It is to be noticed that there is, besides the actual falling dream, an experience akin to it that is very common, namely a sensation of falling some three or four feet, while half - awake. It is quite painless, accompanied only by slight shock, and I believe that the doctors ascribe it to something that happens to the heart. It lies quite outside our subject, for it is not a dream at all, and it is a little curious that one of the very few of my correspondents to whom the falling dream is unknown says that the sensation of a sudden short drop while half - asleep and half - awake is peculiarly frequent with him. Another correspondent has a curious dream sensation which he classes under the head of the flying dream, but it seems equally well to come under the head of the falling dream, and, indeed, to be a singular medley of the two. This correspondent writes as follows: "As regards what you say about flying in your dreams being a pleasurable sensation, it never was so to me. As a child I have a vivid recollection of constantly flying downstairs in my dream, but having all the time a perfect terror of dropping down, and was only too thankful when I found myself on terra firma at the bottom" The flying, with a fear of dropping and a sensation of terror therewith, is surely, so far, more akin to falling than flying, as the two are commonly experienced in the dream illusion, and the true flying, so to speak of it, is generally so pleasant a sensation that it seems in this regard quite different from the experience of this writer.

On the other hand, the fact that the dreamer landed, that the falling (so to call it as she calls it) finished, differentiates this altogether from the typical falling dream, so that this has to be regarded as a kind of freak dream, a cross between the falling dream and the flying, and with some qualities of both. Neither the typical falling nor the typical flying dream occur in the experiences of this correspondent It would seem, however, that the reaching the bottom of the fall, in the falling dream, is not so unusual as I had supposed, for another correspondent writes: "With regard to No. 1 class, the writer of these notes knows several people who have more than once reached the bottom in safety, though most dreamers wake with a start just before the end of the fall" Another correspondent writes to me of an experience which consists at first of falling, but towards the end of the fall its line becomes less and less perpendicular until it ends by a kind of skating away along a horizontal line - The curious finish to the fall in some measure seems to ally the dream to the cross - bred falling and flying dream noticed just above.

There seems a tendency for the illusion of actual flying to merge into a gliding in an upright posture, as will be seen when we go on to discuss the second class. Miss Frances Power Cobbe writes: "I have read somewhere that the falling dream arises when the process of pressure of the blood vessels on the brain takes place with a jerk instead of gradually, and that we have in fact a sort of miniature apoplectic fit". It is evident that Miss Cobbe does not attach much importance to this, the commonplace, explanation which will perhaps, if it explains anything, explain the sudden drop in the half - asleep state equally well if not better than the fall in the dream state. Miss Cobbe also says that there is "a terrible kind of disease of the brain in which the otherwise sane patient imagines that a great chasm or abyss opens suddenly before him in the street or the floor of his room, and he retreats instantly in horror". Miss Cobbe suggests that this may be merely an exaggerated form of the falling dream.

But against this theory comes the consideration that Miss Cobbe herself ventures on in the following sentence, that "this dream" (the falling dream) "is very abrupt, not led up to, as most vivid dreams are, by introducing circumstances, and is always followed immediately by waking ". This, as it appears to me, is very typical of this falling dream, and I do not know any other dream that is quite like it, in this circumstance, of which the probable explanation (the explanation, at least, which I should suggest) is that the illusion of falling being so very vivid, not to say distressing, it is far more likely to remain in the waking consciousness than any of the introducing circum stances. The fall over the precipice is a much more striking incident than the walk up to its edge, which walk very likely occurs to our sleeping fancy, but is not remembered when we wake up. The vividness of the illusion of falling may even have an active effort in obliterating the consciousness of the less vivid introductory illusion.

This explanation I offer as merely the vaguest conjecture.

In the most typical and frequent form of the falling dream, one wakes before reaching the bottom. Indeed, as I have said elsewhere, a common notion or saying is that if you dreamed of reaching the bottom you would then and there die, presumably of nervous shock. This can, however, by the nature of the case, be again but a conjecture of the vaguest. There is no proof that any one ever died such a death, and on the other side of the argument I have the evidence of one correspondent at least who reached the bottom, not in any oblique gliding fashion, but with an impact direct and clashing like a lyddite shell. This lady writes: "You say you have never heard of any one falling who has arrived at the bottom. I have 'arrived' with a crash, have broken up into pieces, and then I - a sort of detached ego - have picked up the pieces and glued them together again". Now this is marvellous; it is magnificent; but it is not war - that is to say it is not the typical falling dream. It sounds more like war than dreaming; but we may dismiss it as not being made in the mould of the ordinary falling dream. It is a freak, and a mightily disagreeable one, as we may imagine.

Another variant of the falling dream, a correspondent describes as follows: "As to the falling dream, I never awake immediately, except when I only seem to step over a step, without any dream at all, immediately after going to sleep ". Evidently this is the "drop" of a few feet, in the transition stage, between sleep and wakefulness, of another correspondent, and is not, as that correspondent says, a dream at all. He proceeds: "I generally throw myself over the precipice to escape something, not always exactly alarming" (merely a boring acquaintance, perhaps) "and the result is that at once I have the sensation of being carried away on a river, my sleep becoming dreamless".

This is something like the way in which that other correspondent experiences the falling dream, the falling turning into a gliding, and finishing without any shock, even without sufficient shock to awake the dreamer - very different from the lyddite shell business of the last correspondent's alighting. In this account it is to be noted, too, that there are "introductory circumstances," which persuade the dreamer voluntarily to throw himself over the precipice (it is well that no precipices are at hand when we see certain of our friends approaching us in waking life, otherwise we might be tempted by the example of this dreamer to his heroic mode of getting free from the friendly attention). This dream again is evidently a freak or departure from the true type of the "falling dream". The correspondent adds "I remember this" (i.e. that there is the river ready for his reception, like the feather - bed that receives the villain who is hurled over the precipice at the Adelphi Theatre) "in my dreams, and throw myself over with perfect confidence and do not see anything as I go down. Indeed I have no sensation of going down.

After the spring the floating away comes at once." Evidently this is not the true falling dream at all.

One correspondent who dreams, obediently to rules, the falling dream in its typical form, gives me a suggested cause of it, which is well worth noting, however much or little we may be disposed to adopt it The first sentence of that correspondent, that I will quote immediately, is by way of an answer to a suggestion of my own that the falling dream might be the outcome of an optical delusion which showed some object passing upwards from below. This would satisfy the optical condition of a long fall, and conceivably might arise from some momentary twitch of the optic nerve. I have spoken of this elsewhere. My correspondent writes thus: "In my own case I do not, in the falling dream, see any objects at all, either apparently rising or otherwise; the sensation is purely of physical falling" (Query - our familiarity with this sensation?) "but without striking against anything, rather as if the ground or bed were suddenly removed from under me " (certainly this is a good description) "I have felt something not unlike it when in a berth at sea, when the sea was very rough, and the berth suddenly descended, leaving me, for a perceptible fraction of a second behind. This seems to suggest another possible explanation.

Can the sensation be due to one's losing the bodily impression of the bed beneath one a little too soon, before the brain is sufficiently unconscious not to be startled by the apparent loss of support to the body?" The very least to say of this is that it is a very ingenious theory. My own doubt is whether the physiological conditions of sleep will permit its acceptance.

Another correspondent, writing to me of the falling dream, tells me that his experience of it presents features in most respects quite normal, but differing from type in that "I really reach the bottom, and the sudden concussion awakes me. This I had always attributed to some momentary cessation of the heart's action, which probably caused the whole dream." This is the popular account, no doubt, but it is hardly scientificially accurate. Yet another writer, whose experience of the falling dream seems to conform in general to the type, expresses in this way a departure from it: "I, however, always experience a cold terror, while falling, and never wonder at any lack of fear". I gather from all that my correspondents say, that this is a very rare departure from the type. Alice in Wonderland falling down the rabbit hole and thinking how brave the people at home would deem her, not to be frightened, is typical of the dream. Only one more writer will I quote, and then we will cease to fall, which is a stupid action after all, and commence to fly, which is much more engaging. This correspondent suggests that the falling dream is "purely physical". "I always believed," she writes, "it to be caused by the relaxing of one's muscles, as one sees in dogs and cats when fast asleep.

A twitch of the limbs will cause them to start violently, and perhaps utter a sound of distress, sometimes causing them to wake, but not always, and most clearly causing a dream, - presumably like that of falling." Are we to admit the adverb, the "presumably," and let it go unchallenged? And after all if we admit the twitch to be identical with the falling sensation (and is not the twitch familiar to us as something different from the fall?) does not that leave a question behind, still to be answered, namely, "What is the cause of the twitch?" So let us leave this business of falling, some of us gliding on on arrival at the bottom, as if on skates and ice, some of us landing dynamically with a crash and a splutter of fragments, but most of us never reaching the bottom at all, our dream break-ing off with us in mid - air, which is, most obviously, the proper situation in which to begin the more honourable business of flight. Lucifer and the devils fall, but all good angels fly.