Page:Occult Japan - Lovell.djvu/360

338 The result is rather a lightning-like zigzag through the mind than a general illumination. This accounts for what we call inconsequently enough the inconsequence of dreams. For dream inconsequence really means too absolute ideal consequence. Each idea fires the next, and only the next. That we believe everything that comes along, and see nothing odd in so doing, shows that side considerations are not roused. For it is our side-thoughts that cause us to comment upon our leading ones. In dreams we are for the moment men of one idea, with the usual monomaniacal result. Purely sensational starting-points, à la lobster, rouse in the same way such simple dream trains that, destitute of their accustomed fringe, we fail to recognize them for the sensations they are.

In our deeper dreams we have not even those adumbrations of other thoughts which so commonly give us ghostly warnings in our waking state. This makes us fall easy dupes to the deception. For where only one idea exists it must inevitably seem true for want of possible contradiction. It simply is till it is contradicted. As we get nearer