MAURY ON SLEEP AND DREAMS. 407 



One dream passes into another, as far as consciousness 

 and memory can inform us, without continuity or con- 

 nexion. This description, however, needs to be quali- 

 fied in more than one respect. We have already 

 remarked that the act of dreaming is varied by the 

 greater or less completeness of the conditions which 

 constitute sleep. As the time of awakening approaches 

 these conditions change ; the sensorial powers are 

 partially revived, and the dreams, though still perhaps 

 erratic in the points just mentioned, are more consecu- 

 tive and consistent in the events they include. ~ We 

 may repeat our belief that to this fact we must look for 

 explanation of those singular stories of problems solved, 

 verses composed, and arguments logically pursued 

 during the hours of sleep. 



Again, as respects the erratic character of dreams, 

 analogy is not wanting for its illustration. The mind 

 awake, or nominally so, often wanders almost as 

 strangely. Let anyone, even when thoroughly awake 

 and under ordinary circumstances, seek to retrace the 

 successive thoughts or mental acts of the antecedent 

 half-hour. Unless the mind be engaged on some 

 single and definite object, he will find the task difficult 

 and laborious ; and if partially successful in tracking 

 backwards these sequent states, the chance is that they 

 will be found variously broken and divergent, in effect 

 of impressions from without or of internal conditions 

 of the brain and other organs. Though we are all 

 living in this unceasing series of mental changes, few 

 take note of them, or mark how rapid and abrupt 

 they often are even in the calmest moods of mind. 



