This example relates to a young woman, twenty-four years of age, unable to read or write, who contracted a fever, and who, while delirious, was heard to utter a great number of intelligible but disconnected Latin, Greek, and Hebrew sentences. According to views prevailing at the time, the priests said she was possessed by the devil. Only a few of her Hebrew sayings could be traced to the Bible; most seemed to be in the Rabbinical dialect. "All trick was out of the question; the woman was a simple creature; there was no doubt as to the fever" Eventually a physician, after much trouble, solved the mystery. He discovered that at the age of nine the girl had been charitably taken into the house of an old pastor who was a great Hebrew scholar. It was the old man's custom to walk up and down a passage of his house into which the kitchen opened, and read to himself with a loud voice out of his books. The pastor's books were found, and among them were several of the Greek and Latin Fathers, together with a collection of Rabbinical writings. So many of the passages taken down at the young woman's bedside were located in these works as to leave no doubt as to their origin.

1 Principles of Psychology, 1890, Vol. I, p. 681, Henry Holt & Co.

2 Psychology and the Day's Work, 1919, Chap. VI, Chas. Scribner's Sons.

Conceding that the mind is completely retentive, it might be asked at what age experiences begin to be permanently recorded. This is also a question difficult to determine; judging by the memories elicited by psychological methods, we have reason to believe that it begins in early childhood, even in infancy. Unfortunately, many of the examples commonly accepted as demonstrating the point are not complete enough to be conclusive. For instance, Carpenter describes the case of a clergyman who, while visiting friends in Sussex, came to a gateway. He had a vivid impression of having seen the gateway before, also donkeys beneath it, and people on the arch of the gateway. He was informed by his mother that when he was eighteen months old she had taken him to this place in the pannier of a donkey, and that the elder members of the party had eaten their lunch on the roof of the gateway, from which place they could see him and he them; he had been left below with the attendants and the donkeys. Before accepting this example, we would wish to know, among other things, whether or not the incident had been told to him years after its occurrence, and whether or not he had fabricated his mother's information to suit his feeling of familiarity with the scene. However, we will select an illustration which is free from the above objections.

As most of us must know, Helen Keller was rendered deaf, dumb, and blind prior to her second year by a severe attack of diphtheria. However, training and perseverance have rescued her from imbecility and rendered her a happy, useful, and accomplished person. Her sense of touch is so well-developed that by placing her fingers on the throat of a person talking, or singing, she can understand what is said or sung. The vibrations of a piano are perceptible to her touch so that she can comprehend music when played. She can also use the finger language, and can talk well enough to be understood. When she was sixteen, Dr. Waldstein1 obtained from her mother copies of two songs which had been sung to her in her infancy and which she had not heard since. These were played in her presence. She laughed, clapped her hands, and said: " Father carrying baby up and down, swinging on his knee. Black Crow! Black Crow!" Black Crow was found to be the name of a third song that her father had sung to her.

It is, as a rule, exceptional for long forgotten memories to come to consciousness in the waking state unless artificial devices are employed. Even then the memories are generally not under the influence of the will. It is in dreams that they are most likely to appear naturally yet involuntarily. Probably most of us have noted how persons and places that we had "forgotten" have appeared very distinctly in dreams. Often the dream brings us back to childhood, re-enacting incidents very vividly, which are recognized as having actually occurred but which have been forgotten entirely by waking consciousness or the memory of which is very indistinct. In another place we will again refer to the remarkable power of the dream in awakening experiences which are not within the conscious mind's power of recall.

1The Subconcious Self, 1906, pp. 61-67, Charles Scribner's Sons.

Just why the dream should be able to make use of material unavailable for waking thought is a matter which is not easily explained. We may, of course, say that in sleep the mind, instead of deriving its material from the various impressions made on the senses as during the waking state, or purposely and directly employing itself in a specific manner, as is also the waking bent, makes use of memories and by means of indirect thinking allows the mind - or that part of it employed when awake - to rest. Shut off pretty well from sources which direct thinking when awake, it has only past ex-perience with which to deal; at any rate we know that it is unconscious material with which the dream does concern itself and that all our past experiences are available for dream life.

Our dreams are, each and every one, founded on our personal experiences, and we dream of nothing which is not related to such experiences. If, for example, I should see an alligator in a dream such indicates that in some way I have become acquainted with what an alligator is. I may have formed such an acquaintance by actually seeing one or a picture of one, or I may have had one described to me. If I have never formed such an acquaintance I cannot dream of this animal; the same applies to other things.

It may, of course, be argued that in a dream one may see something the like of which does not actually exist. Possibly one may see in a dream such an absurd image as a horse with a man's head; true he will not find such an animal existent. However, he might have seen a picture of such a creature in a fairy tale, and at any rate he has seen a man and a horse; in the dream these two, the man and the horse, have become fused. How dreams cause fusion of images we will consider later; the point is that dreams are modelled on things that we have ourselves experienced in some way. The same holds true for waking thought. For example, devils are represented as being red in colour, suggested doubtless by their supposed contact with fire; they are pictured as having the hoofs, horns, and tails of beasts and the bodies of men. Angels have men's bodies and birds' wings. Heaven is represented as paved with gold, etc. Since no one has actually seen these places they are built up by the imagination, and the imagination builds on material with which the individual is familiar.

Since our dreams are founded on our personal experiences - from childhood to the present - it naturally follows that the greater the experiences of the individual the greater the amount of material at the disposal of his dreams. The man who spends his life in a village has fewer experiences than the city dweller; the latter less than the one who travels. The man who reads much has more dream material than the man who reads little or none. Likewise, persons of poor imagination lack not only vivid and varied material for waking thought but for dream-life as well. Imaginative people are constantly building new characters, new scenes, in their thoughts, and even our thoughts are preserved in the mind intact. As illustrating the influence of experiences on dreams, the dreams of De Quincey might be cited. His, instigated by opium, were diversified, highly coloured, crowded with incidents of his varied past. The dreams of a humble person to whom he fed opium were, on the contrary, of a very commonplace nature.