vidual is equally preserved
on both planes.

I hold that here lies the origin of belief in the existence of a soul in
man, separable from the body, and the confines of matter, space, and time,
in an actual experience of every individual. The beating of the heart, the
phenomena of respiration, the cessation of these at death, and the shadows
cast by man and inanimate bodies serve as connecting links between the
experiences of the individual on the subjective and objective planes of
being.

The dream state and the experiences thence derived are subjects for
psychological science to investigate. The experiences allotted by du
Maurier to "Peter Ibbetson" are not altogether fantastic and unwarranted,
as the records of somnambulism and hypnotism abundantly prove. When we
remember that nothing deserving the name of Psychology or Psychic Science
exists in the western world to-day, we need not wonder why men eminent for
investigations in other departments prove themselves novices and
dogmatists here.

The folklore, the traditions, and the mythology of dreams would form a
very interesting subject for discussion. It is true that the literature of
the subject is fantastic, mixed with fable and often altogether
unreliable; but these difficulties offer no more formidable bar to
scientific investigation than many another problem already classified and
formulated for systematic study.

I know a lady of very superior ability, the mother of a prominent jurist,
who all her life has had distinct premonitions of many calamities and
coming events, and there are those who dream true in every community.
Fantasies, nightmare, dreams from indigestion and delirium, form a
separate class where the dreamer is entangled in the meshes of the bodily
functions.

Here fasting, either voluntary or enforced, comes in, and drugs known to
the remotest times are found to promote and to determine the character of
dreams. There are furthermore processes of mental gymnastics whereby the
thinker withdraws himself from the bodily avenues of sense and functions
at will on the subjective plane of being.

"When then," said Socrates, in the _Phaedo_, "does the soul light on the
truth? for when it attempts to consider anything in conjunction with the
body, it is plain that it is led astray by it."

"And surely," he continues, "the soul reasons best when none of these
things disturb it, neither hearing, nor sight, nor pain, nor pleasure of
any kind, but it ret