l, and between
the ear and the muscular system in general, and more particularly the
vocal organ.[96] A new odour often sets us asking how the object would
taste, and a series of sounds commonly disposes us to movement of some
kind or another. How far there may be finer threads of connection
between other organs, such as the eye and the ear, which do not betray
themselves amid the stronger forces of waking mental life, one cannot
say. Whatever their number, it is plain that they will exert their
influence within the comparatively narrow limits of dream-life, serving
to impress a certain character on the images which happen to be called
up by special circumstances, and giving to the combination a slight
measure of congruity. Thus, if I were dreaming that I heard some lively
music, and at the same time an image of a friend was anyhow excited, my
dream-fancy might not improbably represent this person as performing a
sequence of rhythmic movements, such as those of riding, dancing, etc.

A narrower field for these general associative dispositions may be found
in the tendency, on the reception of an impression of a given character,
to look for a certain kind of second impression; though the exact nature
of this is unknown. Thus, for example, the form and colour of a new
flower suggest a scent, and the perception of a human form is
accompanied by a vague representation of vocal utterances. These general
tendencies of association appear to me to be most potent influences in
our dream-life. The many strange human forms which float before our
dream-fancy are apt to talk, move, and behave like men and women in
general, however little they resemble their actual prototypes, and
however little individual consistency of character is preserved by each
of them. Special conditions determine what they shall say or do; the
general associative disposition accounts for their saying or doing
something.

We thus seem to find in the purely passive processes of association some
ground for that degree of natural coherence and rational order which our
more mature dreams commonly possess. These processes go far to explain,
too, that odd mixture of rationality with improbability, of natural
order and incongruity, which characterizes our dream-combinations.

_Rational Construction in Dreams._

Nevertheless, I quite agree with Herr Volkelt that association, even in
the most extended meaning, cannot explain all in the shaping of our
dream-pictur