522 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



incoordination, is merely a question of degree, and it will frequent- 

 ly be difficult to assign any given concrete case to either the one 

 class or the other. 



So much for the logical analysis of the hypothesis we are con- 

 sidering and its implications. If we turn now to the facts and 

 try to apply these principles to them we shall find, I think, that 

 many phenomena for which our current psychology can not give 

 any explanation, become, if not entirely intelligible, at least more 

 comprehensible than they were. 



A familiar form of disordination is found in states of which 

 sleep may be regarded as the type. Perfect sleep is not a disor- 

 dinated state. In perfect sleep we must suppose that all mental 

 life is absolutely quenched ; not even isolated states remain. But 

 most sleep is not perfect, and it is probable that some cortical 

 activity persists throughout. When we would go to sleep we 

 withdraw ourselves as much as possible from the storm of stimuli 

 that is always assailing our sense-organs, thus cutting off all vivid 

 sensations with their complex and far-reaching associations. Lit- 

 tle by little the activities that remain i. e., those that lie at the 

 foundation of our ideational life become quiescent. Then the 

 laggards among them, freed from their usual restraints, assume 

 distorted forms. Isolated scenes, dislocated scraps of seniences, 

 vague thoughts, flit through the mind's rapidly emptying cham- 

 bers, coalescing and combining with one another in fashions gro- 

 tesque and unpredictable ; from moment to moment they become 

 fewer, and then oblivion. Sometimes on awaking we remem- 

 ber strange experiences had in sleep what we term dreams. 

 What are they but dislocated systems of mental elements, some- 

 times springing out of elements which have persisted through the 

 period of disruption, as when we dream of things with which our 

 thoughts have been busied through the day, sometimes springing 

 out of sensations occasioned by stimuli falling upon our sense- 

 organs. Yet in every case dreams are developed under associa- 

 tive laws analogous to those of waking life, although very differ- 

 ent in the details of their operation. Take the case M. Maury 

 reports. He got a friend to tickle his face with a feather while 

 he was asleep, and dreamed that he was being tortured by hav- 

 ing a mask of pitch applied to his face and then torn forcibly 

 away, taking with it the skin and flesh. Had he been awake, the 

 stimulus would have caused a sensation of tickling ; by associ- 

 ative reasoning he would have instantly divined its cause, and 

 would have thought of the movements suitable to stop it. In 

 sleep the sensation developed far more than it would have done 

 in waking life, and was therefore magnified into an intense tear- 

 ing sensation, and for this magnified state by similar associative 

 reasoning a suitable cause was found. Had he been awake, even if 



