Читать книгу An Experiment with Time - J. W. Dunne - Страница 14

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A little later on, however, I saw that this abrupt recoil had been illogical. For the whole supposition had been based, of course, upon the earlier hypothesis that any general recollection of these images was rendered difficult by the species of inhibition which had prevented my friend from associating his waking experience of the explosion with his previous dream. No memory is ever aroused unless there is some associated idea which revives it, and if that association misses fire, there can be no recall.

Dreams, moreover, are mostly about trivial things—things which happen every day of one's life. Such a dream, even if it were, in actual fact, related to tomorrow's event, would naturally be attributed to yesterday's similar incident. Then, again, nine-tenths of all dreams are completely forgotten within five seconds of waking, and the few which survive rarely outlast the operation of shaving. Even a dream which has been recalled and mentally noted is generally forgotten by the afternoon. Add to this the before-mentioned partial mental ban upon the requisite association; add to that an unconscious, matter-of-fact assumption of impossibility; and it becomes quite probable that it would be only a very few of the more striking, more detailed, and (possibly) more emotional incidents which would ever be noticed at all. These, moreover, would be attributed to telepathy or to 'spirit messages', or even to anything which, though insane in other respects, could, at least, be expressed in the conventional terms of a single, absolute, one-dimensional Time.

It was true, of course, that the theory of normality would take a lot of threshing out. The statement made in the last chapter was, obviously, incomplete; and the full description of the process involved might never be forthcoming. But the alternative was the hypothesis of abnormality; and that meant, not merely abnormality in the sense of excess of, or deficiency in, some common quality of mind, but abnormality in a sense which was itself senseless. It is difficult really to believe in the utterly meaningless.

Finally (and this was what attracted me most), the supposition of normality—of something inherent, not in this or that individual, but in Time itself—would mean, if correct, that, if only one could devise an experiment which would overcome the two initial difficulties of remembering and associating,^[1] the thing might prove to be directly observable by a very large number of people, including the present reader.

The arrangement of that experiment was, clearly, the first step. Explanation could come (and, as will be seen, did come) later.

[1]

The difficulty of remembering is easily overcome; but the difficulty of associating proves in some cases insurmountable. It is always hard to discover in the average dream any incident which is clearly related to a chronologically definite past waking event, and some people's dreams are far too complex to allow such connections to be traced. It is obvious that persons thus handicapped would find it equally impossible to discover in their dreams any clear suggestion of precognition.