[89] A part of the apparent exaggeration in our dream-experiences may be retrospective, and due to the effect of the impression of wonder which they leave behind them. (See Struempell, _Die Natur und Entstehung der Traeume_.) [90] _Cf._ Radestock, _op. cit._, pp. 131, 132. [91] I was on one occasion able to observe this process going on in the transition from waking to sleeping. I partly fell asleep when suffering from toothache. Instantly the successive throbs of pain transformed themselves into a sequence of visible movements, which I can only vaguely describe as the forward strides of some menacing adversary. [92] Even the "unconscious impressions" of waking hours, that is to say, those impressions which are so fugitive as to leave no psychical trace behind, may thus rise into the clear light of consciousness during sleep. Maury relates a curious dream of his own, in which there appeared a figure that seemed quite strange to him, though he afterwards found that he must have been in the habit of meeting the original in a street through which he was accustomed to walk (_loc. cit._, p. 124). [93] See p. 53. [94] See Maury, _loc. cit._, p. 146. [95] See what was said respecting the influence of a dominant emotional agitation on the interpretation of actual sense-impressions. [96] It is proved experimentally that the ear has a much closer organic connection with the vocal organ than the eye has. Donders found that the period required for responding vocally to a sound-signal is less than that required for responding in the same way to a light-signal. [97] On the nature of this impulse, as illustrated in waking and in sleep, see the article by Delboeuf, "Le Sommeil et les Reves," in the _Revue Philosophique_, June, 1880, p. 636. [98] _Physiologische Psychologie_, p. 660. [99] I may, perhaps, observe, after giving two dreams which have to do with mathematical operations, that, though I was very fond of them in my college days, I have long ceased to occupy myself with these processes. I would add, by way of redeeming my dream-intelligence from a deserved charge of silliness, that I once performed a respectable intellectual feat when asleep. I put together the riddle, "What might a wooden ship say when her side was stove in? Tremendous!" (Tree-mend-us). I was aware of having tried to improve on the form of this pun. I am happy to say I am not given to punning during waking life, though I had a fit of it once. It strikes me that punning, consisting as it does essentially of overlooking sense and attending to sound, is just such a debased kind of intellectual activity as one might look for in sleep. [100] See Radestock, _op. cit._, ch. ix.; _Vergleichung des Traumes mit dem Wahnsinn_. [101] For Spinoza's experience, given in his own words, see Mr. F. Pollock's _Spinoza_, p. 57; _cf._ what Wundt says on his experience, _Physiologische Psychologie_, p. 648, footnote 2.