ff
again into a new turmoil of dreams.

Oh, dreams, what opprobrium I heap upon you--you, the most pointless
things imaginable, saucy apes, brewers of odious contrasts, haunting
birds of ill omen, mocking echoes, unseasonable reminders,
oft-returning vexations, skeletons in my morris-chair, jesters in the
tomb, death's-heads at the wedding feast, outlaws of the brain that
every night defy the mind's police service, thieves of my Hesperidean
apples, breakers of my domestic peace, murderers of sleep. "Oh, dreadful
dreams that do fright my spirit from her propriety!" No wonder that
Hamlet preferred the ills he knew rather than run the risk of one
dream-vision.

Yet remove the dream-world, and the loss is inconceivable. The magic
spell which binds poetry together is broken. The splendour of art and
the soaring might of imagination are lessened because no phantom of
fadeless sunsets and flowers urges onward to a goal. Gone is the mute
permission or connivance which emboldens the soul to mock the limits of
time and space, forecast and gather in harvests of achievement for ages
yet unborn. Blot out dreams, and the blind lose one of their chief
comforts; for in the visions of sleep they behold their belief in the
seeing mind and their expectation of light beyond the blank, narrow
night justified. Nay, our conception of immortality is shaken. Faith,
the motive-power of human life, flickers out. Before such vacancy and
bareness the shocks of wrecked worlds were indeed welcome. In truth,
dreams bring us the thought independently of us and in spite of us that
the soul

"may right
Her nature, shoot large sail on lengthening cord,
And rush exultant on the Infinite."

DREAMS AND REALITY

XIV

DREAMS AND REALITY

IT is astonishing to think how our real wide-awake world revolves around
the shadowy unrealities of Dreamland. Despite all that we say about the
inconsequence of dreams, we often reason by them. We stake our greatest
hopes upon them. Nay, we build upon them the fabric of an ideal world. I
can recall few fine, thoughtful poems, few noble works of art or any
system of philosophy in which there is not evidence that dream-fantasies
symbolize truths concealed by phenomena.

The fact that in dreams confusion reigns, and illogical connections
occur gives plausibility to the theory which Sir Arthur Mitchell and
other scientific men hold, that our dream-think