Daily Arizona silver belt., 1907-12-07
DREAMS AND THEIR CAUSE
Baltimore Professor Tells How Psychol
 ogists Are Now Regarding Them.

brom the Baltimore News.
 At one of the theaters in Baltimore last week man in a prominent seat fell asleep. In the dream theater he probably saw a performance as interest ing as the one going on around him, for he moved his arms and shook his head and seemed to be wholly wrapped up in whatever was occupying his mind at the moment. The incident aroused some curiosity in the mind of one of the spectators of the double show, and yesterday Prof. James Mark Baldwin, of the Johns Hopkins university, was asked to tell something of the nature of dreams and their cause.
 "While there are many questions con nected with dreaming which have not been satisfactorily answered." said Dr. Baldwin, psychologists are pretty well agreed as to the general nature of dreams. They consist of series of images impressed on detached DOT tions of the brain, and not, as in our waking moments, on larger areas, which would enable us to view the thing we are dreaming of in its relation to the facts of our past experience. Conse- quently, the most absurd things do not appear at all absurd in our dreams.
 "There are two diamentrically op- posed theories to account for this dream action-one that it is caused by the absence from the brain during the re- pose of sleep of the ordinary quantity of blood. Both are true, probably, the one causing one kind of dream, the oth- CT another.
 Motion of the various parts of the body, as of arms and legs, is caused by stimulation of the various areas of the brain. When we consider the ordinary workings of the nervous system the wonder is not that there is as much movement during sleep as there is, but that there is not more. You might imagine that somnambulism would be nightly occurrence with almost every one.
 "The old theory, by the way, that somnambulists never come to harm in tf cir movements unless awakened has been disproved. Fatal accidents have occurred in many cases, and one of my own relatives--a little girl--fell down the stairs while walking in her sleep and hurt herself rather seriously. Son. nambulists do perform risky feats, but that is due to the absence of fear or reflection or doubt. Most men can walk twenty feet on a rail on the ground, but few could do it in midair.
 "Almost every one dreams, although there are some persons who say that they never do. That some of this class do dream, however, has been proved by observation of them during sleep, and there is some ground for the theory that every one dreams, the images presented to the brain being stronger or fainter, as the case may be. Some of the animals dream, especially those of the higher order, which is not surprising when we consider the similarity of their brain formation to that of the human being. It is a com mon occurrence for dog, for instance, to move and even bark in his sleep.
 "Some writers have attempted to es- tablish a telepathic theory regarding dreams, to prove that they are due to the influence of one mind upon another, but nothing of that sort is accepted by psychologists. Others have attempt ed to show that the range of subjects with dreams is very limited, but they haven't proved their case, either. One man said once that no one ever dreamed of thing in motion. That, to me, is absurd. Another said we nev- er dream of music, but that is not true.
 "We usually dream of things famil- jar to us, although they may appear in unfamiliar relations. Prof. Jastrow of the University of Wisconsin, formerly of the Johns Hopkins, made very