ear. But how we are to
account for it, whether it is to be viewed as a mere result of the play
of associated fragments of experience, or as something involved in the
very process of the association of ideas itself, is a question into
which I cannot here enter.

What I am here concerned to show is that the search for consistency and
connection in the manifold impressions of the moment is a deeply rooted
habit of the mind, and one which is retained in a measure during sleep.
When, in this state, our minds are invaded by a motley crowd of
unrelated images, there results a disagreeable sense of confusion; and
this feeling acts as a motive to the attention to sift out those
products of the dream-fancy which may be made to cohere. When once the
foundations of a dream-action are laid, new images must to some extent
fit in with this; and here there is room for the exercise of a distinct
impulse to order the chaotic elements of dream-fancy in certain forms.
The perception of any possible relation between one of the crowd of new
images ever surging above the level of obscure consciousness, and the
old group at once serves to detain it. The concentration of attention on
it, in obedience to this impulse to seek for an intelligible order, at
once intensifies it and fixes it, incorporating it into the series of
dream-pictures.

Here is a dream which appears to illustrate this impulse to seek an
intelligible order in the confused and disorderly. After being occupied
with correcting the proofs of my volume on _Pessimism_, I dreamt that my
book was handed to me by my publisher, fully illustrated with coloured
pictures. The frontispiece represented the fantastic figure of a man
gesticulating in front of a ship, from which he appeared to have just
stepped. My publisher told me it was meant for Hamlet, and I immediately
reflected that this character had been selected as a concrete example of
the pessimistic tendency. I may add that, on awaking, I was distinctly
aware of having felt puzzled when dreaming, and of having striven to
read a meaning into the dream.

The _rationale_ of this dream seems to me to be somewhat as follows. The
image of the completed volume represented, of course, a recurring
anticipatory image of waking life. The coloured plates were due probably
to subjective optical sensations simultaneously excited, which were made
to fit in (with or without an effort of voluntary attention) with the
image of the book under the