r of a connected
sequence of events, to those tendencies, passive and active, to order
the chaotic of which I have been speaking. Let us try to trace this out
in detail.

To begin with, we may suppose that the image of the procession occupies
the dreamer's mind. From quite another source the image of the lady
enters consciousness, bringing with it that of her deceased husband and
of the friend who has recently been talking about her. These new
elements adapt themselves to the scene, partly by the passive mechanism
of associative dispositions, and partly, perhaps, by the activity of
voluntary selection. Thus, the idea of the lady's husband would
naturally recall the fact of his death, and this would fall in with the
pre-existing scene under the form of the idea that he is the person who
is now being buried. The next step is very interesting. The image of the
lady is associated with the idea of selfish motives. This would tend to
suggest a variety of actions, but the one which becomes a factor of the
dream is that which is specially adapted to the pre-existing
representations, namely, of the procession on the further side of the
street, and the cholera (which last, like the image of the funeral, is,
we may suppose, due to an independent central excitation). That is to
say, the request of the lady, and its interpretation, are a _resultant_
of a number of adaptative or assimilative actions, under the sway of a
strong desire to connect the disconnected, and a lively activity of
attention. Once more, the feeling of oppression of the heart, and the
subjective stimulation of the optic nerve, might suggest numberless
images besides those of anxious flight and of red-clad men and nosegays;
they suggest these, and not others, in this particular case, because of
the co-operation of the impulse of consistency, which, setting out with
the pre-existing mental images, selects from among many tendencies of
reproduction those which happen to chime in with the scene.

_The Nature of Dream-Intelligence._

It must not be supposed that this process of welding together the
chaotic materials of our dreams is ever carried out with anything like
the clear rational purpose of which we are conscious when seeking, in
waking life, to comprehend some bewildering spectacle. At best it is a
vague longing, and this longing, it may be added, is soon satisfied.
There is, indeed, something, almost pathetic in the facility with which
the dreamer's mind