34 INTERNATIONAL CONGRESS OF EDUCATION.
‘nvents itself while I look on. Thus, on one occasion, after vaguely con-
seiving the plan of a story, 1 happened to see a woman at a railway station
and said, ¢ There she is,” and the rest of her history, every thought she
had, and all she felt, flowed gradually into my brain.” Another puts it
this way: “The process is like a dream in seeming to be independent of
one’s will ; one feels as if one were deciphering or remembering, not invent-
ing.” The reader need hardly be reminded that Mr. R. L. Stevenson, in
she charming ¢¢ Chapter on Dreams,” * tells us that both in literary com-
position and in dreaming it is not he but the ‘“ Brownies ” who do the
creating for him.
One curious fact may be added on the mode of artistic representation.
Just as the dramatic impulse seems to play a prominent part in many of
our dreams, so it figures in poetic production. One lady writes : “ While
she pictures resemble dreams in a degree, they much more resemble dra-
matic performance. I find myself imitating the gestures of my persons
and representing to my mind the tones of their voices in just the same
way that I should represent to myself—and have done—a play in which I
was to take part.”
My last question, or group of questions, aimed at finding out whether
-here was any observable overlapping and interaction of dreaming and
Jrtistic invention. Thus it was asked whether dreaming seems to increase
vith amount of imaginative work, and so forth. Here, too, the results
were largely negative. A writer by exercising his imaginative gift in
waking hours does not necessarily add to its activity during sleep. Ina
certain proportion of cases, it is true, the filmy creations of imagination
find their way across the confines of sleep. Thus more than one novelist
has told me that after writing late into the night he is apt, on falling asleep,
to reéncounter the figures of his romance. On the other hand, an emi-
sent and voluminous producer of fiction says that though dreaming is
sommon with him he has never dreamt of any figure or situation of his
own creation.
The most interesting fact captured by this final cast of the interrogatory
set is that a modest proportion of novelists appear to have worked up
dream products into their stories. I was put on the track of this fact by
what Mr. R. L. Stevenson told me four years ago respecting the genesis
of the * Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.” information which he
aas since given to the world.
About twelve out of my twenty-eight correspondents are clear that they
1ave made use of dreams in stories, and one or two more are doubtful, se
shat if our sample is a fair one we may say that about half of our novelists
owe some of their literary inspiration to the nocturnal pranks of Queen
Mab. I may add that the most distinguished names find themselves on
¢ Across the Plains, chapter viii,
