As with night dreams, day-dreams have an influence, of which we are unaware, on our daily activities, the significant as well as the insignificant. We have before considered their usefulness should they stimulate the individual to accomplish a noble purpose. However, in many cases their hidden purpose is to achieve the impossible, and the result is that the dreamer becomes a vainglorious or otherwise disliked person. Many of those who affect the grand manners of the lady of leisure do so simply because they are unconsciously acting as would be their wont if their fancies came true; others affect a certain style of talk, a patronizing air, a hoity-toity walk, expect servility from every one, are domineering, etc., for the reason that, unknown to themselves, they are acting as if their day-dreams were fulfilled.

Prof. Bleuler,1 in speaking of autistic thinking, which is synonymous with day-dreaming, calls attention to the similarity of thought between the insane person and the day-dreamer. In telling about an insane inmate of an asylum, a little, ungainly creature, reared in poverty, who enters a room in a country hotel and who can only be removed by force because he expects at any moment the arrival of the Queen of Holland who wishes to marry him, Prof. Bleuler says:

"The thinking of this patient, which represents a very common type, appears to be sheer nonsense. He imagines something absolutely impossible, and what is more, he believes it to be reality. Its contradictions to reality do not exist for him.

"If, however, we don't touch these things, the patient seems to be quite reasonable. He works all the week like a healthy man and goes for a walk on Sundays like ordinary people. Here he thinks rightly and reckons reality as it is. His thinking, therefore, is not disturbed in all directions. Moreover, there is method in his madness. To marry a princess would naturally be the height of human happiness to any unfortunate devil. Our fairy tales testify to this. And it is just a fairy tale with which our friend has to do, only after a somewhat different fashion than with us rational mortals. He does not tell a fairy tale, he does not read one, he lives his fairy tale. Let us hold this in our minds, and it will bring the abnormal man nearer to us healthy ones.

1 Amer. Jour. Insanity, Vol. LXIX, No. 5, pp. 873-874.

"Each of us has also his fairy tale. He does not indeed usually believe himself to live it. Only when he is quite alone and his thoughts are let loose does it come to light. The man is then rich, attractive, healthy and handsome. He always chooses those advantages in which he is most hopelessly lacking. Directly reality gains its sway, the plaything will be thrust hastily back into the cupboard, where it is hidden not only from strangers but from the owner himself; for, once outside the dream, he is not at all aware how far he can really identify himself with its characters. But perhaps I have said too much. The cupboard into which the toy is put is our own brain, and it never shuts tight. Without our noticing it, the imprisoned fairy very often stretches out a hand. She guides our taste in the choice of a tie, she guides our hand when we make the flourish to our signature. By our bearing, the choice of our phraseology, she shows the expert the trend of our aspirations. We stand therefore far nearer than would have at first sight appeared to the lunatic; whose vagrant thoughts struck us just now so forcibly. At any rate the difference is only a relative one. And when we look more closely we find amongst all normal people many and important instances where thought is divorced both from logic and reality."

This does not mean, of course, that insanity is apt to result from mere day-dreaming. It does show, however, that we have little cause to ridicule the insane, as many of us do; each of us has thoughts as fantastic. The insane person acts his day-dreams more or less constantly; he does not distinguish their unreality. We who are normal are able to shut out the fairies, to bring ourselves back to the real world. Unlike some of the insane, our dreams do not so gain the upper hand that we no longer attend to the wants of nature; the lunatic, who spends the greater part of his time gazing apparently at nothing, who speaks none, who must be fed and cleansed does so because in his mind a fairy tale is being acted, in which he is taking a part, where he is attending to everything; the tale seems real to him; his world is the fairy world. Nevertheless, scarcely any of us can shut out the fairies without a sigh, perhaps a regret. And sometimes, because the actual world is not at all like the dream world, we become bitter, discontented. Also, because the fairies are gradually getting the upper hand, we act in real life as if we were living in the world where wishes had come true. Because we assume grand manners, expect to be catered to, etc., when our station in life denies such rights, we get to be out of harmony with our fellows; consequently we are disliked, unpopular.

Day-dreams, then, have an influence upon our everyday acts. They have also an influence upon our success. Every girl desires to be popular, yet if she allows her reveries to gain so much control that she assumes airs much out of place for one of her station, she will hardly be so; nor will she if day dreams which must remain unfulfilled render her envious. Every man probably desires to be a leader, to have a strong personality, a strong will. There are, of course, many persons who are naturally of a quiet disposition, who prefer the quiet places, and to whom we are indebted for art and literary creations: in fact day-dreams are apt to be particularly useful to these individuals. However, if a man's work requires that he mingle with men and compete with them, he must have strength if he is to become a leader. As Charles Piez,1 himself a great leader, said in a magazine article in the American: "Let me say right here, as strongly and emphatically as it can possibly be said, that the foundation stone of all executive ability is moral courage. If you have all the other qualifications - resourcefulness, personality, vision, technical knowledge, judgment, and all the mental speed in the world - and you lack the moral courage, the backbone, or, as it is vulgarly but expressively termed, 'the guts,' to make your own decisions on your own responsibility, you're no executive. I don't care what you're doing, nor how you're doing it, this is the touchstone and proving ground of all executive ability."

The habitual day-dreamer is not usually one who perseveres, who fights discouragement, opposition, who is aggressive. True, a person may be too aggressive but a certain amount of self-confidence and push is necessary for success. The day-dreamer is a leader only in his thoughts; he is unable to stand the trials and buffet-ings of the real world. And so he jumps the real world and becomes forceful in his dreams. The more he dreams the more retiring he becomes; the more is he wounded by the hard places of the real world. He prefers the solitude, and thus misses the education gained in the school of hard knocks, where the world's workers are the teachers. He is apt to have violent likes and dislikes, to be quarrelsome because his wishes do not come true as easily in the real world as they do in the dream world. He is apt to make ludicrous and fatal mistakes because his will power, his judgment, his perseverance weaken; in the dream world there are no problems to be solved. He is likely to be of the so-called shut-in personality; he avoids his fellows, and may see in everything said or done something directed against himself. Since he cannot master his thoughts, since he is their slave, he can hardly master men, for the first step to progress is to master one's self.

1 The American Magazine, Feb., 1919.

It is, as a rule, the day-dreamer who occupies the lower rounds of the ladder in the business world. He is the person who does not get ahead because his time is spent in wool gathering. The hours that should be given to the work in hand are broken repeatedly by thoughts of how the baseball game is going, the fine time he had last night or expects to have, - anything more pleasurable than the work he is supposed to be doing. Day in and out fancies or reveries steal away hours that really belong, not to the worker, but to the employer. Success rarely comes to the castle builders, to clock watchers, to those who dream away other people's time. It does come, however, to those who give their employers full measure, and who apply themselves faithfully to their work. Success does not single out the smart men particularly; it most always falls to the lot of the plodder, the loyal worker, he who, if he dreams, dreams constructively, with a practical slant. And it is he who in later years lives in real castles, while his fellows are still inhabitants of dream ones.