WE are very objective-minded individuals, living in a sub-
stantial world of very solid reality, and yet every day for a
few minutes or many hours at a time we are rapt away into
a different-seeming universe, one of mental impressions, of
ideas, of images that symbolize in various fashions the things
and qualities of the external world in which we live. ¹

At certain moments our desires or fears give the cue for
the appearance of certain actors on the stage of the mind.
We may carry on elaborate mental rehearsals of the wedding
that is to take place next week or of the journey we hope to
realize next vacation. We may build in Ourtown, on the
corner of X street, a very modern steam-heated, electric-
lighted Castle in Spain. At other times we are imaging scenes
of the past, suddenly living again amid other surroundings,
visualizing perhaps the fishing-pool with its dappled shadows,
or hearing in memory a mother's voice crooning a lullaby.

In our hours of reverie we watch with amused or sombre
detachment the seemingly inconsequential images and thoughts
that flit through our heads. Some of us have a drop-curtain
to that theatre of the mind, a bit of woodland scenery or a
seascape painted by fancy or memory that is seen as often as
the bright lights of the external world are extinguished,
whenever we let go for a moment our practical preoccupations,
when we surrender to the noonday siesta or the nightly
drowsiness. In moments of relaxation, others of us entertain
ourselves with a continued story, a prolonged serial wherein

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