es. The "phantastical power" which Cudworth talks about
clearly includes something besides. It is an erroneous supposition that
when we are dreaming there is a complete suspension of the voluntary
powers, and consequently an absence of all direction of the intellectual
processes. This supposition, which has been maintained by numerous
writers, from Dugald Stewart downwards, seems to be based on the fact
that we frequently find ourselves in dreams striving in vain to move the
whole body or a limb. But this only shows, as M. Maury remarks in the
work already referred to, that our volitions are frustrated through the
inertia of our bodily organs, not that these volitions do not take
place. In point of fact, the dreamer, not to speak of the somnambulist,
is often conscious of voluntarily going through a series of actions.
This exercise of volition is shown unmistakably in the well-known
instances of extraordinary intellectual achievements in dreams, as
Condillac's composition of a part of his _Cours d'Etudes_. No one would
maintain that a result of this kind was possible in the total absence of
intellectual action carefully directed by the will. And something of
this same control shows itself in all our more fully developed dreams.

One manifestation of this voluntary activity in sleep is to be found in
those efforts of attention which not unfrequently occur. I have remarked
that, speaking roughly and in relation to the waking condition, the
state of sleep is marked by a subjection of the powers of attention to
the force of the mental images present to consciousness. Yet something
resembling an exercise of voluntary attention sometimes happens in
sleep. The intellectual feats just spoken of, unless, indeed, they are
referred to some mysterious unconscious mental operations, clearly
involve a measure of volitional guidance. All who dream frequently are
occasionally aware on awaking of having greatly exercised their
attention on the images presented to them during sleep. I myself am
often able to recall an effort to see beautiful objects, which
threatened to disappear from my field of vision, or to catch faint
receding tones of preternatural sweetness; and some dreamers allege that
they are able to retain a recollection of the feeling of strain
connected with such exercise of attention in sleep.

The main function of this voluntary attention in dream-life is seen in
the selection of those images which are to pass the threshol