with clothing being absent or so far modified as
to be unrecognizable. In the same way the absence of foot-gear may
account for some dreams of flying. It is possible to test the influence
of external stimuli by direct experiment; Maury made a number of trials
with the aid of an assistant.

_Rapidity of Dreams._--It has often been asserted that we dream with
extreme rapidity; but this statement is by no means borne out by
experiment. In a trial recorded by J. Claviere the beginning of the
dream was accurately fixed by the sounding of an alarm clock, which
rang, then was silent for 22 seconds, and then began to ring
continuously; the dream scene was in a theatre, and he found by actual
trial that the time required in ordinary life for the performance of the
scenes during the interval of silence was about the same as in ordinary
life. Spontaneous dreams seem to show a different state of things; it
must be remembered that (1) dreams are commonly a succession of images,
the number of which cannot be legitimately compared with the number of
extra-organic stimuli which would correspond to them in ordinary life;
the real comparison is with mental images; and (2) the rapidity of
association varies enormously in ordinary waking life. No proof,
therefore, that some dreams are slow can show that this mentation in
others is not extremely rapid. The most commonly quoted case is one of
Maury's; a bed-pole fell on his neck, and (so it is stated) he dreamt
of the French Revolution, the scenes culminating in the fall of the
guillotine on his neck; this has been held to show that (1) dreams are
extremely rapid; and (2) we construct a dream story leading up to the
external stimulus which is assumed to have originated the dream. But
Maury's dream was not recorded till many years after it had occurred;
there is nothing to show that the dream, in this as in other similar
cases, was not in progress when the bed-pole fell, which thus by mere
coincidence would have intervened at the psychological moment; Maury's
memory on waking may have been to some extent hallucinatory. But there
are records of waking states, not necessarily abnormal, in which
time-perception is disturbed and brief incidents seem interminably long;
on the other hand, it appears from the experiences of persons recovered
from drowning that there is great rapidity of ideation before the
extinction of consciousness; the same rapidity of thought has been
observed in a fall from a b