I could not claim that all my own dreams have the adventurous and imaginative quality of the dreams described by Mr. Greenwood. Some happily have these qualities, just as some days in our life also possess them, days when a fine sense of adventure seems to be in the very air we breathe; but there are many other more "every-day" dreams that lack these romantic qualities but which are nevertheless the source of great enjoyment; giving the same kind of quiet pleasure that we feel when journeying through an unfamiliar country, when each little hill we surmount and each bend of the road that we turn reveals to us something new, and the attention is held absorbed by all the simple incidents and homely beauties of the wayside. Just so do some dreams make their quiet and pleasant progress. Tranquil as they are, they have all the charm of the unexpected, the unfamiliar. The incidents of some such dreams written down next morning might seem almost too simple to record, but so also would the incidents of many days of happy travel. A curious sense of pleasure and well-being seems to pervade them that is out of all proportion to the incidents that happen in their course.

In coherent dreams such as these the reasoning faculty, the memory, and the imagination are all called upon to bear a part, after the same fashion, though not perhaps in the same degree, as when these faculties are used in the construction of a work of imagination; and the fact that many dreams are of such a nature shows at least that no mere physiological description of their origin suffices to explain them wholly to us.

1 Frederick Greenwood, "Imagination in Dreams," a book which, though written many years ago, still seeing to me one of the most enlightening of all the studies of dreams, and for the unprofes-sional student a most suggestive introduction to the subject.

We ask what dreams are - how the dream mind works which produces them - and our intelligence refuses to be satisfied with an answer which tells us merely what physical causes may have started them. The very nature, the characteristics of such dreams makes it equally impossible for us to rest content with theories that see in them only the working of a mind in disorder, or only the symbolic representations of repressed desire. Neither do we feel that they are explained to us when we are told that functional disturbances set up disturbances of the brain and that these are the cause of our dreams. Even the fact that they may be started by vibrations of sound, of light, or of touch, making sense impressions upon the body, does not carry us very far towards their comprehension.

The physiologist may be able to show us how the beginnings of a dream occur, "but he cannot get beyond a statement of how and where they make their beginning. He does not, and cannot, give us the answer to the question 'What are our dreams?' What faculties of the mind are mostly displayed in them? Which, if any, remain dormant? Does any mental faculty (such as imagination) change its character in our dreams, assume functions of which we are unconscious when awake, or exhibit powers and properties that only appear in sleep f ... In fine, what do our dreams teach us about the constitution of the mind and its potentialities as a whole!? "1

This, indeed, is the question that we would ask -the thing that we most desire to know. Our task as students of dreams should therefore be to find out by experiment and careful observation all that we can learn about the working of the various mental faculties in the dream state; to find out, for instance, in what way the memory works in sleep, to discover as much as possible about the extraordinary functions of the imagination in dreams and the superior powers and activity that it develops; to study the operation of the mind in the borderland between sleeping and waking, and to ascertain whether any one of our mental faculties is in abeyance whilst we dream, and if so to what* extent does it cease to work? Is our will-power, for example, totally suspended when we sleep, as many authorities assume it to be; or is it able, at any rate, to exercise a partial control over our other faculties ? This question of the suspension of the will-power during sleep is one of special interest; underlying as it does the whole theory of "disinterestedness" as defined by M. Bergson. It is a widely held belief that when we dream the controlling and selecting power of the mind entirely ceases.

But does it actually cease? I believe that it is not necessarily suspended, and that if we choose we can still exercise a considerable degree of selection and control over our dreams.

1 F. Greenwood, "Imagination in Dream*.

It is a matter of common experience that we can wake up at will at a given hour that has been resolved on overnight; the will in that case operates to awaken the sleeper at a definite moment, and it cannot, therefore, have been in a state of entire suspension. I have found also that by adopting certain methods and by acquiring a certain discipline of mind we can ensure that our will shall retain a very considerable degree of influence over our dream mind, an influence sufficient to give us a real and effective measure of command over our dreams.

This point has long been one of especial interest to me, and the notes that are given in the next chapter on the subject of dream control, slight and inconclusive as they may be, embody observations that have been made during a period of many years.