The Rev. James Wills on Dreams. 23 



the same affections or trains of thought in the recurrence of similar states of 

 insanity, delirium, and, if I rightly recollect, dreams; while these affections 

 are wholly forgotten in the intervals of sanity or waking. I am not aware that 

 this remarkable fact has been traced to any cause in the nature of the mental 

 operations, before the explanation offered in myessay on Accidental Associations 

 in which I have briefly introduced these cases for illustration. By the law of 

 association anyportion of pastideas or events can only be recalled as a constituent 

 part of some whole combination, whether of incidents, or visual objects, or ideas, 

 or states of feeling. And this is equally true whether the combination be acci- 

 dental and transitory, or habitual and fixed ; this is the ideal chain which con- 

 nects the Present with the Past. Now, to apply this; in dreams, or in various 

 states of mental disorder, the mind becomes employed upon combinations mostly 

 • so very different from those in its ordinary normal condition that no real inci- 

 dent is likely to occur in the sane or waking state that will not be more nearly 

 associated with real sane and waking incidents and combinations, which will 

 thus, as it were, interpose. And further, in, perhaps, most instances there 

 passes no idea that can be sufficiently represented by any real incident; the fan- 

 tastic train of shapeless impressions is isolated so wholly from the province and 

 habitual courses of waking thought and real incident, that there can be no index 

 for the search of recollection. This explanation applies in its full extent to 

 insanity and delirium, and has a partial application to dreams. In dreams, the 

 leading ideas are commonly the same as belong to the waking habits of the 

 dreamer; and hence the variety of cases. But the actual recurrence of the same 

 or nearly the same ideal wandering, must become, on the same principle, likely 

 to occur when the mind happens to be similarly affected. To confine my state- 

 ment to dreams, it is to be observed that in the entire absence of all interfering 

 impulses from without, there is a presumption that the same internal suggestion 

 will, when repeated, be similarly propagated; and, by the ordinary process of 

 combination, recall the same train as in the first instance. Thus, at distant 

 intervals, one may find himself wandering in the same labyrinths formerly visited 

 in a dream, and never known elsewhere. 



This recurrence could not be known unless recollected when awake; and we 

 are led to another and more interesting consideration, in what way a dream is 

 to be recollected, as every one must know it may be, many hours after dream 



