Other steps in the process of dream construction are shown in the following note. The simplest type of dream is given here because it exemplifies better than one of more imaginative interest would do the actual building up of a dream.

"We were walking in a country unknown to me. We had crossed some grasslands and came to a roughly made stile of wooden bars, over which I helped my mother to climb. The path which we followed led down the side of a grassy slope which formed the side of a shallow winding valley. On our left the valley disappeared round a corner behind low hills. To our right a small foreign-looking village lay at a distance, too far off for us to see it clearly. Looking down the valley that we were descending into, I saw that the path lay across it like a white ribbon and then turned off to the right towards the distant village. 'It looks just like a road marked out upon a map,' I thought,' or like a railway map.' As I looked again I saw that there was running down the length of the valley a railroad track which I had not seen before and which crossed the path that we were following. We came nearer, and I saw that no gates guarded the crossing of the roads. 'What a dangerous sort of level crossing,' thought, 'like some of those unguarded railway lines in America that we read of.

There would be no warning whatever of a train coming from behind the hills except the sound of it.' I listened, and then I began to hear, far away, the roar of a train; it came round the hill and round a sudden sharp curve at the foot of the valley, rushing towards us very fast. I stood clear of the line and watched it come and go. 'Will it stop at the village?' I wondered. As it thundered by, three carriages at the end of the train detached themselves from it and followed, but at a lessening pace. 'Slip carriages for the village, of course,' I thought. 'What a fine thing it is to see the oncoming of a great train - it is like the description of a stampede of wild cattle on the Western Plains. These slip carriages are like the animals selected and cut off by the herdsmen from the main body.' Again the suggested thought realised itself at once. From far down the valley there came the sound of many hoofs beating the earth all together with a deep sound, and there came tearing up it a vast body of splendid wild cattle; their heads lowered, tossing their horns.

They came rushing up - they were not very close to me, but I could see them part a little, and a few young ones, who were trailing rather behind them, got separated and were left a short way behind the rest.

"No sense of fear was in my mind and no great surprise, 'I suppose that in this country it is natural to see such great herds,' was my thought." The dream after this followed on a tranquil course, and nothing else occurred that needs to be recorded.

It is given here because it illustrates the process that constantly takes place in the making of a dream.

The winding path that we look down upon suggests the marking of roads and railroads on a map; the railroad idea having been thus suggested, the dream mind seizes on it and makes it objective, and the railway at once takes its place in the dream valley. Path and railroad cross each other, and the crossing suggests the next step in the story. A rapid se-quence of ideas flashes through the mind somewhat as follows: a level crossing - its possible dangers -stories of accidents in certain American states at level crossings - sound of the train the only warning. Just such a sequence of thoughts as might occur if we were glancing at such a scene by day. But no sooner has the thought of the warning noise of a train flashed into the dream mind than it seizes upon this particular idea, and converts it into an actual fact. In the dream we listen, and in a few seconds the sound is heard. Imagination and memory work together so well that a perfect realisation of the roar of a train, increasing in sound as the train comes from behind the hills is produced.

The illusion is complete.

The dream goes on. I watch the foreshortened train as it rushes towards me, and the rush suggests the image of a charge of wild cattle. This image links on to the idea of the Western States just now recalled to mind, and suggests a ranch, and the ranch-men skilfully separating the required number of animale from the herd. The simile is worked out rather fancifully by the dream imagination, in obedience to which the slip carriages are detached from the train. Then the imagination visualises the actual herd: It sees them come from afar; it hears - or makes me hear - the very sound of their trampling feet.

Now this elaborate process of dream building is very much like the process that is carried on in the mind by day when images pass quickly across it, and one association calls up another. Only at night the imagination is not fettered by the discipline which restrains our wandering thoughts from following too eagerly in the random track of every chance thought and suggestion. The imagination in sleep, unchecked in this way, can devote itself to perfecting each successive image that arises, giving life and reality to each of them in turn, metamorphosing them, and constantly adding new facts and fresh touches to the pictures which are its creation.

This simple explanation of the method of construction of one very ordinary type of dream will seem quite inadequate to those who believe that the origin and contents of dreams are to be explained only on the basis of Freudian psycho-analysis. The theory of dream building by the association of ideas which seems to account for the making of many of these dreams does not take into consideration the symbolisms and hidden meanings that the psycho-analyst finds in all of them. I do not question that there may be dreams that may symbolise the repressed or unconscious wish of Freudian teaching; others no doubt have a symbolic character, and represent some thought or mood experienced by the dreamer. But beside these, there are numberless dreams which do not seem to belong to either of these categories; the construction of some of these may be accounted for by the theory of associated ideas. No single theory seems capable of explaining every kind of dream, and when we try to reason about dreams we have to take refuge once more in the fact that they are not all alike, but are so manifold in their nature as are the thoughts and imaginations of men.