It appears to me as though the only part of the brain that is active in dreams is the spectatorial and dramatic part; and even so it is quite beyond me to solve the problem of how it comes about that my visualising faculty in dreams can bring upon the stage, as it often does, some personage who is perfectly well known to me in real life, and cause him to behave in so unaccountable and grotesque a fashion that I appear to be entirely bewildered and even shocked by the occurrence.  For instance, I dreamt the other night that I went to see a high ecclesiastical dignitary, whom I have known for many years, whom I knew in my dream to have been undergoing a rest-cure, though the person in question has never to my knowledge undergone any such experience.  I was greatly surprised and even distressed when he entered the room arrayed in a short jacket, with an Eton collar, carrying some childish toys, and saying, “I am completely rejuvenated.”  I was not in the least amused by this at the time, but only lost in wonder as to how I could communicate to him that it would be a great misfortune if he went back to his dignified post in such a guise and with such avocations as his toys implied.

The whole thing is an insoluble mystery.  I often wish that some scientific person would investigate the matter in a strictly rational spirit; though it is certainly difficult to see in what directions such investigations could be fruitful.  Still it seems to me strange and unsatisfactory that so little should be known about the origin and nature of so universal a phenomenon.

I have had sometimes dreams of a solemnity and beauty that appear to transcend my powers of imagination.  I have seen landscapes in dreams of a kind that I have never seen in real life; I have held long, intimate, and tender conversations with persons long since dead, which I might, if I were inclined, consider to be real contact with disembodied spirits, did I not also sometimes hold trivial, absurd, and even painful intercourse, of an entirely uncharacteristic kind, with the same people, intercourse which all sense of affection and reverence would lead me unhesitatingly to regard as purely imaginary.  The strangest thing in such dreams is that the memory is wholly at fault, because, though one is not conscious that the people have died long ago, the mind is apt to wrestle with the wonder as to why one has seen so little of them of recent years.  The memory seems to be perfectly aware that one has not seen much of them of late, but the effort to recall the fact that they are dead, even when their deaths have been some of the most vivid and grievous experiences of one’s life, seems to be quite beyond its power.

One of the most curious facts of all is this.  I sometimes have had extremely affectionate and confidential interviews with people in dreams whom I have not known well—­so vivid, indeed, that the dream interview has proved a real step in a friendship, because when, as has more than once occurred, I have met the same people in real life while the dream is still fresh in my mind, I have met them with a sense of confidential relations that has made it easier for me to advance in intimacy and to take a certain sympathy for granted.  I have one particular friend in mind whose friendship I can honestly say I gained in a dream.