MAUBY ON SLEEP AND DREAMS. 405 



and the great mystery of their nature. 1 We can under- 

 stand (or fancy we understand) the memories of past 

 images or events impressed upon the brain. But the 

 manner of their grouping in the mind during sleep is 

 the marvel with which we are here concerned. 

 Loosened from all fetters of time and place, and freed 

 from control of the will, the dream makes a little 

 world of its own, bringing into strangely broken suc- 

 cession scenes which have no counterpart in actual 

 life; conjunctions of persons, places, time, and incidents, 

 which never did or could have occurred in such combi- 

 nation. The complete dream disregards all realities. 

 It brings the dead back among the living without sur- 

 prise to the dreamer, and embodies them in the en- 

 tangled stories which have no recollected beginning or 

 end ; which run abruptly into one another ; confuse 

 personal identities ; and blend impossibilities with the 

 most common incidents of life. Shakspeare has well 

 called dreams, ' the children of an idle brain.' That 

 power in fact is dormant which gives sequence and con- 

 gruity to the acts of the waking mind. 



But still, even here, analogies press closely upon us. 

 The images of sensible objects occurring in dreams 

 would seem to be closely akin to those which the 

 memory furnishes to the mind awake, either by effort 

 of will or by mere automatic connexions of thought. 

 In this case, as in the other, they are vague and fleeting. 

 No effort of will can long detain them before the waking 

 consciousness ; and in dreams, unaided by will, they 



1 ' Animus incidit in visa varia et incerta, ex reliquiis inhserentibus 

 earum rerum quas vigilans gesserit aut cogitavit j quarum perturbatione 

 mirabiles interdum existunt species somniorum.' 



