There is in dreams a very imperfect memory of waking life. Nearly as imperfect is the memory of dream life in those who are awake. It may happen, however, that in sleep a memory may come up of an occurrence in waking life, which has been quite forgotten. But in like manner some altogether forgotten event may be suddenly and inexplicably remembered, while we are awake. There is nothing supernormal about such things. If there are ever supernormal phenomena in dreams, they are not known to me. I refer to such phenomena as those of telepathy, transference of thought and emotion, clairvoyance and premonitions. I neither deny nor admit the possibility or occurrence of such phenomena. It is mere foolishness to call a thing impossible. All the length I go is to say that I have never met with sufficient or satisfying proof of the existence of such phenomena, either in waking life, sleep life, or delirium life. Of the invasion of the spirits of living or dead persons into our lives, either when awake, or asleep, or delirious, I know nothing for certain. Nor do I know anything for certain, or even as probably true, either about warnings or revelations of the future. It is true that in dreams we really seem to be, without questioning or wonder, in places far distant, which may be known or not known to us, to see persons whom, when we are awake, we know to be dead, but whom we accept in dreams, without any surprise, as alive, to talk and act with persons who are new to us and whom we have never seen when awake. All these and many other such things occur in dreams, and I can perhaps understand the inquiry: - Where are we during such visions? Are we still here, or away from here? I can only answer the inquiry by expressing my personal belief that we are still all here, in as full a sense as that we are all here at any time and in any condition. I am not able to be sufficiently credulous to hold any other belief. I cannot accept as in any degree sufficient the evidence that has been adduced to show that I am wrong in this belief.

Sir William T. Gairdner, K.C.B., whose interesting Typhus Delirium Experience appears in the paper by Professor Coats on 'Sleep, Dreams, and Delirium' (Glas. Med. Jour., vol. xxxviii. 1892, pp. 241-261), has written to mc about his dreams generally, and he concludes his letter with the narrative of a dream, which, as he correctly says, 'if it had only fulfilled itself, might have become famous.' He prefaces the narrative by this statement: 'In all my individual experience, now extending over more than the usual term of life, I have never met with anything suggestive in the remotest degree of telepathy or second sight, or of dream prophecies or any other fact bearing on the marvellous.' He then goes on to tell the dream to which I have referred. 'In crossing the Atlantic in 1891,' he says, 'in delightful weather and perfect bodily health, and without a shade of anxiety on my mind so far as I was aware (in waking consciousness), I was suddenly aroused in the very early morning, say, three or four a.m., out of a perfectly sound, and, as I should call it, dreamless sleep, by the apparition of a telegram written on the usual paper, and presumably from home, in these words: "Miss Dorothea died at - ,"all the rest being blurred and indistinct, but these words having a startling distinctness and a vivid sense of reality. I was not, I think, in the least degree alarmed at first, and certainly had no superstition about it on discovering that it was only a dream; but, failing to get any more sleep, I rose early, took my bath as usual, and went on deck, where I had to repeat the story of my dream to each one of some three or four companions who were on board, of whom I will only mention Sir John Batty Tuke, Professor Young of Owens College, and Professor Cunningham then of Trinity College, Dublin. Any of these gentlemen will confirm my saying that I attached no special importance to this dream in the way of a scare or a superstition, but in this way it got abroad to a certain extent within a small circle on board - in such a way as would have ensured it a widespread fame had it only come true. In discussing the matter at breakfast I remarked (alluding to telepathy) that the telegram was clearly, judging from it3 terms, not from my wife or any member of my immediate family, and could only have been despatched by a servant or some one with whom I could not be supposed to be in telepathic rapport. From this point of view it clearly refuted itself, and yet the effect upon my mind was such that, upon arriving at New York, I at once despatched a telegram announcing my arrival an making inquiry, the reply to which showed that the family were pursuing a quite undisturbed course at St. Andrews.'

Sir William describes himself as aroused out sound sleep by the apparition of a telegram, but I think this only means that he became suddenly awake on seeing the telegram during sleep. He does not say whether he knew in his dream that he was a passenger on a great ship in mid-ocean, but he says that the telegram wa9 written on the usual paper, by which I take it that he means the paper used here on shore.

If it had happened that the death of Miss Dorothea took place about the time of the appearance of the telegram to so distinguished a man as Sir "William in his sleep, I scarcely think there would be any more startling instance on record of a so-called telepathic message. But most happily the death did not take place, and so the story of the dream will be forgotten. Tens of thousands of similar dream-stories have that fate.

(29) If there be no such thing as dreamless sleep, it seems to me that the fact has not been so fully accepted as it ought to be, because it can scarcely fail to have important bearings in various directions. I have endeavoured here to bring under consideration the opinion that it is a fact.

But my chief object at present is to show that in dream-thinking we are subject to frequently recurring periods of what may be properly called mental disorder, not only without injury but with benefit, and that there is a disordered state of mind which as not pathological in any correct sense, l hope to be able to show the occurrence of a similar thing both in laughter and in blushing. (30) Although it has not much to do with the opinions or contentions dealt with in this essay, perhaps it may be useful to indicate briefly the effects on dreaming of a deprivation from birth of one or more of the senses.