GHOSTS FROM DREAMLAND 



automatic, predetermined by heredity and environment 

 (experience); and that the mind is the victim of self- 

 illusion in thinking itself the arbiter of a train of thought, 

 of which it is in reality only a spectator. 



It would lead us far afield to discuss this contention 

 here, but everyone may find for himself at least a sug- 

 gestive answer through a moment's consideration of 

 his own dreams. 



How realistic, how life-like, after all, even the most 

 " bizarre " dream is. How familiar is the sequence of 

 ideas, how like to a train of thought of our waking hours. 

 If here and there arises an unfamiliar form, it is after 

 all some creation of the imagination modelled along 

 familiar lines. If we seem to do things that we have 

 never done or could never do in real waking life, they 

 at least are things that we can imagine while awake. 

 Indeed, as a rule, the dreams that we clearly remember 

 after awaking present a record of very clearcut and 

 logical lines of action, even though involving, for ex- 

 ample, certain physical feats such as rising through 

 the air and the like that are not physically possible. 



The most grotesque dream is no more grotesque 

 than sundry trains of thought that flit through our 

 brains in times of waking reverie. 



The one radical distinction is that we know the 

 reverie to be of a flight of fancy, whereas the dream, 

 while it is passing, seems to impress itself upon us as an 

 actuality. If in a normal waking reverie the mind's 

 eye pictures an absent friend or a dear one who has 

 long been dead as standing before us, we are but con- 

 juring with a phantasy of memory there is no real 



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