In our waking states these innumerable paths of association are practically closed by the supreme energy of the coherent groups of impressions furnished us from the world without through our organs of sense, and also by the volitional control of internal thought in obedience to the pressure of practical needs and desires. In dream-life both of these influences are withdrawn, so that delicate threads of association, which have no chance of exerting their pull, so to speak, in our waking states, now make known their hidden force. Little wonder, then, that the filaments which bind together these dream-successions should escape detection, since even in our waking thought we so often fail to see the connection which makes us pass in recollection from a name to a visible scene or perhaps to an emotional vibration. It is worth noting that the origin of an association is often to be looked for in one of those momentary half-conscious acts of waking imagination to which reference has already been made. A friend, for example, has been speaking to us of some common acquaintance, remarking on his poor health. The language calls up, vaguely, a visual representation of the person sinking in health and dying. An association will thus be formed between this person and the idea of death. A night or two after, the image of this person somehow recurs to our dream-fancy, and we straightway dream that we are looking at his corpse, watching his funeral, and so on. The links of the chain which holds together these dream-images were really forged, in part, in our waking hours, though the process was so rapid as to escape our attention. It may be added, that in many cases where a juxtaposition of dream-images seems to have no basis in waking life, careful reflection will occasionally bring to light some actual conjunction of impressions so momentary as to have faded from our recollection. We must remember, further, how great an apparent disorder will invade our imaginative dream-life when the binding force of resemblance has unchecked play. In waking thought we have to connect things according to their essential resemblances, classifying objects and events for purposes of knowledge or action, according to their widest or their most important points of similarity. In sleep, on the contrary, the slightest touch of resemblance may engage the mind and affect the direction of fancy. In a sense we may be said, when dreaming, to discover mental affinities between impressions and feelings, including those subtle links of emotional analogy of which I have already spoken. This effect is well illustrated in a dream recorded by M. Maury, in which he passed from one set of images to another through some similarity of names, as that between _corps_ and _cor_. Such a movement of fancy would, of course, be prevented in full waking consciousness by a predominant attention to the meaning of the sounds.