But with that we come to a further question, viz., what happens if we do not think directedly? Then our thinking lacks the major idea, and the feeling of direction which emanates from that.[26] We no longer compel our thoughts along a definite track, but let them float, sink and mount according to their own gravity. According to Kulpe[27] thinking is a kind of inner will action, the absence of which necessarily leads to an automatic play of ideas. James understands the non-directed thinking, or “merely associative” thinking, as the ordinary one. He expresses himself about that in the following manner: “Our thought consists for the great part of a series of images, one of which produces the other; _a sort of passive dream-state of which the higher animals are also capable_. This sort of thinking leads, nevertheless, to reasonable conclusions of a practical as well as of a theoretical nature. “As a rule, the links of this sort of irresponsible thinking, which are accidentally bound together, are empirically concrete things, not abstractions.” We can, in the following manner, complete these definitions of William James. This sort of thinking does not tire us; it quickly leads us away from reality into phantasies of the past and future. Here, thinking in the form of speech ceases, image crowds upon image, feeling upon feeling; more and more clearly one sees a tendency which creates and makes believe, not as it truly is, but as one indeed might wish it to be.[28] The material of these thoughts which turns away from reality, can naturally be only the past with its thousand memory pictures. The customary speech calls this kind of thinking “dreaming.” Whoever attentively observes himself will find the general custom of speech very striking, for almost every day we can see for ourselves how, when falling asleep, phantasies are woven into our dreams, so that between the dreams of day and night there is not so great a difference. Thus we have two forms of thinking—_directed thinking_ and _dream or phantasy thinking_. The first, working for communication with speech elements, is troublesome and exhausting; the latter, on the contrary, goes on without trouble, working spontaneously, so to speak, with reminiscences. The first creates innovations, adaptations, imitates reality and seeks to act upon it. The latter, on the contrary, turns away from reality, sets free subjective wishes, and is, in regard to adaptation, wholly unproductive.[29]