What a confirmation of this is to be found in the
phenomena of sleep and dreams! Then the instinct is steadily at work,
neither remembering nor anticipating, but weaving together the results
of experience into a self-taught tale.
And then if one considers later life, it is no exaggeration to say
that the greater part of human happiness and unhappiness consists in
the dwelling upon what has been, what may be, what might be, and,
alas, in our worst moments, upon what might have been "My unhappiest
experiences," said Lord Beaconsfield, "have been those which never
happened"; and again the same acute critic of life said that half the
clever people he knew were under the impression that they were hated
and envied, the other half that they were admired and loved;--and that
neither were right!
The imaginative faculty then is a species of self-representation, the
power of considering our own life and position as from the outside;
from it arise both the cheerful hopes and schemes of the sound mind,
and the shadowy anxieties and fears of the mind which lacks
robustness. It certainly does seem singular that this deep and
persistent element in human life is left so untrained and unregarded,
to range at will, to feed upon itself. All that the teacher does is to
insist as far as possible on a certain concentration of the mind on
business at particular times, and if he has ethical purposes at
heart, he may sometimes speak to a boy on the advisability of not
allowing his mind to dwell upon base or sensual thoughts; but how
little attempt is ever made to train the mind in deliberate and
continuous self-control!
The latest school of pathologists, in the treatment of obsessed or
insane persons, pay very close attention to the subjects of their
dreams, and attribute much nerve-misery to the atrophy, or suppression
by circumstances, of instincts which betray themselves in dreams.
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