form of illustrations. But this stage of
coherency did not satisfy the mind, which, still partly confused by the
incongruity of coloured plates in a philosophic work, looked for a
closer connection. The image of Hamlet was naturally suggested in
connection with pessimism. The effort to discover a meaning in the
pictures led to the fusion of this image with one of the subjective
spectra, and in this way the idea of a Hamlet frontispiece probably
arose.

The whole process of dream-construction is clearly illustrated in a
curious dream recorded by Professor Wundt.[98] Before the house is a
funeral procession: it is the burial of a friend, who has in reality
been dead for some time past. The wife of the deceased bids him and an
acquaintance who happens to be with him go to the other side of the
street and join the procession. After she has gone away, his companion
remarks to him, "She only said that because the cholera rages over
yonder, and she wants to keep this side of the street to herself." Then
comes an attempt to flee from the region of the cholera. Returning to
his house, he finds the procession gone, but the street strewn with
rich nosegays; and he further observes crowds of men who seem to be
funeral attendants, and who, like himself, are hastening to join the
procession. These are, oddly enough, dressed in red. When hurrying on,
it occurs to him that he has forgotten to take a wreath for the coffin.
Then he wakes up with beating of the heart.

The sources of this dream are, according to Wundt, as follows. First of
all, he had, on the previous day, met the funeral procession of an
acquaintance. Again, he had read of cholera breaking out in a certain
town. Once more, he had talked about the particular lady with this
friend, who had narrated facts which clearly proved her selfishness. The
hastening to flee from the infected neighbourhood and to overtake the
procession was prompted by the sensation of heart-beating. Finally, the
crowd of red bier-followers, and the profusion of nosegays, owed their
origin to subjective visual sensations, the "light-chaos" which often
appears in the dark.

Let us now see for a moment how these various elements may have become
fused into a connected chain of events. First of all, it is clear that
this dream is built up on a foundation of a gloomy tone of feeling,
arising, as it would seem, from an irregularity of the heart's action.
Secondly, it owes its special structure and its ai