20 The Eev. James Wills on Dreams. 



As a dream may involve the impression that the dreamer is reasoning or 

 judging, so it may, in like manner, and on the same principle, involve any other 

 impression to which the individual happens to be subject, or which may be a 

 component in the combination presented by the mind. Among these com- 

 ponents there are, in every instance, some which are less the objects of attention. 

 On this point it will much conduce to clearness to revert to the general statement 

 offered in the commencement of this inquiry: — " There is, in those who are in 

 any state of consciousness, at all times, a certain aggregate of things [conditions 

 of any perceptible nature] presented to the perception. Of these, some may 

 become more prominently the objects of attention, and the rest will invariably, 

 in the same proportion, become vague and indistinct. The perception of indi- 

 vidual parts of this vague whole will, in general, not be separately recollected, 

 because they have not been separately observed,"* &c. It is to these vague com- 

 ponents that we are to look for the solution of some of the most curious questions 

 concerning dreams. Connected as essential conditions of the reality, the past 

 existence, and anticipated futurition, and other similarly unobtrusive com- 

 ponents of nearly every state of waking consciousness, they enter in like man- 

 ner, with a vague efficiency, into dreams, and impart the sense of an imaginary 

 past and future; and a host of concomitant apprehensions, some in their nature 

 constant, some transient, according to the main character of the combination. 



From this may be explained the fictitious memory so often present in dreams. 

 In some cases there is, however, with this more vague and general impression, a 

 train of antecedents essentially contained, not so much in the association, as in 

 the nature of the incident. This, too, is very common, — everything that happens 

 is in some respects a consequent, — and the determining condition must be in 

 the tendency of any supposed incident or state of things, to carry with it to the 

 mind the apprehension of its antecedents. If this apprehension were to be very 

 distinctly obtruded, it would have the efiect of changing the course of a dream. 

 But as, in general, the relative proportion of mental combination is preserved, 

 the effect is probably not often produced in this precise manner. It is, how- 

 ever, likely sometimes to occur, in the absence of all the governing and control- 

 ling powers of reason and the senses, that these more feebly marked components 



* Transactions, Vol. six. p. 80, Part ii. 



