There is another reason why, in dreams, we may find ourselves engaged in criminal operations. The purely automatic process by which the imagery of dreams is perpetually shifting in pursuit of associations of resemblance or contiguity, leads to confusions which are not rooted in any personal or primitive impulse, as in the example I have previously referred to, of a lady who had carved a duck at dinner, and a few hours later woke up exhausted by the imaginary effort of cutting off her husband's head. Such a dream is merely a mechanical turn of the visionary kaleidoscope, bringing together two unrelated images. The most potent cause of dream criminality, and especially of murders we have been guilty of before the dream commenced, seems clearly, however, to be that emotional factor of visceral origin which is well illustrated by one or two of the dreams already brought forward.[98] In these cases, again, we are not concerned with any primitive or personal impulse to crime, but we feel ourselves to be so possessed by all the physical symptoms of terror, that the only adequate explanation of our state seems to be the theory that we have committed murder. And if we are more concerned to flee from justice than to experience remorse, that is clearly because the really labouring and agitated heart suggests flight from pursuit far more than any passive emotion.[99] There is, moreover, no more fundamental and primitive emotion than fear. While these considerations combine to deprive criminal dreams, when they occur, of any great significance as an index of the dreamer's latent morality, I must add that I am by no means prepared to agree that moral emotions are so absent from sleep as many writers have stated. There is often a diminished sense of morality, an easier yielding to temptation than would take place in real life, a diminished remorse--these tendencies being mainly due to the conditions of dream-life--but there is frequently a strong sense of morality in dreams, as well as a vivid perception of social proprieties. Those persons who have an unusually strong moral sense, when awake, frequently show, I think, a similar tendency when asleep, but in the dreams of most people moral and decorous considerations seem, as a rule, to make themselves more or less clearly felt, much as in waking life. It may be worth while to bring forward a few dreams which incidentally illustrate the moral attitude of the dreamer.