We have seen that the very fact of falling asleep involves a renunciation of one of the psychic activities- namely, the voluntary guidance of the flow of ideas. Thus the supposition obtrudes itself (though it is in any case a natural one) that the state of sleep may extend even to the psychic functions. One or another of these functions is perhaps entirely suspended; we have now to consider whether the rest continue to operate undisturbed, whether they are able to perform their normal work under the circumstances. The idea occurs to us that the peculiarities of the dream may be explained by the restricted activity of the psyche during sleep, and the impression made by the dream upon our waking judgment tends to confirm this view. The dream is incoherent; it reconciles, without hesitation, the worst contradictions; it admits impossibilities; it disregards the authoritative knowledge of the waking state, and it shows us as ethically and morally obtuse. He who should behave in the waking state as his dreams represent him as behaving would be considered insane. He who in the waking state should speak as he does in his dreams, or relate such things as occur in his dreams, would impress us as a feeble-minded or muddle- headed person. It seems to us, then, that we are merely speaking in accordance with the facts of the case when we rate psychic activity in dreams very low, and especially when we assert that in dreams the higher intellectual activities are suspended or at least greatly impaired.

With unusual unanimity (the exceptions will be dealt with elsewhere) the writers on the subject have pronounced such judgments as lead immediately to a definite theory or explanation of dream-life. It is now time to supplement the resume which I have just given by a series of quotations from a number of authors- philosophers and physicians- bearing upon the psychological characteristics of the dream.

According to Lemoine, the incoherence of the dream-images is the sole essential characteristic of the dream.

Maury agrees with him (Le Sommeil, p. 163): "Il n'y a pas des reves absolument raisonnables et qui ne contiennent quelque incoherence, quelque absurdite." *

* There are no dreams which are absolutely reasonable which do not contain some incoherence, some absurdity.

According to Hegel, quoted by Spitta, the dream lacks any intelligible objective coherence.

Dugas says: "Les reve, c'est l'anarchie psychique, affective et mentale, c'est le jeu des fonctions livrees a elles-memes et s'exercant sans controle et sans but; dans le reve l'esprit est un automate spirituel." *

* The dream is psychic anarchy, emotional and intellectual, the playing of functions, freed of themselves and performing without control and without end; in the dream, the mind is a spiritual automaton.

"The relaxation, dissolution, and promiscuous confusion of the world of ideas and images held together in waking life by the logical power of the central ego" is conceded even by Volkelt (p. 14), according to whose theory the psychic activity during sleep appears to be by no means aimless.

The absurdity of the associations of ideas which occur in dreams can hardly be more strongly stigmatized than it was by Cicero (De Divinatione, II. lxxi): "Nihil tam praepostere, tam incondite, tam monstruose cogitari potest, quod non possimus somniare." *

* There is no imaginable thing too absurd, too involved, or too abnormal for us to dream about.

Fechner says (p. 522): "It is as though the psychological activity of the brain of a reasonable person were to migrate into that of a fool."

Radestock (p. 145): "It seems indeed impossible to recognize any stable laws in this preposterous behaviour. Withdrawing itself from the strict policing of the rational will that guides our waking ideas, and from the processes of attention, the dream, in crazy sport, whirls all things about in kaleidoscopic confusion."