h all the materials were drawn from a time before I
had begun to write; because sometimes dreams will repeat, or interweave
into their texture, quite recent experiences.

It appears to me as though the only part of the brain that is active in
dreams is the spectatorial and dramatic part; and even so it is quite
beyond me to solve the problem of how it comes about that my
visualising faculty in dreams can bring upon the stage, as it often
does, some personage who is perfectly well known to me in real life,
and cause him to behave in so unaccountable and grotesque a fashion
that I appear to be entirely bewildered and even shocked by the
occurrence. For instance, I dreamt the other night that I went to see a
high ecclesiastical dignitary, whom I have known for many years, whom I
knew in my dream to have been undergoing a rest-cure, though the person
in question has never to my knowledge undergone any such experience. I
was greatly surprised and even distressed when he entered the room
arrayed in a short jacket, with an Eton collar, carrying some childish
toys, and saying, "I am completely rejuvenated." I was not in the least
amused by this at the time, but only lost in wonder as to how I could
communicate to him that it would be a great misfortune if he went back
to his dignified post in such a guise and with such avocations as his
toys implied.

The whole thing is an insoluble mystery. I often wish that some
scientific person would investigate the matter in a strictly rational
spirit; though it is certainly difficult to see in what directions such
investigations could be fruitful. Still it seems to me strange and
unsatisfactory that so little should be known about the origin and
nature of so universal a phenomenon.

I have had sometimes dreams of a solemnity and beauty that appear to
transcend my powers of imagination. I have seen landscapes in dreams of
a kind that I have never seen in real life; I have held long, intimate,
and tender conversations with persons long since dead, which I might,
if I were inclined, consider to be real contact with disembodied
spirits, did I not also sometimes hold trivial, absurd, and even
painful intercourse, of an entirely uncharacteristic kind, with the
same people, intercourse which all sense of affection and reverence
would lead me unhesitatingly to regard as purely imaginary. The
strangest thing in such dreams is that the memory is wholly at fault,
because, though one is not consci