stimulate the moral nerve.
It has been often noticed that the exaggerated sentimentality which
sheds passionate tears over the fictitious sorrows of a novel or a play
is no certain sign of a benevolent and unselfish nature, and is quite
compatible with much indifference to real sorrows and much indisposition
to make efforts for their alleviation. It is, however, no less true, as
Dugald Stewart says, that the apparent coldness and selfishness of men
are often simply due to a want of that kind of imagination which enables
us to realise sufferings with which we have never been brought into
direct contact, and that once this power of realisation is acquired, the
coldness is speedily dispelled. Nor can it be doubted that in the
management of thought, the dream power often plays a most important part
in alleviating human suffering; illuminating cheerless and gloomy lives,
and breaking the chain of evil or distressing thoughts.

The immense place which the literature of fiction holds in the world
shows how widely some measure of it is diffused, and how large an amount
of time and talent is devoted to its cultivation. It is probable,
however, that it is really stronger in the earlier and uncultivated than
in the later stages of humanity, as it is more vivid in childhood and in
youth than in mature life. 'A child,' as an American writer[65] has well
said, 'can afford to sleep without dreaming; he has plenty of dreams
without sleep.' The childhood of the world is also eminently an age of
dreams. There are stages of civilisation in which the dream world blends
so closely with the world of realities, in which the imagination so
habitually and so spontaneously transfigures or distorts, that men
become almost incapable of distinguishing between the real and the
fictitious. This is the true age of myths and legends; and there are
strata in contemporary society in which something of the same conditions
is reproduced. 'To those who do not read or write much,' says an acute
observer, 'even in our days, dreams are much more real than to those who
are continually exercising the imagination.... Since I have been
occupied with literature my dreams have lost all vividness and are less
real than the shadows of the trees; they do not deceive me even in my
sleep. At every hour of the day I am accustomed to call up figures at
will before my eyes, which stand out well defined and coloured to the
very hue of their faces.... The less literary a peopl