It is this sensation, that dreams arise from some power or influence exterior to oneself, which them the significance which they used to possess, and indeed still possess, for the unreasoning mind.  They seem communications from some other sphere of life, experiences external to oneself, messages from some hidden agency.  When they correspond, as by coincidence they are almost bound on occasions to do, with some unforeseen and unexpected event that follows them, it is very difficult for unphilosophical minds not to believe that they are visions sent from some power that can foresee the future.  It would be strange if dreams, trafficking as they do with such wide and various experiences, did not occasionally seem to be related to events of the following day, however little anticipated those events may be; but no theory of dreams would be satisfactory or scientific which did not take account of the vast number of occasions on which they do not in the least correspond with what followed in the day.  The natural temper of man is so pre-eminently unscientific that a single occasion on which a dream does seem to correspond in a curious manner with subsequent events outweighs a thousand occasions on which no such correspondence is traceable.  Yet nothing but a long series of premonitory dreams could suffice for the basis of a scientific theory.

The main interest of dreams to myself is that they serve to show the essential texture of the mind.  In waking hours I am conscious of many natural phenomena which make a strong impression on my mind; but my dreaming mind makes, it seems, a whimsical selection among these incidents, and discards some, while it makes a liberal use of others.  For instance, in real life, the sight of a beautiful sunset is a common experience, and stirs in me the most profound emotion; yet I have never seen a sunset in dreams.  All my dreams are enacted in a pale and clear light of which the source is never visible.  I have never seen sun, moon, or star in a dream.  Again, to step into a farther region, I am a good deal occupied in real life by ethical considerations; but in dreams I have absolutely no sense of morality.  I am afraid, in my dreams, of the consequences of my acts; but I commit a murder or a theft in a dream without the least scruple of conscience.

Whether this proves that my morality, my conscience, in real life, is a purely conventional thing, acquired by habit, I do not know; it would appear to be so.  Again, some of my most habitual actions in real life are never repeated in dreams; I have for many years devoted much time and energy to literary work in real life, but in dreams I have never written anything; though I have heard poems repeated or read from books which are purely imaginary, and I have even read my own compositions aloud from what appeared in dreams to be a previously written manuscript; but I am never conscious, in dreams, of ever having put pen to paper for any purpose whatever, even to write a letter.  Yet, again, it is not as though all the materials were drawn from a time before I had begun to write; because sometimes dreams will repeat, or interweave into their texture, quite recent experiences.