If there were dreams to sell,

What would you buy?

Some cost a passing bell,

Some a light sigh,

That shakes from Life's fresh crown

Only a rose-leaf down.

If there were dreams to sell,

Merry and sad to tell,

And the crier rung the bell,

What would you buy?

- Thomas Beddoes, Dream Pedlary.

"If there were dreams to sell," if indeed the dream-pedlar could bring us the dreams of our desire, how well we know what we would choose; the faces that we would summon in our sleep, the paths that our feet should tread, the familiar rooms known to us long ago, in which we would find ourselves again - if we could buy. Is there any key that will open the doors of dreaming at our will? Any secret which would give us the power of choice or control over the activities of our sleeping hours? Elusive phantom-like things our dreams are, evading the memory which would hold them fast, refusing often to come at our bidding, however great our longing may be; but although this is true, and although we may never find any magic word of power that will give us perfect mastery over them, yet I am sure that there are some simple secrets, some methods that can be learned, by means of which we may in some measure command them, and that, more than we yet realise, the control of our dreams lies within our power.

We shall only be able to enjoy the full value of our heritage in the dream world when we have discovered how to make full use of our powers of happy dreaming, and have learned to exercise at any rate a certain amount of selection and of control over the nature of our dreams. It is obvious that the advantages of such control would be great, but it will probably be objected that it is impossible radically to alter their character, and that the elimination of unhappy or evil dreams, and the cultivation of pleasurable dreaming are equally outside our powers. The mind in sleep, it is often alleged, will always remain independent of our waking thoughts. A philosopher as wise as M. Bergson assumes this to be the case, and bases his dream theories on the assumption; but a long personal experience teaches me that the dream mind is far less independent of our will than is supposed, and that, to a degree that is not generally thought possible, the waking mind can and does direct the activities of the mind in sleep.

I believe, in short, that we can at will stop the recurrence of "bad" dreams, or of dreams that we dislike or dread, and that we can, to a considerable extent, alter the very nature of our dreams by using in our sleep the same faculty of rational selection and rejection that we use with regard to our thoughts and to our wandering fancies by day. We shall find, when the habit is learned, that we can make desired dreams recur more or less at will, and that we can develop in them certain qualities and powers. In this way the habit of dream control will gradually become ours. That we should be able to acquire such power should not, indeed, seem surprising, for much of the latest teaching of science points in the same direction, and offers possible clues to the meaning of experiences that are familiar to some of us who are students of dreams. If we may provisionally accept as a working hypothesis the theory that "every human organism comprises two mental selves or personalities, the normal one and one that comes into activity only under hypnosis or in our dreams," 1 this may actually give us such a clue, and help to solve some of the difficulties that present themselves. Every day more is being ascertained about the power of "suggestion" that one mind can exercise over another.

It is proved by well-attested experiments that, under the influence of hypnotic suggestion, control, not only of the mind, but of the organic processes of the body, can be established, and that the power of memory and the powers of the senses can be controlled and even greatly heightened in this condition. If by means of suggestion one mind can thus control another, can command its obedience, and actually exalt its powers of memory and imagination, it should not be impossible to conceive of a process by which our normal consciousness is able to control to some degree the working of our subconscious or dream mind in sleep. Parallel and very similar to this process is the control that we all, consciously or unconsciously, exercise over what are popularly called our "nerves" and over the organic processes of our own bodies. The lessons learned by all who have acquired disciplined habits of mind and body suggest that there is nothing fundamentally improbable in the belief that we should be able to control the actions and the imagination of the subconscious self in dreams.

The problem is how to acquire this controlling power, how, in short, we are to set up in the dream mind such a habit of response and obedience to the command of the waking mind as to make voluntary dreaming possible.

1 W. McDougal, Enoyelopadia Britannioa, "Hypnotism".

Much may have been written on this subject that I have not yet discovered. I have not found in books much to help me in gaining this power, nor many records of other persons who have sought for or have acquired it. Mr. Frederick Myers gave a few instances of such experiments, and no doubt there are others who have found out more than I have done, and who have advanced further on these lines. Perhaps each of us has at present to puzzle out a solution of our own. Each student of dreams who tries to get some measure of dream control can only record his own limited personal experience; the sum of all such experiences might be of great future value were there a clearing house of dreams; but as this does not yet exist, I can only write of my own limited and partially successful experiments in dream control -first in eliminating a certain class of dream, and secondly in cultivating a dream that I wanted to re-ear, by heightening and intensifying its pleasurable elements.