the waking point, the inertia grows less till side motion starts and summons obscure shapes of thoughts to hint dimly our delusion.
This theory as to what consciousness is affords explanation of another peculiarity about dreams which seems at first to defy comprehension, and certainly is inexplicable on the ordinary dualistic theories of the thing—their vividness. It is matter of every-day notoriety that dreams are often extremely vivid, and commonly exceed in vividness like events of waking life. That they quickly fade out does not detract from the fact of their vividness at the time of their occurrence. Now the dualistic theories that consciousness is a thing apart from brain processes, its directing power, according to the spiritualists, and its complaisant handmaid, according to the materialists, neither of them can account for this. For if consciousness be, as William James would have it, a loader of dice in the game of life, she shows herself here to be an utterly unprincipled gambler; inasmuch as in dreams she actively abets delusions in the most seemingly ingenuous manner, and pro tanto
