he psychologists have
trained a pack of theories and facts which they keep in leash, like so
many bulldogs, and which they let loose upon us whenever we depart from
the straight and narrow path of dream probability. One may not even tell
an entertaining dream without being suspected of having liberally edited
it,--as if editing were one of the seven deadly sins, instead of a
useful and honourable occupation! Be it understood, then, that I am
discoursing at my own breakfast-table, and that no scientific man is
present to trip the autocrat.

I used to wonder why scientific men and others were always asking me
about my dreams. But I am not surprised now, since I have discovered
what some of them believe to be the ordinary waking experience of one
who is both deaf and blind. They think that I can know very little about
objects even a few feet beyond the reach of my arms. Everything outside
of myself, according to them, is a hazy blur. Trees, mountains, cities,
the ocean, even the house I live in are but fairy fabrications, misty
unrealities. Therefore it is assumed that my dreams should have peculiar
interest for the man of science. In some undefined way it is expected
that they should reveal the world I dwell in to be flat, formless,
colourless, without perspective, with little thickness and less
solidity--a vast solitude of soundless space. But who shall put into
words limitless, visionless, silent void? One should be a disembodied
spirit indeed to make anything out of such insubstantial experiences. A
world, or a dream for that matter, to be comprehensible to us, must, I
should think, have a warp of substance woven into the woof of fantasy.
We cannot imagine even in dreams an object which has no counterpart in
reality. Ghosts always resemble somebody, and if they do not appear
themselves, their presence is indicated by circumstances with which we
are perfectly familiar.

During sleep we enter a strange, mysterious realm which science has thus
far not explored. Beyond the border-line of slumber the investigator may
not pass with his common-sense rule and test. Sleep with softest touch
locks all the gates of our physical senses and lulls to rest the
conscious will--the disciplinarian of our waking thoughts. Then the
spirit wrenches itself free from the sinewy arms of reason and like a
winged courser spurns the firm green earth and speeds away upon wind
and cloud, leaving neither trace nor footprint by which science may
t