Dreams. 



reconciled. A dreamer may seem to be engaged in grave and earnest delibe- 

 ration upon some matter of seeming weight, and really no meaning, while the 

 most monstrous impossibilities are passing unheeded. The seeming operation 

 of the reason is, in all such cases, an illusion of memory. And the same expla- 

 nation will, in most instances, similarly apply when the active operations of the 

 intellect appear to be involved in the process of a dream. 



I have next to explain the other proposed condition, which is the apparent 

 visibility which mostly belongs to the ideas of a dream. This — itself a con- 

 sequence of the great primary law of association — is the main element in the fan- 

 tastic and seemingly disordered transitions peculiar to dreaming. The larger 

 portion of the ordinary objects of human thought (at least as concerns the mass 

 of mankind) consists of things visible. These are, more or less, mixed in every 

 pvu'suit, and have place in every course of action, — they are the symbols of the 

 unseen, — and it is difficult to think of anything as real existence without invest- 

 ing it with the characters of visibility. The analyst who has to deal with invi- 

 sible realities is compelled to have recourse to visible symbols, and clothe his 

 thought in signs. And if we look for the exception, — it will only be found in 

 the idle mazes of metaphysical abstraction, in which terms are the representatives 

 of imaginary and unreal ideas. In the active concerns of waking life, visible 

 objects, and the conception of things visible, occupy the scope of thought, and 

 facilitate those habitual and superficial uses of reason which are uecessarj^and suf- 

 ficient for the common occupations of the world. And it needs not to be added 

 that the sense of sight is, more than all other senses and faculties, constantly 

 and widely employed, and a main element in every movement of waking life; 

 or that waking life is dimly and confusedly reflected in sleep, in the ordinary 

 languor and nervous collapse of which, only the most habitual and easiest seized 

 ideas can be entertained, and these, for the most part, indistinctly. 



Consequently, when the senses and active powers of the mind are depressed 

 by sleep, the ready associations of form and colour offer themselves on the 

 slightest impulse which can excite the cerebral action. But, in whatever way 

 it may be explained, such is the actual fact, — the dream is mostly a succession 

 of visible objects, accompanied by indistinct apprehensions of their purport or 

 consequence. 



"We have next to consider the application of these conditions. "When the 



