In sleep, on the contrary, the slightest touch of resemblance may engage the mind and affect the direction of fancy.

In a sense we may be said, when dreaming, to discover mental affinities between impressions and feelings, including those subtle links of emotional analogy of which I have already spoken.

This effect is well illustrated in a dream recorded by M.Maury, in which he passed from one set of images to another through some similarity of names, as that between _corps_ and _cor_.

Such a movement of fancy would, of course, be prevented in full waking consciousness by a predominant attention to the meaning of the sounds.
It will be possible, I think, after a habit of analyzing one's dreams in the light of preceding experience has been formed, to discover in a good proportion of cases some hidden force of association which draws together the seemingly fortuitous concourse of our dream-atoms.

That we should expect to do so in every case is unreasonable, since, owing to the numberless fine ramifications which belong to our familiar images, many of the paths of association followed by our dream-fancy cannot be afterwards retraced.
To illustrate the odd way in which our images get tumbled together through the action of occult association forces, I will record a dream of my own.