672 Dynamic Theory. 



the circumstance of having seen such a beautiful French bureau in New 

 York, which suggests to another the question, why such an article should 

 be imported instead of being made at home, which question opens up 

 the tariff policy of the country, which leads to the discussion of the 

 general politics of this country, then to that of Europe, and so on with- 

 out end. 



Our waking ideas are of about the same consistency and continuity. 

 They are changing constantly, like a series of dissolving views. Even 

 when some strong motive is holding us to a particular and persistent 

 line of thought, images foreign to the purpose are constantly being re- 

 vived and interposed. The stimulus which ought to be expended in 

 arousing apt and correlative images or recollections, is frittered away 

 upon diverging tracks, which never return to assist in the formation of 

 the purposive idea. 



The prattle of children is also of this wandering and flighty nature. 

 But it is stimulated largely by sensations directly from without, instead 

 of those stored sensations in the internal sense organs of the cerebrum. 

 But the effect being much the same, the fact affords both a proof and 

 an illustration of the reality and the function of the internal senses. 

 The first stimulations which assail us in infancy are manifestly the ex- 

 ternal stimulations which reach our sensory cells through the external 

 sense organs. The process of storing these sensations in the cerebral 

 cells, continues during life, and in the revival of them, which consti- 

 tutes recollection, consists the phenomenon of internal sensation, the 

 cerebral cells being the internal sense organs. In old age, and as life 

 progresses, particularly with people of recluse and retired habits, more 

 and more, of the sensations which govern their actions and form the 

 basis of the new images composed in their brains, are furnished by these 

 internal senses. The observation of the external senses becomes less 

 acute, and they exert less influence. 



The erratic nature of dreams is likewise due largely to this same en- 

 tanglement of the lines of memory. At any rate, this is certainly true 

 of all dreams that have an^ coherency or continuity, as many of them 

 have. Such dreams are much like the ordinary waking movements of 

 the brain, frequently changing the subject, and gliding from one image 

 to another, but yet preserving in each image its proper and rational 

 features. But there are dreams in which the images are all broken up, 

 and the parts thrown together in the utmost jumble and incongruous 

 confusion. The head grows out of the back, feathers grow from the 

 toes, people walk without feet on the water, sail on the land in boats, 

 fly without wings, are chopped to pieces by impossible dragons, without 

 injury or pain. These things all appear to happen without in the least 

 exciting surprise or any suspicion of incongruity. 



