Note 56 — Chapter IV

Although I reached this conclusion independently, as a result of the analysis of dream experiences, I find that it was set forth at a much earlier period by Wundt. 'Men are accustomed to regard most of the phantasms of dreams as hallucinations,' he writes (Grundzüge der Physiologischer Psychologie, vol. iii.), 'but most dream representations are apparently illusions, initiated by the slight sensory impressions which are never extinguished in sleep.' Weygandt, in his brief but excellent book, Entstehung der Traäme, fully adopts this view, although I scarcely think he is always successful in his attempts to demonstrate it by his own dreams; such demonstration is necessarily often difficult or impossible because, apart from the dream itself, we seldom know what sensory impressions are persisting in our sleep. C. M. Giessler (Die Physiologische Beziehungen der Traumvorgänge, 1896, p. 2), who also proceeds from Wundt, likewise regards dreams as in general the more or less orderly and successive revival of psychic vestiges of waking life, conditioned by inner or outer excitations. Tissié (in Les Rêves, 1898), again, declares that 'dreams of purely psychic origin do not exist,' and Beaunis (American Journal of Psychology, July-October 1903) also believes that all dreams need an internal or external stimulus from the organism.