The correspondence that I received in response to the invitation set out in Part I. of this chapter seems to contain matter of interest that may be grouped conveniently under several distinct heads; there are some suggestions directly responsive to the question of the causes of the dreams; some dreams that had escaped my own notice - or that did not seem of sufficient frequency to be worthy of a class to themselves - have been shown to deserve recognition in the form of a separate class; suggestive and interesting additions to the dreams within the classes that I drew up have been contributed; besides many comments on the subject as a whole that are full of interest, although they do not advance one's general understanding of the way that the different, well distinguished, dreams come about. Among the most interesting, and most mysterious, of the additional kinds that have been suggested to me is what we may call the "dream within a dream". You dream that you are dreaming, you seem to awake, still in your dream, out of the one dream, and you go on with the other, and when really awake are conscious both of the outer and of the inner dream so to speak.

This is an experience that has never come to me personally, but it is mentioned by many correspondents and therefore should have some claim to be placed in a class by itself, were it not that, if it has a common cause, in most cases of its occurrence, it must surely be so very subtle and complex a cause that we may quite despair of tracing it. Perhaps to be mentioned in association with this dream within a dream question is the question of "dual personality" which a correspondent, for whose opinion I am bound to have more than ordinary respect, suggests as an explanation of some of the phenomena of dreams. We are told, and on such good authority that it is hard to disbelieve it, that in the case of certain hypnotic subjects, studied at the Saltpetrtere and elsewhere, a "dual personality," as it is called, has been developed. That is to say, for instance, that a young peasant girl of Brittany, typical of her class and perfectly ignorant of any classical language, will, in a certain stage of the hypnotic trance, imagine herself to be, let us say, a priest of the Middle Ages, and gabble Monkish Latin. Of course, it sounds utterly incredible, but the fact is abundantly testified, and I believe it is said that cases have even been known in which, at a further stage of the hypnotic trance, a third personality has been developed, wherein the patient acts, thinks, and speaks, in a manner perfectly agreeing with this third metempsychosis, as one might almost call it, and perfectly distinct from the action, thought or speech exhibited either in the natural state or in the earlier stage of the hypnotic trance.

However that may be, it is on the dual personality, merely, that my correspondent in whom I put much faith, takes his stand, suggesting it as an explanation, and in his opinion the most probable explanation, of some dream phenomena. For example, the instruction of youth has occupied much of his time during the life here below. He has dreamed - according to the well known tendency, that was noticed in the first part of this chapter, of dreams to concern themselves with the stuff of waking thoughts - that he was lecturing to an assemblage of sufficiently thick - headed students, endeavouring with some measure of success to make them comprehend an involved argument or subtle point, when suddenly, just as his eloquence and lucidity had gained their interested attention, the whole train of his thought and their own was confounded by a raucous voice shouting behind his back "The Prince, the Prince. Make way for the Prince!" The Prince, as it turned out, was Ranjitsinjhi, Prince of cricketers, and the scene instantly shifted, as it only does in dreams or Drury Lane, to Lord's pavilion, and the Prince himself appeared in the semblance of a fat old Indian Nabob - anything but a sharp short - slip.

Very well then, argues my friend, this is only to be explained on the supposition of a joint authorship, a dual personality, of whom the one, the good and intellectual Mr. Jekyll, is conducting his dream lecture in orderly fashion until it is suddenly spoiled by the intrusion of the Philistine and raucous - voiced Mr. Hyde with his cricket.

Again the same dreamer quotes me another dream pointing, in his opinion, to a like conclusion. He is a sufficient French scholar to read French fluently; occasionally, when in the country, finding his vocabulary, or at least his idiom, a little lacking for want of practice. In his dream he finds himself, thus moderately equipped with French, conversing with a Parisian speaking the language with the delicacy and swiftness of finished perfection. Now and again the Englishman has to ask the Frenchman to repeat more slowly. Now, how is it possible, my friend in effect asks me, that I could put into the mouth of my Parisian that perfect and beautiful French, and at the same time could find it now and again beyond me to understand it? Surely this again must be a case of dual personality - myself being myself with the " French of Stratford - atte - Bowe," my dream - man, with his perfect Parisian, my second, my dual self.

I do not agree with my friend in this, for all my respect for his opinion. I could not respect him so much if I could not venture frankly to disagree with him. In the first place I suspect this fluent Parisian, with his perfect idiom and fluency, altogether. You see, the only evidence that we have of the idiom and the fluency is the effect they produced on the mind of my dreaming friend. That he should imagine a man speaking beautiful French to him, is easy enough to comprehend; that he should accordingly have difficulty in understanding his quick speech and should ask for a repetition, is only in accord with what would be his natural conception of a conversation in which he and a born Parisian took part. There is nothing difficult to imagine in this; but, on the other hand, what is difficult to imagine is that he was a better French scholar asleep than awake, or that the dual personality is the correct explanation. Far easier to credit, according to my thinking, that he imagined the Frenchman's diction to be more perfect than he could have made it!