28 The Rev. James Wills on Dreams. 



use of reason. Instead of what I may call the processes of mental power — 

 active or passive — we are carried forward by the force of an external stream ; 

 and our errors or failures also result from the same current which decides our 

 course. It is not improbable that it may sometimes happen that the elementary 

 process on which reason itself is dependent may chance to supply the light 

 which is its peculiar property, when this light has been vainly sought amid the 

 glare of the myriad cross lights of waking life. It is that, while reason treads 

 the thousand paths of error, the dreamer follows the law of association. 



In this latter statement I only desire to indicate how this theory can be 

 applied to exceptional cases. It is not, however, necessary that this should, in 

 all such cases, be possible, — our knowledge of the mind, however correct it may 

 be supposed to be, must still be incomplete. Our lights are closely shut in by 

 profound obscurity. We are not without mysterious indications of a psycho- 

 logical nature, wholly beyond the compass of ordinary experience, — and as 

 nothing in nature can have beeu without its design and scope of operation, so 

 we cannot say at what hidden boundary in the workings of mind other laws 

 than those we deem familiar may perform a latent part. Of such it is not the 

 business of this essay to speak. 



I am not aware that I have omitted the consideration of any of the more 

 ordinary phenomena of dreams which may appear to claim any distinct remark. 

 By observing that the state of the mind and body in sleep admits of many degrees 

 of intensity, allowance is made for many distinctions which it would require 

 much time and space to discuss ; as, upon a topic so little known, it would be 

 hazardous to offer statements without much cautious examination, and many 

 refined distinctions. And it is but fair to allow, that I omit some considera- 

 tions because I have not been able to satisfy myself as to the truth of any expla- 

 nation I could find. It is not, for example, easy to reconcile with this, or any 

 theory consistent with the ordinary phenomena of dreams, the cases which have 

 been, in some few instances, alleged ; of dreams in which the mind would 

 appear to act according to the ordinary laws of its waking state. It is, indeed, 

 a curious feature of these cases, and in some degree significant, that music and 

 verse seem to have been the result. I must confess a doubt. But I trust I 

 may be forgiven by the irritabile genus which trades in these kindred arts, if I 

 observe, in explanation, that both the verse and music, which are the ordinary 



