can be pacified with the least appearance of a
connection. Just as a child's importunate "Why?" is often silenced by a
ridiculous caricature of an explanation, so the dreamer's intelligence
is freed from its distress by the least semblance of a uniting order.

It thus remains true with respect even to our most coherent dreams, that
there is a complete suspension, or at least a considerable retardation,
of the highest operations of judgment and thought; also a great
enfeeblement, to say the least of it, of those sentiments such as the
feeling of consistency and the sense of the absurd which are so
intimately connected with these higher intellectual operations.

In order to illustrate how oddly our seemingly rational dreams
caricature the operations of waking thought, I may, perhaps, be allowed
to record two of my own dreams, of which I took careful note at the
time.

On the first occasion I went "in my dream" to the "Stores" in August,
and found the place empty. A shopman brought me some large fowls. I
asked their price, and he answered, "Tenpence a pound." I then asked
their weight, so as to get an idea of their total cost, and he replied,
"Forty pounds." Not in the least surprised, I proceeded to calculate
their cost: 40x10=400/12=33-1/3. But, oddly enough, I took this quotient
as pence, just as though I had not already divided by 12, and so made
the cost of a fowl to be 2s. 9d., which seemed to me a fair enough
price.

In my second dream I was at Cambridge, among a lot of undergraduates. I
saw a coach drive up with six horses. Three undergraduates got out of
the coach. I asked them why they had so many horses, and they said,
"Because of the luggage." I then said, "The luggage is much more than
the undergraduates. Can you tell me how to express this in mathematical
symbols? This is the way: if _x_ is the weight of an undergraduate, then
_x_ + _x_.n represents the weight of an undergraduate and his luggage
together." I noticed that this sally was received with evident
enjoyment.[99]

We may say, then, that the structure of our dreams, equally with the
fact of their completely illusory character, points to the conclusion
that during sleep, just as in the moments of illusion in waking life,
there is a deterioration of our intellectual life. The highest
intellectual activities answering to the least stable nervous
connections are impeded, and what of intellect remains corresponds to
the most deeply organized connect