nly see from the previous analysis.

This is so much the case, that some savage peoples even now find it hard
to distinguish real events from those of dreams, and this is owing to a
defect in their memory or to the imperfection of their language. In
fact, all civilized and barbarous peoples in the world have without
exception believed, and still believe, in the reality of images seen in
dreams, and their personification has been the source of an immense
number of myths. Even now, with all our civilization and advanced
science, not only the common people, but many of those in fashionable
and tolerably cultivated society, believe in the reality of dreams and
in their hallucinations, and derive from them fears, hopes, and warnings
for their future life.

I will give one instance in a thousand to prove the innate tendency even
in the act of dreaming to transform the image into a real object. It
appeared to me that I was in a large room filled with acquaintances and
strangers, who discussed an event which had really occurred in the city
a few days before. All at once I raised my eyes to the wall of the room,
and saw a large picture, representing a landscape with distant
mountains, streams, cottages, and animals. As I looked, the picture was
gradually transformed into a real object, and I found myself, together
with the company before mentioned, in the midst of the fields, on the
bank of the river, and within one of the cottages.

In another dream, I appeared to be conversing with an old soldier on the
shores of a lake; after some incoherent talk, he began to describe a
bloody battle in which he had taken part; he had not gone far before the
narrative was changed for an actual occurrence, and I was in the midst
of a real battle, such as the soldier had undertaken to describe.
Another night I dreamed that I was reading a tragic poem, relating
terrible deeds of blood and rapine, and suddenly I seemed to have become
an actor or real spectator of that which I had at first read in a book.
In another strange dream I was going over a difficult pass in a hired
carriage, and I seemed to see before me a friend from whom I had parted
on the previous day, when he got into an omnibus to return to the
country. I soon saw in the distance a large coach-builder's
establishment, a vast enclosure with sheds and carriages, and in the
_piazza_ I saw the manager, a man I knew, who had really some
appointment in a carriage manufactory; the buildi