I should be more especially inclined to find the dream-like character of
the child's mind at three points: (1) the abnormally logical tendency
of the child's mind and the daring mental fusions which he effects in
forming theories; (2) the greater preponderance of hypnagogic phenomena
and hallucinations in childhood, as well as the large element of reverie
or day-dreaming in the child's life, and the facility with which he
confuses this waking imagination with reality; and (3) the child's
tendency to mistake, also, the dreams of the night for real events.[249]
This last tendency is of serious practical import when it leads a child,
in all innocence, to make criminal charges against other persons.[250]
This tendency clearly indicates the close resemblance which there is for
children between dream life and waking life; it also shows the great
vividness which children's dreams possess. In imaginative children, it
may be added, a rich and vivid dream life is not infrequently the direct
source of literary activities which lead to distinction in later life.[251]
The child, we are often told, is the representative of the modern savage
and the primitive man. That is not, in any strict sense, true, nor can we
assume without question that early man and modern savages are identical.
But we can have very little doubt that in our dreams we are brought near
to ways of thought and feeling that are sometimes closer to those of early
man, as well as of latter-day savages, than are our psychic modes in
civilisation.[252] So remote are we to-day from the world of our dreams
that we very rarely draw from them the inspiration of our waking lives.
For the primitive man the laws of the waking world are not yet widely
differentiated from the laws of the sleeping world, and he finds it not
unreasonable to seek illumination for the problems of one world in the
phenomena of the other. The doctrine of animism, as first formulated by
Tylor (more especially in his _Primitive Culture_) finds in dreams the
chief source of primitive religion and philosophy. Of recent years there
has been a tendency to reject the theory of animism.[253] Certainly it is
possible to rely too exclusively on dreams as the inspiration of early
man; if the evidence of dreams had not been in a line with the evidence
that he derived from other sources, there is no reason why the man of
primitive times should have attached any peculiar value to dreams. But
if the animistic conception presents too extreme a view of the primitive
importance of dreaming, we must beware lest the reaction against it should
lead us to fall into the opposite extreme. Durkheim argues that it is
unlikely that early man attaches much significance to dreams, for the
modern peasant, who is the representative of primitive man, appears to
dream very little, and not to attach much importance to his dreams. But
it is by no means true that the peasant of civilisation, with his fixed
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