some common acquaintance, remarking
on his poor health. The language calls up, vaguely, a visual
representation of the person sinking in health and dying. An
association will thus be formed between this person and the idea of
death. A night or two after, the image of this person somehow recurs to
our dream-fancy, and we straightway dream that we are looking at his
corpse, watching his funeral, and so on. The links of the chain which
holds together these dream-images were really forged, in part, in our
waking hours, though the process was so rapid as to escape our
attention. It may be added, that in many cases where a juxtaposition of
dream-images seems to have no basis in waking life, careful reflection
will occasionally bring to light some actual conjunction of impressions
so momentary as to have faded from our recollection.

We must remember, further, how great an apparent disorder will invade
our imaginative dream-life when the binding force of resemblance has
unchecked play. In waking thought we have to connect things according to
their essential resemblances, classifying objects and events for
purposes of knowledge or action, according to their widest or their most
important points of similarity. In sleep, on the contrary, the slightest
touch of resemblance may engage the mind and affect the direction of
fancy. In a sense we may be said, when dreaming, to discover mental
affinities between impressions and feelings, including those subtle
links of emotional analogy of which I have already spoken. This effect
is well illustrated in a dream recorded by M. Maury, in which he passed
from one set of images to another through some similarity of names, as
that between _corps_ and _cor_. Such a movement of fancy would, of
course, be prevented in full waking consciousness by a predominant
attention to the meaning of the sounds.

It will be possible, I think, after a habit of analyzing one's dreams in
the light of preceding experience has been formed, to discover in a good
proportion of cases some hidden force of association which draws
together the seemingly fortuitous concourse of our dream-atoms. That we
should expect to do so in every case is unreasonable, since, owing to
the numberless fine ramifications which belong to our familiar images,
many of the paths of association followed by our dream-fancy cannot be
afterwards retraced.

To illustrate the odd way in which our images get tumbled together
through the action