622 DREAMING. 



intelligence, however acute, is limited : concentrated in one point, 

 without the general intelligence of our waking moments, so that 

 a collateral incongruity or impossibility is not detected. 



I believe that excitement of the portions of the brain destined 

 for emotion is more frequently the cause of the train of ideas 

 than those of the intellect ; just as the hallucinations of madmen 

 most frequently arise from the morbid state of a feeling, the 

 idea of being God or an Emperor, for instance, from inordinate 

 pride : and I may mention that Prof. Wheatstone remarked to me 

 in conversation that his observation of the greater incoherency and 

 rapidity of transitions in dreaming, where emotion was not excited, 

 might be extended to insanity. Still, I should say that, if very 

 many passions are excited in either dreaming or insanity, this 

 effect of emotion will be lost and the incoherence be very 

 great. The organs of the feelings may be excited alone in sleep. 

 We often wake under emotion, without knowing why. If it is 

 urged that we may have dreamt unpleasant things, but forgotten 

 them, which may be true, for we may recollect our dream after 

 some lapse of time, I add that, after going to bed under distress 

 of mind, we often wake in the morning feverish and wretched 

 without knowing why, till, after trying to consider the reason, 

 we in a few minutes recollect the real cause of our disquietude. 

 The emotion or unpleasant excitement of an organ of a feeling 

 must have existed during sleep, unaccompanied by images ; at 

 least their occurrence is a mere hypothesis. 



The excitement may be limited even to portions of organs, 

 or to particular modes of excitement. Just as in paralysis 

 we sometimes find one patient's organ of language so affected 

 that he forgets nouns substantive only, and but some of them, 

 and another forgets one particular language only of two or 

 more that he may have learnt, so in dreaming we may hear or 

 talk one language only of several that we know, or we may see 

 every thing of one colour. 



The excitement of the individual part that dreams may of 

 course be of all degrees : the conceptions may be almost too ob- 

 scure for us to discern them : they may be most vivid : we may 

 surpass our best efforts of the waking state, as happens sometimes 

 in insanity : we may remember things forgotten, and which we 

 have in vain attempted to remember ; nay, we probably sometimes 

 remember in our dreams without ever being aware that what we 



