246 Shadowings 



through reaction of religious beliefs, there would 

 persist some dim survival of savage primitive 

 fears, and again, under this, a dimmer but in- 

 comparably deeper substratum of ancient animal- 

 terrors. In the dreams of the modern child all 

 these latencies might quicken, one below an- 

 other, unfathomably, with the coming and 

 the growing of nightmare. 



It may be doubted whether the phantasms of 

 any particular nightmare have a history older 

 than the brain in which they move. But the 

 shock of the touch would seem to indicate some 

 point of dream-contact with the total race-ex- 

 perience of shadowy seizure. It may be that 

 profundities of Self, abysses never reached by 

 any ray from the life of sun, are strangely 

 stirred in slumber, and that out of their black- 

 ness immediately responds a shuddering of mem- 

 ory, measureless even by millions of years. 



