Page:Occult Japan - Lovell.djvu/359

Rh. But that there should be any current at all proves that some part of the brain has risen to the necessary pitch of possibility before the rest of it. Now what part has done so, and why?

If we consider the motifs of our dreams we shall find them, when not directly traceable to boiled lobster, to be due to the play either of very habitual ideas or of ideas that had last preoccupied us before we fell asleep. The lover dreams of his mistress, the merchant of his transactions, the scientist of his discoveries. Each dreams after his kind, because the habitual idea is in action so much of the time that its train of cells has become specially permeable to the current and vibrates upon slight provocation. For the same reason, the idea that preoccupied us before we fell asleep is the one which, from having just been in action, is easiest set in action again.

The motion once started passes out along those associated channels which, under the then conditions, offer least resistance to its passage. But as the brain, as a whole, is still sluggishly inert, the current rouses no side motion to speak of in the process