IV. The dream-power intrudes more or less into all waking life. Then

it acts, though irregularly, yet in harmony, with conscious will. When it is powerful and has great skill in forming associations of images — and by images I mean, with Kay, " ideas " — and can also submit these to waking wisdom, the result is poetry or art. In recalling strange, beautiful images, and in imagining scenes, we partly lapse into dreaming ; in fact, we do dream, though conscious will sits by us all the time and even aids our work. And most poets and artists, and many inventors, will testify that, while imagining or inventing, they abstract the " mind " from the world and common-place events, seek calm and quiet, and try to get into a " brown study," which is a waking dream. That is to say, a condition which is in some respects analogous to sleep is necessary to stimulate the flow and combination of images. This brown study is a state of mind in which images flow and blend and form new shapes far more easily than when Will and Reason have the upper hand. For they act only in a conventional beaten track, and deal only with the known and familiar.