Levitation 229 



faces. Touching the ground only at intervals 

 of several hundred yards is pleasant skimming; 

 but I always feel, in a faint and watery way, the 

 dead pull of the world beneath me. 



Now the experience of most dream -flyers I 

 find to be essentially like my own. I have met 

 but one who claims superior powers : he says 

 that he flies over mountains goes sailing from 

 peak to peak like a kite. All others whom I 

 have questioned acknowledge that they fly low, 

 in long parabolic curves, and this only by 

 touching ground from time to time. Most of 

 them also tell me that their flights usually begin 

 with an imagined fall, or desperate leap ; and no 

 less than four say that the start is commonly 

 taken from the top of a stairway. 



* * 



For myriads of years humanity has thus been 

 flying by night. How did the fancied motion, 

 having so little in common with any experience 

 of active life, become a universal experience of 

 the life of sleep ? 



It may be that memory-impressions of certain 

 kinds of aerial motion, exultant experiences of 

 leaping or swinging, for example, are in dream. 



