Dreams, they held, made men children again, with their souls upon their skins, so absolutely transparent did they render the nature, so free from convention and the mask of policy. And what was best of all, the shadows of the past, at times of the primeval past, answered to their call and played upon the mind during sleep. “We are such stuff as dreams are made of” was a saying of our own far-seeing dramatist’s which often came into my mind as I looked into their somnology. Into the making of our bodies and our brain-tissues go elements from all the ages of our human and animal past, ages buried beyond the reach of history or speculation. They enter subtly into the tissue of our life, though we are all unconscious of the process. And these elements are the stuff that goes to the making of dreams as well. But in the dream-world there is no central personality, no will to control or transform, no mask to wear, no power to conceal. We are ofttimes ashamed of our dreams because they are so unconsciously naked in their savagery or even animality. Nor is it an uncommon or unnatural thing that dreams foreshadow incidents in the after-life of the individual; for they bring into play elements in his nature that he has never been conscious of and whose existence he would stoutly deny. Then, when the favouring circumstance or set of conditions brings these elements into action, he is startled to remember how close the long-forgotten dream had come to the unimagined reality. If only he had known how much it had meant, as it entered on the theatre of sleep and then vanished, he might have been forewarned and have avoided the opportunity for its reappearance on the stage of life.