would be found to prove the connexion existing between those peculiarities and the most universal phenomena. I shall employ caution, indeed, as to the facts which I state, that they contain nothing false or exaggerated. But they contain no more than certain elucidations of my own nature; concerning the degree in which it resembles, or differs from, that of others, I am by no means accurately aware. It is sufficient, however, to caution the reader against drawing general inferences from particular instances.
I omit the general instances of delusion in fever or delirium, as well as mere dreams considered in themselves. A delineation of this subject, however inexhaustible and interesting, is to be passed over.
What is the connexion of sleeping and of waking?
II. I distinctly remember dreaming three several
times, between intervals of two or more years, the same
precise dream. It was not so much what is ordinarily
called a dream; the single image, unconnected with all
other images, of a youth who was educated at the same
school with myself, presented itself in sleep. Even now,
after the lapse of many years, I can never hear the name
of this youth, without the three places where I dreamed
of him presenting themselves distinctly to my mind.
III. In dreams, images acquire associations peculiar to dreaming; so that the idea of a particular house, when it recurs a second time in dreams, will have relation with the idea of the same house, in the first time, of a nature entirely different from that which the house excites, when seen or thought of in relation to waking ideas.
IV. I have beheld scenes, with the intimate and unaccountable connexion of which with the obscure parts of my own nature, I have been irresistibly impressed.
