WHAT DREAMS ARE MADE OF. 285 



knowledge of the nature of dreams and the allied states we have 

 already considered. It is obviously not in any sense necessary that 

 consciousness should take part in this transmission, from one part of 

 the brain to another, of ideas and impressions. Indeed, if personal 

 experience is appealed to, we may urge that of the mere existence 

 of such action we are not likely to gain any knowledge from the 

 ordinary acts and method of our waking lives. And still less is the 

 will concerned in this reflex action of the brain. Admit that the 

 brain may act and react upon itself, in virtue of external impressions 

 received by it and retained within its mystic portals, and we are 

 furnished with a key which, if it may not unlock all the secrets of the 

 mental chamber, may nevertheless supply us with materials for a due 

 understanding of what dreams are made of. 



We have seen that the faculty of abstraction and reverie passes 

 naturally into that of sleep, and in like manner we may suggest that 

 the presence of such a faculty depends on this power of the brain to 

 commune with itself which we have just been considering. Trains 

 of thought, received casually it may be and without awaking any 

 active mental response or the slightest glimmering of consciousness, 

 are thus reproduced in the dream, it may be with automatic faith- 

 fulness, or on the other hand distorted beyond such recognition as 

 we might have possessed of the original ideas. Such is the simple 

 dream. Carried to a further extent, the dream becomes associated 

 with action ; the reflex power of the brain extends its limits ; the 

 simulation of the every-day power of calling bodily action into play 

 takes place, and the ideas of the dream become acted. The way of 

 the sleep- vigil is thus inaugurated and produced as a temporary phase 

 of mental activity. Under other circumstances, it may be this reflex 

 action of the brain will project from its memory- stores the remem- 

 bered ideas of long ago or the unconscious registrations of past 

 years ; and thus the " hallucination" and " illusion " appear also as the 

 product of the same action which, in a modified degree, produces the 

 harmless visions of the night. Starting from the simple sensation or 

 impression, and beginning with its reception by the brain, we have 

 but to think of the organ of mind reacting upon itself to form a 

 starting-point for the outlines of a complete history of all mental 

 acts, and of our walks in those strange byways of thought and 

 action of which mention has been made in the context. 



A very few considerations of interest, as bearing on the mechanism 

 of dreams, may be added by way of bringing this already extended 

 paper to a close. 



Recent investigations into the functions of the brain point to 

 the central ganglia, or those nervous masses (corpus striatum and 

 optic thalamus) lying on the base of the brain, as the probable seat 

 of the actions we have just been considering. These particular brain- 



