personal, ignoble or trivial to permit us to reveal more than a small
part of it. I believe this must be true of everyone. We do not, of
course, know what goes on in other people's heads. They tell us very
little and we tell them very little. The spigot of speech, rarely
fully opened, could never emit more than driblets of the ever renewed
hogshead of thought--_noch grosser wie's Heidelberger Fass_. We
find it hard to believe that other people's thoughts are as silly as
our own, but they probably are.

We all appear to ourselves to be thinking all the time during our
waking hours, and most of us are aware that we go on thinking while we
are asleep, even more foolishly than when awake. When uninterrupted by
some practical issue we are engaged in what is now known as a _reverie_.
This is our spontaneous and favorite kind of thinking. We allow our
ideas to take their own course and this course is determined by our
hopes and fears, our spontaneous desires, their fulfillment or
frustration; by our likes and dislikes, our loves and hates and
resentments. There is nothing else anything like so interesting to
ourselves as ourselves. All thought that is not more or less
laboriously controlled and directed will inevitably circle about the
beloved Ego. It is amusing and pathetic to observe this tendency in
ourselves and in others. We learn politely and generously to overlook
this truth, but if we dare to think of it, it blazes forth like the
noontide sun.

The reverie or "free association of ideas" has of late become the
subject of scientific research. While investigators are not yet agreed
on the results, or at least on the proper interpretation to be given
to them, there can be no doubt that our reveries form the chief index
to our fundamental character. They are a reflection of our nature as