Not long ago I was enabled to apply some measure to this remarkable difference between the action of the mind independently of the body and its action when conducted through the slow moving mechanism of the body. Called at the usual hour in the morning, I looked at my watch and in about two minutes fell asleep again. I dreamed a dream of a series of events that in their performance occupied what the mind conceived to be a whole day—events in which I was an actor and played a part that would have occupied a day in actual doing. Waking suddenly with the influence of the dream upon me and the memory of it full before me, I looked at my watch again, thinking that I must have been sleeping for an hour and had lost the train. I found that, in fact, I had been asleep but four minutes. In four minutes my mind had passed through the history of a day, had invented that history, and contemplated it as a whole day’s action, although it was in fact a day’s work done by the mind in four minutes. This may give us some conception of what is the capacity of the Soul for perception and action when, if ever, there is a falling away from it of the cumbrous bodily material mechanism through which alone, in its present stage of evolution, it is adapted to communicate with the external material world. Another phenomenon of Dream is _exaltation of the mental faculties_ generally. Often there is an extraordinary development of special faculties in special dreams. A proof of this is found in the fact, already noted, that dream itself is an invention of the mind whose then capacities far exceed anything of which it is capable when the body is awake and imposing upon it the conditions of its own slow, because material—that is molecular—action. Not only do we _invent_ the dream, but we _act it_ in thought. Not merely do we act in it ourselves, but we paint the scenery, construct the dresses and decorations, invent the characters, and put into their mouths the language that would properly be theirs had they been beings of flesh and blood instead of shadows summoned by the fancy. Almost every faculty of the mind must be exercised upon such a work. Even the waking mental condition will not enable us to do this. If you doubt, try it. Set yourself to invent a dream and describe it on paper, making each one of the personages with whom you have peopled it talk in his proper character. Unless you are a skilful and practised dramatist you will find yourself wholly at fault. Remember that what you in the full possession of your intellect have failed to do, the most ignorant and stupid do every night and you will begin to measure this marvel of the exaltation of the mental powers that attends upon the condition of dream. If you indulge in the pleasant but dangerous practice of reading in bed, have you not often, on closing the book, extinguishing the candle, and turning to sleep, continued in a state of dream to read on, believing that you were still reading the book.