WHAT DREAMS ARE MADE OF. 277 



mental activity, we ally ourselves to the dreamer and to the sleep- 

 walker himself. 



It is a curious circumstance that in certain individuals the faculty 

 or habit of abstraction may become so thoroughly developed that the 

 subject is to all intents and purposes an automaton pure and simple, 

 and may be said to dwell on the borders of the somnambulistic state 

 itself. The latter opinion alone can be expressed regarding the well- 

 authenticated case of the clergyman who, engaged in an abstruse 

 mathematical calculation, was reminded by his wife that it was time 

 to dress for dinner. The gentleman in question proceeded upstairs 

 to his bedroom still deeply involved in his thoughts, with the result 

 of being found, soon thereafter, in the act of getting into bed a 

 proceeding simply suggested to the semi-unconscious mind and 

 well-nigh absent volition by the act of entering his bedchamber and 

 commencing to undress. Only on the supposition of habit having 

 developed this awkward faculty of allying oneself to a species 

 of sleep in the hours of wakefulness can the doings of a late 

 well-known Scottish Professor be accounted for. This gentleman 

 passing out of college on one occasion ran against a cow. Pulling 

 off his hat amid his abstraction, he exclaimed, " I beg your pardon, 

 madam ! " Although aroused to a sense of his mistake, shortly 

 thereafter he stumbled against a lady under somewhat similar 

 circumstances, greeting his astonished neighbour with the remark, 

 " Is that you again, you brute? " It was this gentleman who bowed 

 to his own wife in the streets, but remarked that he had not the 

 pleasure of her acquaintance ; whilst another vagary consisted in his 

 making his appearance at college in the costume of his day, dis- 

 playing on one leg a black stocking; of his own, and on the other a 

 white stocking of his better half. Another narrative credits the Pro- 

 fessor with addressing a stranger in the street and asking this person 

 to direct him to his own house. "But ye're the Professor! " replied 

 the interrogated and astonished person. " Never mind," was the 

 reply, " I don't want to know who I am I want to know where the 

 Professor lives ! " 



Such is a brief account of the condition we term Abstraction, 

 serving to bridge over the gulf between the waking state and sleep ; 

 and the analogy becomes closer still if we venture to compare a well- 

 authenticated case of so-called " automatism " in man, and thereafter 

 to compare the details of such a case with the acts and behaviour 

 of the absent-minded man, on the one side, and with those of 

 the somnambulist on the other. The best-authenticated case of 

 automatism pure and simple in man is the famous case of the French 

 Sergeant F., reported by Dr. Mesnet. When twenty- seven years of age 

 F. was wounded on the left side of the head by a ball. Immediately 

 thereafter, his right side being paralysed, he became senseless. 



