Say, that you want to wake at six o’clock. You fall asleep with this impression upon the mind; but you fall also into the condition of dream and in that condition your mind is engaged in inventing adventures that are the business of a long day. Nevertheless, it preserves the consciousness of the time as it is in the external world and you wake at the desired hour. I can suggest no other solution of this than that the brain that dreams, and the Conscious Self that perceives the dream, are two entities, and that it is the Conscious Self or Soul that notes the flight of time in the external world, while the dreaming brain is revelling in its own conception of time as measured by the flow of its own ideas, and not in hours measured by the motions of the earth and moon. Another solution suggests itself. May not the duality of the mind, the action of the double brain, which explains so many other mental phenomena, account for this also? But these phenomena of dream are proofs that to the mind “time” is more ideal than real; that the measure of it may differ in individuals and still more in races. May it not be that thus lives are equalised and that to the ephemera its one day of life may appear to be as long as our lives appear to us? A life is practically as long or short as it _appears_ to the mind to be. Dreams are rarely, if ever, without foundation; that is to say, they are the product of some _suggestion_, although it may be difficult to trace them to their sources. Very slight suggestions suffice to set the mind in motion, as is proved by a multitude of recorded cases which the memory of every reader will present to him. The senses are not wholly paralysed in ordinary sleep. They carry to the mind impressions of various degrees of power and act with more or less of force according to the condition of the recipient ganglion. Sounds are heard and suggest dreams. But the loudest sounds are not always perceived most readily. The unaccustomed sound most startles the consciousness. Often a whisper will waken when the roar of cannon makes no impression upon the sleeper. A dweller in a noisy street sleeps soundly amid the roar of carts and carriages and is wakeful in the country by reason of the silence. Habit governs this as so many others of our sense impressions. We learn _not_ to hear. Hence the influence of trifling impressions upon the sleeping senses when powerful ones fail to reach us. Very slight impressions suffice to suggest the subjects of dreams. The mind having taken the direction given by that impulse forthwith employs its inventive faculties in the construction of a story based upon the faint lines of that suggested subject.