FORGETFULNESS OF DREAMS. 557 



arouses us, and, in the act of waking, a long drama connected with that 

 noise appears before us ; or, in like manner, we are disturbed perhaps by 

 a flash of lightning, and with that flash occurs a dream which seems to 

 us to occupy a space of hours or even days, so many are the incidents 

 with which it is filled. It has long been known that a like peculiarity 

 has offered itself to those who have suffered by drowning, and have been 

 subsequently restored. They have related that in their moment of su- 

 preme agony, the whole series of events of their past life has, as- it were, 

 flowed in an instant upon them with the most appalling vividness, their 

 good and evil works, and even the most trifling incidents presenting 

 themselves with distinctness a tide of memory. And doubtless it is 

 owing to like causes that, under the influence of opium or other narcotic 

 drugs, the relations of space and time are so totally destroyed that we 

 seem to live through a century in a single night, or to take in our view 

 scenery, the distances and magnitudes of which are utterly beyond the 

 reach of mortal vision. It has been truly said that the province of 

 dreams is one of intense exaggeration. It is so in a double sense, for 

 with equal facility we spread out a single and perhaps in- The g readin(r 

 significant circumstance, so that it occupies the entire night, of one idea over 

 or we crowd a thousand strange, though perhaps connected, a ong time ' 

 representations into the twinkling of an eye. Nor is it by any means 

 the least extraordinary part of these wonderful facts that the mind occu- 

 pies itself in an undiverted and unbroken manner for so long a time, 

 with an insignificant idea in the one case, and perceives, with miraculous 

 perspicuity, the rapidly disappearing occurrences in the other ; that of a 

 majority of dreams it retains no precise recollection, though they may 

 have been presented with an intense energy, as we are assured from the 

 impression of dread or melancholy, or even the physical results they 

 have left, as when we awake and feel the heart throbbing Forgetfuiness 

 violently and the whole frame trembling with terror, yet can of dreams, 

 not, with the utmost exertion of memory, recollect what it wds that we 

 saw. The remembrance of dreams by no means, therefore, depends on 

 the intensity of the impression that they made for the time ; doubtless 

 the majority of them are forgotten and can never be recalled. In some 

 instances, which almost every one can recall, we dream a second time the 

 same dream which we failed to remember when awake, and, it is said, 

 even occasionally dream that we are dreaming. 



Our mental capability for recalling the scenes that have occupied us 

 in our sleep is therefore dependent upon something more than the depth 

 of the impression they have made. Whether it be, as some suppose, 

 through an inertness of the mind, an incapability or indisposition of pay- 

 ing attention to the things thus presented to it, or whether it be that, 

 through accidental causes, the vestiges of impressions remaining in the 



