Elements of the philosophy of the human mind. By Dugald Stewart. Rev. and abridged, with critical and explanatory notes, for the use of colleges and schools. By Francis Bowen ...

198 DREAMING'.
merly remarked. If I am not mistaken, the influence of these
circumstances may also be traced in the history of our dreams;
which, in youth, commonly involve, in a much greater degree,
the exercise of imagination; and affect the mind with much
more powerful emotions, than when we begin to employ our
maturer faculties in more general and abstract speculations.
II. From these different observations, we are authorized to
conclude, that the same laws of association which regulate the
train of our thoughts while we are awake, continue to operate
during sleep. I now proceed to consider, how far the circumstances which discriminate dreaming from our waking thoughts
correspond with those which might be expected to result from
the suspension of the influence of the will.
i. If the influence of the will be suspended during sleep, alour voluntary operations, such as recollection, reasoning, etc.,
must also be suspended.
That this really is the case, the extravagance and inconsistency of our dreams are sufficient proofs. We frequently confound together times and places the most remote from each
other; and in the course of the same dream, conceive the same
person as existing in different parts of the world. Sometimes
we imagine ourselves conversing with a dead friend, without
remembering the circumstance of his death, although, perhaps,
it happened but a few clays before, and affected us deeply. All
this proves clearly, that the subjects which then occupy our
thoughts are such as present themselves to the mind spontaneously; and that we have no power of employing our reason in
comparing together the different parts of our dreams; or even
of exerting an act of recollection in order to ascertain how far
they are consistent and possible.
The process of reasoning in which we sometimes fancy ourselves to be engaged during sleep, furnish no exception to the
foregoing observation; for, although every such process, the
first time we form it, implies volition; and, in particular, implies
a recollection of the premises, till we arrive at the conclusion;
yet, when a number of truths have, been often presented to us
as necessarily connected with each other, this series may after