d are rare, but every
one who dreams at all must have had them once or twice in life.

If we are therefore sometimes sane in dreams we can remember, and act in
them as we really should, according to our individual consciences and
possessed of our usual intelligence and knowledge, it cannot be denied
that a series of such imaginary actions constitutes a real experience,
during which we have risen or fallen, according as we have thought or
acted. Some dreams of this kind leave impressions as lasting as that
made by any reality. The merit or fault is wholly fictitious, no doubt,
because although we have fancied that we could exercise our free will,
we were powerless to use it; but the experience gained is not imaginary,
where the dream has been strictly sane, any more than thought, in the
abstract, is fictitious because it is not action. People of some
imagination can easily, while wide awake, imagine a series of actions
and decide rationally what course they would pursue in each, and such
decisions constitute undoubted experience, which may materially affect
the conduct of the individual if cases similar to the fancied ones
present themselves in life. When there is no time to be lost, the
instantaneous recollection of a train of reasoning may often mean
instant decision, followed by immediate action, upon which the most
important consequences may follow.

Will any one venture to maintain that the vivid impressions left by
rational dreams do not act in the same way upon the mind, and through
the mind upon the will, and by the will upon our actions? And if we
could direct our dreams as we pleased, so that they should be always
rational, as some persons believe that we can, should we not be
continually gaining experience of ourselves while sleeping, as well as
when awake? Moreover, it is certain that there are men and women who are
particularly endowed with the faculty of dreaming, and who can very
often dream of any subject they please.

Since this digression is already so long, let one more thing be said,
which has not been said before, so far as the writer can find out. Our
waking memory is defective; with most men it is so to a lamentable
degree. It often happens that people forget that they have read a story,
for instance, and begin to read it again, and do not discover that they
have already done so till they have turned over many pages. It happens
constantly that the taste of something we eat, or the odour of someth