The Rev. James Wills on Dreams. 21 



may obtain somewhat more than their relative nearness to the apprehension, 

 which may help to explain the seeming lapse of time which sometimes charac- 

 terizes a dream. The idea of time, like that of place, is a constant in every 

 objective suggestion, — and the idea of succession' essentially contains it. The 

 consequence will be found to extend very far. I have already explained, in my 

 examination of Mr. Stewart's theory, how there occurs in dreaming a sort of 

 perspective illusion, due to this law, by which antecedent and consequent inci- 

 dents may be so wrought out from association as apparently to stretch out into 

 an imaginary past and future, and to involve a seeming lapse of time, as a future 

 seems to contain the element of distance. This offers the true account of those 

 instantaneous dreams which sometimes occur, and leads to a conjecture that, in 

 general, dreams may pass in less time than they seem to occupy. 



It is with some feeling of reluctance that I tiu'n for a moment from my direct 

 line of statement to observe upon the confusion by which this part of the subject 

 has been rendered somewhat difficult to deal with. The errors of Mr. Stewart's 

 ingenious theory have, I trust, been fully shown in my first essay. I have there 

 proved that, contrary to his assertion, he assumes a wholly new law of mind for 

 dreaming, — a law not warranted by any indication, and directly contrary to the 

 observed processes of waking thought. Habit, which he applies for one use 

 when awake, performs at his beck the precise opposite part in sleep. Com- 

 pressing by acceleration a number of separate volitions and attentions into a 

 point of time too minute for distinct apprehension, — he endows the sleeper with 

 a power of inconceivably rapid analysis, such that the synchronous events of the 

 same infinitesimal instant can be deliberately contemplated in separate distinct- 

 ness. But this is not enough, — his instrument is one which, however aptly it 

 may be applied in one case, has no application in the other. The waking com- 

 bination is admitted to be the work of habit, though not precisely as explained 

 by Mr. Stewart, — but the ordinary sequence of a dream is of all imaginable 

 succession of ideas the least possible to be brought under tliis law, according to 

 the hypothesis. The connexion of constant recurrence is wanting. But, for a 

 moment, assuming the strange analytic power devised by Mr. Stewart, it becomes 

 a consequence from his theory (of separate volitions and attentions), that the 

 same analysis should reach to the similar decomposition of every idea presented in 

 sleep. If the imaginary succession were always strictly habitual, some deduction 



