Now, a ground-tone of feeling of a certain complexion, answering to the sum of sensations arising in connection with the different organic processes of the time, is a very frequent foundation of our dream-structure.  So frequent is it, indeed, that one might almost say there is no dream in which it is not one great determining factor.  The analysis of a very large number of dreams has convinced me that traces of this influence are discoverable in a great majority.

I will give a simple illustration of this lyrical type of dream.  A little girl of about four years and three-quarters went with her parents to Switzerland.  On their way she was taken to the cathedral at Strasburg, and saw the celebrated clock strike, and the figures of the Apostles come out, etc.  In Switzerland she stayed at Gimmelwald, near Muerren, opposite a fine mass of snowy mountains.  One morning she told her father that she had had “such a lovely dream.”  She fancied she was on the snow-peaks with her nurse, and walked on to the sky.  There came out of the sky “such beautiful things,” just like the figures of the clock.  This vision of celestial things was clearly due to the fact that both the clock and the snow-peaks touching the blue sky had powerfully excited her imagination, filling her with much the same kind of emotion, namely, wonder, admiration, and longing to reach an inaccessible height.

Our feelings commonly have a gradual rise and fall, and the organic sensations which so often constitute the emotional basis of our lyrical dreams generally have stages of increasing intensity.  Moreover, such a persistent ground-feeling becomes reinforced by the images which it sustains in consciousness.  Hence a certain crescendo character in our emotional dreams, or a gradual rise to some culminating point or climax.

This phase of dream can be illustrated from the experience of the same little girl.  When just five years old, she was staying at Hampstead, near a church which struck the hours somewhat loudly.  One morning she related the following dream to her father (I use her own language).  The biggest bells in the world were ringing; when this was over the earth and houses began to tumble to pieces; all the seas, rivers, and ponds flowed together, and covered all the land with black water, as deep as in the sea where the ships sail; people were drowned; she herself flew above the water, rising and falling, fearing to fall in; she then saw her mamma drowned, and at last flew home to tell her papa.  The gradual increase of alarm and distress expressed in this dream, having its probable cause in the cumulative effect of the disturbing sound of the church bells, must be patent to all.