VOLUNTARY ACTION 233 



to forethought or calculation or inference, but solely to 

 impulse. With the man it is different. His notion of the 



learning (Ants, Bees, and Wasps, chap. xi.). Yet she knows her way 

 back to the nest. Does she do it by the exercise of a true memory 1 

 Is she able to recall ideas and events that have passed from her mind ? 

 Or does she merely live in a specious present of long duration, during 

 which the way to the nest is always dimly present in her mind 1 

 Considering how low is her' capacity for making mental acquirements, 

 it is possible that her specious present is long of duration and rich of 

 contents, and that she finds her way by virtue of it. This, however, 

 would imply a prodigious extension of the specious present. It is much 

 more probable that she is really able to recall past experiences but 

 only a certain set of past experiences which she can utilize only in a 

 certain way. Man's mind, on the other hand, is capable of much more 

 varied acquirement, which can be utilized in an infinitely greater 

 diversity of ways. 



Possibly by studying our dreams we may be able to get some notion 

 of the mental processes of purely instinctive animals. So far as my own 

 experience enables me to judge, we dream even during the soundest 

 sleep. As a medical man I am frequently rung up. I appear always 

 to awaken from the midst of a dream, which I remember if I think of 

 it at the time, but which otherwise I soon forget. When dreaming 

 during fairly sound sleep we seem to live entirely in the present. At 

 least this is the case with me and nearly all whom I have questioned. 

 There is little or no casting of our thoughts backward to the past or 

 forward over the future. When we see an individual in a dream we 

 know him at once, as it were by instinct, to be a friend or an enemy. 

 Or we judge him to be one by his immediate conduct. The state of 

 mind is entirely different from that which obtains in our "waking 

 dreams," when we are pre-occupied exclusively with the past or the 

 future. Thus one of my most common dream-enemies is a school- 

 master whom I detested as a boy. When this person appears he does 

 not come surrounded by an aura of recollections. He is greeted with 

 aversion which he proceeds to justify ; but his past hostilities, his 

 cruelties, stupidities, and injustices, are never recalled except perhaps 

 in very light sleep. He is an enemy in the " specious present," beyond 

 which my dream- mind does not wander ; and he is then to me an enemy 

 just solely because he is an enemy, because I know intuitively that he 

 is going to act as an enemy, not because I remember him as an enemy. 

 I never say to him, "You did this or that iniquitous thing." He is 



Perceived, not conceived, as an enemy. Nothing he does surprises me. 

 ndeed no situation, however absurd, ever does surprise a dreaming 

 person. How could it if real memory be abolished ? We are surprised 

 in our waking hours only at phenomena that contradict past experience. 

 If we cease to draw inferences from our past we cannot be surprised. 

 A young baby would be no more surprised at flying than at being 

 carried, at seeing a dragon than at seeing its own nurse, at observing a 

 stone rise to the ceiling than at observing one fall to the ground. Last 

 year in the character of Father Christmas I carried some toys to my 

 boy's bedroom. The only surprise he expressed subsequently was 

 that " Father Christmas did not look quite so nice " as he had expected. 

 In lighter sleep, when the waking and the dreaming consciousness are 

 merged, particularly when we are just dropping off or rousing naturally, 

 our powers of recollection appear less in abeyance. We seem to have 



