a few seconds a dream can present
to us a series of events which will occupy, in the waking state, entire
days. You know the example cited by M. Maury: it has become classic, and
although it has been contested of late, I regard it as probable, because
of the great number of analogous observations that I found scattered
through the literature of dreams. But this precipitation of the images
is not at all mysterious. When we are awake we live a life in common
with our fellows. Our attention to this external and social life is the
great regulator of the succession of our internal states. It is like
the balance wheel of a watch, which moderates and cuts into regular
sections the undivided, almost instantaneous tension of the spring. It
is this balance wheel which is lacking in the dream. Acceleration is no
more than abundance a sign of force in the domain of the mind. It is, I
repeat, the precision of adjustment that requires effort, and this is
exactly what the dreamer lacks. He is no longer capable of that
attention to life which is necessary in order that the inner may be
regulated by the outer, and that the internal duration fit exactly into
the general duration of things.

It remains now to explain how the peculiar relaxation of the mind in the
dream accounts for the preference given by the dreamer to one memory
image rather than others, equally capable of being inserted into the
actual sensations. There is a current prejudice to the effect that we
dream mostly about the events which have especially preoccupied us
during the day. This is sometimes true. But when the psychological life
of the waking state thus prolongs itself into sleep, it is because we
hardly sleep. A sleep filled with dreams of this kind would be a sleep
from which we come out quite fatigued. In normal sleep our dreams
concern themselves rather, other things being equal, with the thoughts
which we have passed through rapidly or upon objects which we have
perceived almost without paying attention to them. If we dream about
events of the same day, it is the most insignificant facts, and not the
most important, which have the best chance of reappearing.

I agree entirely on this point with the observation of W. Robert, of
Delage and of Freud. I was in the street, I was waiting for a
street-car, I stood beside the track and did not run the least risk. But
if, at the moment when the street-car passed, the idea of possible
danger had crossed my mind or eve