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THE KEY OF KNOWLEDGE.
attention is not linked to action that is actual, there the mind is left free to plunge into the past or even to make an excursion into the future, regardless of the presence of the contiguous. When this happens, the form and flow of ideas are determined by the similar, except where the very exigencies of thought determine otherwise.
These are the laws of reverie ; in dreaming, too, disinterestedness is almost complete, and the will is loth so to speak, to exert itself in any way. Hence, an idea has only to rise above the threshold of consciousness to be woven into a dream-content.
As Bergson says, in perception we choose, with extreme precision and delicacy, among our memories, rejecting all that do not suit the present state. But in dreaming the selection of memories is made without any real interest, or, to be more precise, is left to be made, to a great extent, to the mechanism of memory itself, the interests of the ego disposed to sleep being opposed to fine work of precision and judgment.
Bergson further tells us :“ The incoherence of the dream seems to me easy enough to explain. As it is characteristic of the dream not to demand a complete adjustment between the memory image and sensation, but, on the contrary, to allow some play between them, very different memories can suit the same sensation. For example, there may be in the field of vision a green spot with white points. This might be a lawn spangled with white flowers, it might be a billiard-table with its balls, It might be a host of other things besides. These different memory images, all capable of utilising the same sensation, chase after it, Sometimes they attain it, one after the other. And so the lawn becomes a billard-table, and we watch these extraordinary transformations. Often it is at the same time, and altogether that these memory images join the sensation, and then the lawn will be a
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