MAURY ON SLEEP AXD DREAMS. 397 



ject, the plural personality of an anonymous reviewer 

 becomes somewhat inconvenient. If we have to speak 

 of our experience, it must be understood only in an 

 individual sense. Here, indeed, we may fairly ask our 

 readers to become critics also ; for each and all have 

 some experimental knowledge of their own, where- 

 with to confirm or contradict what is set before them. 

 But this knowledge, from causes already assigned, is 

 generally vague and transient. The memory of the 

 dream is speedily discarded by the waking events that 

 follow, and dreams are often so intermingled in the 

 same night that no effort of recollection can disentangle 

 them. We doubt if anyone has ever attempted a suc- 

 cessive written record of these erratic visions of our 

 sleeping hours. If carefully and honestly executed, it 

 would be more curious than many of those diaries of 

 ordinary events which amuse the leisure, or innocently 

 please the little vanities, of those who keep them. A 

 certain number of records of dreams, coming from 

 authentic sources, and indicating especially their rela- 

 tions to acts or events immediately or remotely antece- 

 dent, might justify conclusions attainable in no other 

 way a shadowy science, it may be admitted, yet 

 better than none. 



We have used the term honestly here, because from 

 causes already assigned there is much proneness to 

 exaggeration, as well as great facility for it, in the re- 

 lation of dreams. To give completeness to a vague 

 story is a temptation to the narrator, and it may be 

 indulged without fear of contradiction. This tempta- 

 tion becomes stronger where a certain superstitious 



