What I understand by occult influence is this. In ordinary experience the object is first perceived, then a sentiment may be excited either by the same noumenon or by recollection. In the occult procedure this order is reversed. The sentiment is first secretly reached through the chinks of our intellectual armour, and the intellect is not excited at all or only by association. During sleep, when the Self is nearly exhausted of power, it is likely we are more exposed than usual to such influences. They invade our mind and excite our sentiment without awaking the intellect. Whatever ideas accompany the sentiments are generally inadequate to explain them, the stock of available ideas being now reduced. The conversations we hold in dreams, and the apparent communication of knowledge that takes place, are referred by Du Prel to a division of the ego into two or more individuals who talk together. This notion appears to me forced and unthinkable. Under what image is the ego figured that it should be capable of division? In the waking state we sometimes ask ourselves questions, and on consideration find answers to them. We cannot recall a name, a word, or date, though we know it is somewhere in our memory, and we pause and search till we succeed in exciting the latent image. When this takes place in a dream the information is assumed to come from another individual by an easy dramatisation. A disturbance in the body during sleep may constitute--like all bodily suffering--a drain upon our mental energy, which will be felt as a sentiment and may excite ideas by sympathy. No doubt many dreams are caused in this manner. Since our waking consciousness is highly artificial and imaginary, we may infer that whilst dreaming we are nearer to the natural, primitive state of the mind, but in a weakened condition. [Footnote 13: Ueberweg's _Logic_, Fleming's _Vocabulary_, and Dickenson's _Dict. of Philosophy_.]