Even, however, when we have reached this conclusion the path of the student is still far from easy. The undoubted fact that in any case the difficulties of observing and recording dreams are very great cannot fail to make us extremely careful. Although the dreams of some persons, who may be regarded as themselves of vivid and dramatic temperament, seem to be habitually vivid and dramatic to an extent which, in my own case, is extremely rare, one is usually justified in feeling a certain amount of suspicion in regard to dream-narratives which are at every point clear, coherent, connected, and intelligible. Dreams, as I know them on awaking from sleep, occasionally present episodes to which these epithets may be applied, but on the whole they are full of obscurities, of uncertainties, of inexplicable lacunae. The memory of dream events is lost so rapidly that one is constantly obliged to leave the exact nature of a detail in doubt. One seems to be recalling a landscape seen by a lightning flash. It is for this reason that I have made it a rule only to admit dreams which are noted very shortly, and if possible immediately, after the moment of awakening. It is further of importance in recording one's dreams, to note the emotional attitude experienced during the dream as well as any physical sensations felt on awakening. The attitude of dream consciousness towards dream visions usually varies from that of waking consciousness, although the normal extent of the difference is a disputable point. When I read dream narratives of landscapes which, as described, appear at every point as beautiful and impressive to waking consciousness as they appeared to dreaming consciousness, I usually suspect that, granting the good faith and accuracy of the narrator, we are really concerned, not with dreams in the proper sense, but with visions experienced under more abnormal conditions, and especially with drug visions. In the present inquiry I am only concerned to ascertain the most elementary and fundamental laws of the dream world, as they occur in fairly ordinary and normal persons, and therefore it becomes necessary to be very strict as to the conditions under which they were recorded. It is the most ordinary dreams that are most likely to reveal the ordinary laws of dream life, but for this end it is necessary that they should be recorded with the greatest accuracy attainable. I am myself neither a constant nor, usually, a very vivid dreamer, and in these respects I am probably a fairly ordinary and normal person; the personal material which I have accumulated, though it spreads over twenty years, is not notably copious. Nor have I ever directed my attention in any systematic and concentrated manner to my dream life. To do so would be, I believe, to distort the phenomena. I have merely recorded any significant phenomena as they occurred.