FEELING EmoTION.) \\e have, further, fre quent instate-es of passive memory, i.e. of the recognition of persons or places—recognitions which our waking consciousness not seldom de (laws to be false recognitions, hut which, none the less, have the true recognitive form and 'feel': of act ire memory, efforts ttf recollection; of passive imagination. time supplementing in idea of the situation before us in (seeming) perception: of active imagination, e.g. the writ ing of poetry: of resolve and voluntary en deavor; and of active attention. In illustra tion of the latter, we may take the following dream: "I was trying to find the name of a philosophical writer, which I knew began with D. I ran through the index of the book I held in my hand. but could not find the name. Then I went to the shelf: took down another book, and ran through its index in the same way, with successful result." So far, indeed, may this reproduction or simulation go, that we some times dream that we are dreaming. We say, in ordinary life, "The whole thing scented like a dream": and the same experience of dream likeness reoccurs in the dream-consciousness.
IVe have spoken of the 'reproduction or simu lation' of mental formations. Our dream poetry, if it be really composed during sleep and not in the half-waking state before complete arousal, is neither rhyme nor reason: the foreign lan guages that we speak so fluently in dreams are unfamiliar to us in the waking life: our dream resolves are ineffective; our dream recognitions, as we have said, are oftentimes false. These observations have led to the theory that the dream-consciousness is composed, in reality, of a mere panorama of images; and that the complex mental formations which seem to occur in dreams are really imaginary. There is. how ever, no cause for going behind the clear ver dict of introspection. The formations occur; but, owing to the extreme limitation and irregu lar distribution of attention in the dreaming state, they show characteristic differences from the corresponding formations of the waking life.
Here, indeed. is the crucial problem that the dream presents to psychology. The arrangement of ideas in dreaming is fantastic amid disorderly: yet, as the dream comes. we accept its events and incidents unquestioned. taking everything for granted. !low are we to account for these seemingly opposed facts? (1 1 'lime fantastic nature of the dream is explained by the almost unrestricted freedom of association in the dream consciousness. Our waking conscionsnesses are regulated by pressure of outside eireumstanees.
In dreaming, as in reverie, there is a practical absence of leg,nlation: an idea of 011 r childhood is as likely to arise as an idea of yesterday; the sequence of ideas may be logical. hut may also be determined by the utmost trivial and irrelevant of eonnecting links. As a rule, the fundamental things of mind fspace-perception, personal identity) remain; even these may undergo dissociative changes. Association is uncontrolled. and has tree play. (2 t On the other hand, dream ideas are intensive, and im presske. 'the sleeping brain is generally in xeitable; ever, am excitation make. its tray to the cortex, the result is out of all proportion to the intensity of stimulus. It is as if the acute part of the brain drained the inactke part of a portion of its stored Alorcover, the in a dream alttay., single tile. has nothing of the complexity, the wealth of 'hinges' and marginal elements, that it has in waking. The 'Kitt of the brain stimulated is a strictly local area the greater part of the cortex is still quiescent. Now this narrowness of con s•iousness means that we have no of comparing the dream event with the data of our past experience: the meta does not fall into relations, but stands alone. But an idea which is at once impressive and unetmtrailieted is. of course. accepted and believed. Hence is it that the dream, despite its absurdity when recounted in the normal environment of the waking life, pra t okes no .eriiples hesitancies as we dream it.
A word may be added concerning the prophetic character ascribed to dreams, both in primitive belief and in popular superstition at the present day. \Vhile the genesis of the belief is not hard to trace—we have but to remember that a friend, known to be many miles away, may appear at our side in a dream: nay, more, that our dead friends may seem to return and converse with us—it is scarcely necessary to say that it. is wholly Our dreams reflect, to some extent, the ante of our general health, and may thus be useful as warning us against overstrain; but there is no valid evidence that they give us insight into the future.
Consult : Wundt, Human and Animal Psy cho/01p, I London. 1806) : id., Grand:4/9e der physiologisehen 1'st/etiologic ( Leibzig, 1SD:3) Dellneuf, Questions de philosophic et de science: Le some nil et lest 71'reS (Paris. ISA5) Alaury. Le sommeil rl less recess (Park, 18651; Ilammontl. Steep and Its Derangements ( Phila 1869).