IV. in his beautiful invocation, and Young, and many

others.
Ev. Sleeplessness is one of the severest penalties of our nature. In the darkness and silence of night the wakeful mind preys on itself; the pulse is rapid, it is a throb of anguish, — to the wearied thought there is no conclusion, and the parched tongue prays in vain for the morning light. In the curse of Kehama, I think the sleepless lid is one of the most cruel inflictions ; and in the severe disorder which we term hemicrania, this curse is to a degree realized.
The sleeplessness of Caligula is related by Suetonius. In Bartholinus, we read of one who slept not for three months, and he became a melancholy hypochondriac. And Boerhave, from intense study, was constantly awake during six weeks.
IDA. We are happy in our quiet minds, are we not, dear Castaly? yet, if we are ever summoned to the couch of one wearied by night watching, Evelyn will tell us how we may soothe the pillow of a sleepless mind, to which the secret of inducing slumber would be a priceless treasure.
Ev. Study the causes of insomnia, or sleeplessness, Ida ; as those which excite nervous irritability, — coffee, green tea, small doses of opium, the protracted use of
NATURE OF SLEEP. 203
antimony, &c. ; and believe not in the virtues of vulgar remedies, often as dangerous as they are ridiculous. There is a batch of these which Burton has gleaned from various authors ; as a sample, — nutmegs, man- drakes, wormwood ; and from Cardan and Miraldus,
the anointing the soles of the feet with the fat of a dormouse, and the teeth with the ear-wax of a dog, swine's galls, hares' ears, &c.
I might offer to you many plain precepts for the alleviation of the light causes of sleeplessness; and while I dole them out to you in very dulness, you will fancy my gold-headed cane to my chin, and other essential symbols of an Esculapius of the olden time. Adopt, then, a free ventilation in summer, and airing in winter, of the chamber. This should never be a mere closet, always above the ground floor, neither very light nor dark, the window not being close to the bed, and, above all, not in the vicinity of stoves, ovens, and large kitchen fires. Do not allow the windows to be open throughout the night, to admit the cold dew or air; and, in winter, the basket-fire should be placed there for an hour before you enter your chamber. A slight acceleration of the circulation may be produced by gentle exercise before rest ; and two or three wafer biscuits or spring water, to prevent the wakeful effects of both chilliness and hunger. A light woollen sock may be worn, which is unconsciously displaced when sleep comes on, and the night-cap should be little more than a net, except during the very cold months. The posi- tion of the body should be that which is the easiest, except the supine, which induces congestion and often " night mare ;" and if there be much sensitiveness of the surface, the hydrostatic bed should be employed, but that not too long, as it will become heated by pro- tracted pressure. Children should not be enveloped in clothes, nor crowded in bed; nor should infants be
204 NATURE OF SLEEP.
shaken, or tossed, or patted, as foolish nurses too often do.
There are many simple modes of inducing slumber : I allude not to poppy and henbane, nor to the pillow of hops, which, in the case of the third George, was the charm that sealed up the lids of the king ; but to other modes, such as a tedious recital, (something like my own dull prosing,) the gentle motion of a swing, a cot or cradle, the ripple of a stream, and the dashing of a waterfall, the waving of a fan, the caw of rooks, the hum of bees, the murmur of an ^Eolian harp —
CAST. So gracefully wound up in that quaint morceau, the " Fairy Queen," when Archimago sends the spirit to fetch a dream from Morpheus —
" Cynthia still doth steepe In silver dew his ever-drooping head, Whiles sad night over him her mantle black doth spred.
And more to lull him in his slumber soft, A trickling stream, from high rocke tumbling downe, And ever dringling ram upon the loft, Mix'd with a murmuring winde, much like the soune Of swarming bees, did cast him in a swoune."
SUBLIMITY AND IMPERFECTION OF DREAMING.
" We are such stuff
As dreams are made of, and our little life Is rounded by a sleep." TEMPEST.
Ev. In the transition to and from the repose of sleep, the mind is sinking into oblivion, and thought is fading, and the senses and sensation are overshadowed in their regress to insensibility : even instinct is well nigh a blank. This is the state of slumber. Then, I believe, and only then, are we ever wandering in the ideal laby- rinth of DREAMS.
There is a curious calculation of Cabanis, that certain organs or senses of the body fall asleep at regular pro- gressive periods ; some, therefore, may be active while others are passive, and in this interesting state, I may hint to you, consists the essence of a dream. It seems that in dreamless sleep, the senses fall asleep altogether, as in the case of Plutarch's friends, Thrasymenes and Cleon, and others who never dreamed.
ASTR. So there is some truth in the fanciful conceit of Cardanus, that ''Sleep is the rest of the spirits, — waking their vehement motion, and dreaming their tremulous motion."
CAST. And philosophy plumes herself on her won-
•206 SUBLIMITY AND IMPERFECTION
derous intuition for this discovery. Let her blush, and kneel before the shrine of poesy. The poets, even of a ruder age than ours, have thought and written before you, Evelyn, and have unfolded these arcana. How doth Chaucer usher in his " Dreme ?" —
" Halfe in dede sclepe, not fully revyved ;"
and again :
" For on this wyse upon a night As ye have herd withouten light, Not all wakyng ne full on slepe, About such hour as lovirs wepe ;"
and in " La Belle Dame sans Mercy," there is the same thought :
" Halfe in a dreme, not fully well awaked ;"
and in Sir Walter's " Antiquary :" " Eh, sirs, sic weary dreams as folk hae between sleeping and waking, before they win to the long sleep and the sound." So will your philosophy dwindle somewhat in its consequence, Sir Clerke.
Ev. We are not jealous of these glimpses of a poet, Castaly ; they impart a value to their rhymes : we enrol such poets in the rank of philosophers.
IDA. Solve me this question, Evelyn: is there any relative difference between the subjects of dreams before and after sleep ?
Ev. It has been thought that there is more reference to reality in the first, and more confusion and wander- ing of imagination in the second ; but as nature is often excited rather than exhausted at night, there may be equal brightness with the morning dream, occurring after the recreation and refreshment of sleep.
CAST. We may concede, then, some wisdom to the Sybarites, who destroyed their morning heralds, the
OF DREAMING. 207
cocks, that they might enjoy their matin dreams un- disturbed. And I remember one of Pope's allusions to the virtues of this uTrap, or morning dream :
" What time the morn mysterious visions brings, While purer slumbers spread their golden wings."
ASTR. We have often discoursed on the psychology of Locke, Evelyn, and we are now involved in one of its most interesting points — innate idea. Is the dreamer conscious of his dream? It has been asserted, espe- cially by two profound metaphysicians, Beattie and Reid, that they persuaded themselves in their dreams that they were dreaming, and would then attempt to throw themselves off a precipice ; this awoke them, and proved the impression a fiction. Were there not pre- sent in this, volition and consciousness ; and is it not an evidence of an innate idea without sensation ?
Ev. No. A train of thought and passive memory may take place without volition, even in a waking mind ; a train of reasoning cannot. So feeling and passive thought may in the mere dream, but not a conscious acting on it. The phenomena, and the expressions used to describe these impressions, are precisely illustrative of another condition of sleep, to which we have not yet pointed. This notion of Beattie was but an echo of Aristotle. The Stagyrite himself was subject to dreams of danger, and, after a while, he used to whisper to himself: " Don't be frightened, — this is only a dream :" the glaring proof that it was not ; and yet psychologists still talk of the management of a dream.
The fairest explanation is, that there has been a pre- determination on some point, and unconscious ideas on the same point are elicited, or may be the first to pre- sent themselves to the mind in the morning, at the mo- ment we awaken, and thus it is the first which the judg- ment acts on in its reverie ; that is, the line between
6
208 SUBLIMITY AND IMPERFECTION
dreaming and being awake. If there be many organs asleep, there is still some clouding of this judgment ; but if that be asleep also, there is an absolute dream.
If we know that we are dreaming, the faculty of judg- ment cannot be inert, and the dream would be known to be a fallacy. We might, by thinking, render our dream what we pleased, and be sure we should never wish for devils or dangers. The essence of the dream is that it is uncontrolled : other states are not dreaming. Above all, if judgment influenced the dream of Beattie, who was not a madman, would he have wished to have toppled down headlong from a rock ? Listen to John- son on this point. " He related that he had once, in a dream, a contest of wit with some other person, and that he was very much mortified by imagining that his opponent had the better of him. Now," said he, " one may mark here the effect of sleep in weakening the power of reflection ; for had not my judgment failed me, I should have seen that the wit of this supposed an- tagonist, by whose superiority I felt myself depressed, was as much furnished by me as that which I thought I had been uttering in my own character."
Nay, in the words of Beattie himself, in his " Essay on Truth,"—
" Sleep has a wonderful power over all OUT faculties. Sometimes we seem to have lost our moral faculty ; as when we dream of doing that without scruple or re- morse, which, when awake, we could not bear to think of. Sometimes memory is extinguished ; as when we dream of conversing with our departed friends, without remembering any thing of their death, though it was, perhaps, one of the most striking incidents we had ever experienced, and is seldom or never out of our thoughts when we are awake."
Even the most sensitive and amiable girls will dream of committing murder, or the most awful crimes, with-
OF DREAMING. 209
out any sense of compunction. We feel no surprise at the working of our own miracles ; and we know not how to avoid danger. I have myself dreamed of occurrences long past, as if they were of to-day ; have fretted in my sleep, on ideal events, and on waking was for a moment wretched. But I have reflected, awake, on these very events, and have not only felt resigned, but deemed them benefits.
There was in the university of Gottingen the phy- sician Walderstein. He was a constant dreamer, and this is his account of one of these illusions. " I dreamt that I was condemned to the stake, and during my exe- cution I was perfectly composed, and indeed reasoned calmly on the mode in which it was conducted ; — whis- pering to myself, ( Now I am burning, and presently I shall be converted into a cinder/ >: It seems that he was dissatisfied with his dream, on account of this apa- thetic calmness ; and he concludes : " I was fearful I should become all thought, and no feeling." / would say, he was all illusion and no judgment.
It is but lately that I dreamed I was reciting a meta- physical poem, which my vanity whispered me possessed a deal of merit. During the recitation I thought there was a turning up of noses, and of tongues into cheeks — a very expressive sign of incredulity and satire. At length a general murmur ran through the assembly that it was a complete " boggle/' Nothing daunted, I assured them that it was a very abstruse passage, and the fault was in the shallow comprehension of my audience. Need I add, that I should blush at such an evasion in my waking judgment ?
How different also is our dream from a waking thought, in which we can control the fancy !
If in the dream the chain be abruptly broken, the waking mind does not then carry on the train, and if any thing occur in waking, associating with the dream,
•210 SUBLIMITY AND IMPERFECTION
to join the broken link, the dream is not completed, but the ideas revert, or are retraced, to their source ; and if any idea at the origin of the dream be re-excited, there will be no consistent continuance of it beyond the dream itself, or, if there be, it will bear the stamp of reasoning, losing all connexion with the illusion. On the con- trary, if we read as we are falh'ng asleep, we continue in the dream the subject of our study, but erroneously ; and if we then start and wake, we shall find that at the moment of slumber we had changed the integrity of our thinking. Be assured, then, that Virgil is correct in this —
" She seems alone
To wander in her sleep, through ways unknown,
CAST. And now, Sir Knight, deign to look on the other side of the shield. Answer me with sincerity, — if your words be true, is not this a high privilege of imaginative minds, to lift themselves out of the gloomy atmosphere of this world of woe ; to soar with fancy, not to drudge with fact ? How do I envy a romantic dreamer? like him of whom Master Edmund Spenser writes, —
His new falne lids, dreames straight, tenne pound to one, Out steps some faery with quick motion, And tells him wonders of some flourie vale."
Sleep is indeed the reality of another existence.
ASTR. So breathed the thought of Heraclitus, in words like these, — that " all men, whilst they are awake, are in one common world ; but that each, when he is asleep, is in a world of his own." The fairies are his boon and chosen compeers, and the sylphs are as much his handmaidens, as those around the toilet of Belinda. We are indeed the happy children, and, like them, our
OF DREAMING. 211
existence is a dream of felicity, — one long and happy thought of the present, with no reflection or forethought to mar its blisses.
Then the shades and memory of departed friends and lovers, are they not around us as true and as beautiful as when they lived? The common sentiment of ena- moured dreamers is —
" I hear thy voice in dreams upon me softly call ; I see thy form as when thou wert a living thing."
In the dream, ambition is lifted to the loftiest pinna- cle of her high aspirings; and power and riches are showered in profusion in the path of their votaries from the cornucopia of fancy ; and all this with a depth and intensity that gilds for a time the moments of wak- ing life. And I agree with Saint Augustine, that if we sleep and dream in Paradise, our existence will be per- fectly felicitous.
But then, alas ! the cruel waking from this world of pleasure. I have breathed many a sigh of sympathy with Milton's dream of his dead wife, and with Crabbe, in his " World of Dreams."
You remember, Evelyn, how oft you have wondered at my absence from our college co3na. You thought not that I was then deeply studying how I might gain a victory over my thoughts in sleep. As my waking memory would, from some indefinite cause, be re- excited after it had seemed to fade and die, so the sub- ject of my dreams has been resumed after many months, without any chain of relative thoughts in the interval. I believed then that this might be a dream ; that I had dreamt the same before ; but on the morning of the second dream, reflection assured me that on the morning of the first I had known and thought on it. I was waiting for a golden hour of inspiration, and it was granted me. One night came o'er my slumber a dream
212 SUBLIMITY AND IMPERFECTION
of beauty : there was an innocent happiness, a sense of purest pleasure, that might be the beatitude of a peri ere she lost her place in Eden. In the morning, the dream was a part of my being ; I nursed it throughout the live-long day, and at night lay me down to slumber, and again with the sleep came the dream. I was thus the monarch of an ideal world : the dream was my life, so long as my thoughts were on it concentrated, and even study was a Rembrandt shadow on its brightness. In a moment of rapture, I cried, —
" We forget how superior, to mortals below, Is the fiction they dream to the truth which they know."
I opened the leaf of a volume, in which an accom- plished pen had traced an episode so like my own, as to make me wonder at its truth.
It was of a visionary German, who, like myself, com- manded the phantasie of sleep's own world, bringing one night thus in connexion with another. He fashioned, like Pygmalion, his idol, Love, and nightly met and wooed, till he won her to his heart, and then he cried, — " What if this glorious sleep be a real life, and this dull waking the true repose ?" At length his ideal of beauty, his dream, died, stung by a serpent. And then the order of the vision was reversed ; the dream lay again before him, dead and withered ; he saw his idol only when he was awake, and this was to him a dream. He pined in thought, and died, — sleeping.
Was not the sleep of this man his real life, and a scene of happiness? Could he wish for reality who had enjoyed such a dream ? For if in life there were equal sleep and waking, and the sleep were all a happy dream, this would indeed be a happy life.
May I tell you, Evelyn, that I enjoyed a deep sub- limity of feeling, a consciousness of that mental eman-
OF DREAMING. 21 J
cipation which devout philosophers have more than glanced at ?
IDA. Although you have again rather run wild, As- trophel, I agree with you in thinking that, under this influence, the dream may be an illustration of Plato's notion, regarding the existence of eternal forms, inde- pendent of matter, — an emanation of the divine mind imparted to that of human beings ; that innate idea, if you will, by which the mind views at large —
" The uncreated images of things."
And I therefore revere the opinion of Sir Thomas Brown, the ingenious author of the " Religio Medici," (with whom believed Sir Henry Wotton, Bossuet, and other good men,) " That we are somewhat more than ourselves in our sleeps, and the slumber of the body seems to be but the waking of the soul. It is the lega- tion of sense, but the liberty of reason ; and our waking conceptions do not match the fancies of our sleeps." And also the sentiment of Addison, that " there seems something in this consideration, that intimates to us a natural grandeur and perfection of the soul."
CAST. In your temple of transcendental philosophy you will leave a niche for Shakspere, dearest Ida, who, even in one of his lightest characters, forgets not this perfection of our emancipated spirit. Lorenzo whispers to the fair Jewess, in the garden at Belmont —
" Sit, Jessica. Look how the floor of heav'n Is thick inlaid with patines of bright gold ! There's not the smallest orb which thou behold'st, But in his motion, like an angel sings, Still quiring to the young-ey'd cherubims. Such harmony is in immortal souls ; But, whilst this muddy vesture of decay Doth grossly close it in, we cannot hear it."
PROPHECY OF DREAMS.
" I have heard, the spirits of the dead May walk again : if such things be, thy mother Appeared to me last night ; for ne'er was dream So like a waking." WINTER'S TALE.
ASTB. Evelyn, you have argued fluently on the nature of mind contrasted with that of matter ; but, if desired to define it, how will you answer?
Ev. That it is a combination of faculties, and their sympathy with the senses. But this definition presumes not to decide in what intimate part or texture of the brain is seated the essence itself, as we may imagine, of the mind — the principle of consciousness ; whether this be the te elementary principle" of Stewart, or the " mo- mentary impression of sense or sensation" of Brown, or the " something differing from sensation" of Reid, or the "power of feeling that we differ from the matter around us" of some one else.
ASTR. Yet on this point, (if, indeed, such point be more than imaginary,) the whole phenomena of intellect must turn. But even if you can ever hope to deter- mine this locality, it will be long, very long, ere the student of psychology will rise from his studies, with the triumphant exclamation, " TtXoc '" ere he conclude
PROPHECY OF DKKAM-. 215
his deepest researches, without the humiliating confes- sion that his philosophy wears fetters.
Yet you consider our visions as one tissue of morbid phenomena ; although there are myriads even of pro- fane visions and warning legends, which bear the certain impress of a prophecy. I never listen to those who laugh at our interpretations, without remembering that me- lancholy story of a youth of Brescia, by Boccaccio, where Andreana, I think, is relating to Jier betrothed Gabriello, an ominous dream of the stars, and of a sha- dowy demon, which had made her sad and spiritless, and for which she had exiled her lover for a whole night from her bosom. The youth smiled in scorn of such a presage ; but, in relating a dream of his own to illus- trate their fallacy, fell dead from her enfolding arms.
For once I will grant you, merely for the sake of argument, that there may be exaggeration in many a legend. I will even yield to your immolation the host of specious dreams in " Wanley^s Wonders ;" you may pass your anathema on the volumes of Glanville, and Moreton, and Aubrey, and Mather, and Berthogge, and Beaumont, as a tissue of imposture ; call them, if you will-
" A prophet's or a poet's dream, The priestcraft of a lying world."
/ will ensconce myself snugly behind the classic shields, and ask you if the pages of Pliny, of Cicero, of Socrates, are mere legends of fiction or credulity ; nay, if the books of mythology and oriental legends are not many of them founded on real events ?
It is clear that there was ever implicit and extensive faith in the East; the definition of ov a/ow, / speak the truth, implies faith in a dream. The office of the oneirocritic was a profession. Amphyction was the first (according to Pliny) of the profane expositors.
216 PROPHECY OF DREAMS.
Hieronymus the most profuse interpreter, and Lysima- chus, the grandson of Aristides, expounded dreams, for money, at the corners of the streets of Athens. The doors of Junianus Majus, the tutor of Sanagorius, and Alexander ab Alexandro, were besieged with dreamers in quest of expositions.
The Romans worshipped with divine honours Brizo, the goddess of dreams ; and the Galeotae, so named from Galei, a Hebrew word signifying to reveal, flourished in Sicily. So impressed were the Jews with the import- ance of the dream, that they convoked a tryad of friends, and went through certain ceremonies, (as writes Josephus in his twelfth book,) which they called the benefaction of a dream.
The orientals, the Greeks, and the Romans, then, were all confident in the truth of these omens. When Nestor urges his army to battle because Agamemnon had dreamed of such a course, it is but a picture of the common mind of Greece. Indeed, on great emergencies, it was the custom to solicit the inspiration of the dream, by first performing religious rites, and then in the temple, (it may be of Esculapius or Serapis,) to lie down on the reeking skins of oxen or goats, sacrificed by the priests.
I may not hope, Evelyn, to convert or alarm you, or I would warn you of the penalty incurred by the slight- ing of a vision. You may read in Livy, that Jupiter imparted his displeasure at the punishment of a slave, during a solemn procession in the forum to Titus An- tinius. But Titus scorned the vision ; when, lo ! his son was struck dead at his feet, and his own limbs were at once paralyzed. In a mood of penitence, he was borne on a couch to the senate, and after a public con- fession of his crime, his limbs immediately began to recover their energy, and he walked to his house un- assisted, amidst the wonder of the people.
PROPHECY OF DREAMS. 217
In Cicero's essay on "Divination," we read the story of two Arcadian travellers. On their arrival at Megara, these two friends slept in different houses. In the night a dream came to one of them : the phantom of his companion appeared to him, and imparted to him that his landlord was about to murder him. He awoke, and feeling assured that the idea was but a dream, fell quietly again to sleep ; but then came over him a second dream, and again the phantom was in his chamber, and told him that the deed of blood was committed, that he was murdered : and in the morning he learned that the vision was prophetic, and told him truth.
But the records of antiquity teem with tales of fatal prognostics to heroes, kings, and emperors, whose deaths, indeed, seldom took place without a prophecy. From Aristotle we learn that the death of Alexander was foretold in a dream of Etidemius, and that of Caesar by his wife Calphurnia. The emperor Marius dreamed that he saw Attila's bow broken, and the Hun king died on the same night. And Sylla (according to Ap- pian) died on the night succeeding that on which he dreamed of such a fate.
Valerius Maximus records the death of Caius Grac- chus, immediately after a dream of it by his mother.
Caracalla (as we learn from Dion Cassius) foretold his own assassination in a dream.
Cyrus (writes Xenophon) dreamed of the exact mo- ment in which he died.
And the death of Socrates was foretold to him in a dream, by a white lady, who quoted to him the 363rd line of Homer, in the ninth book.
Of remarkable events there are many strange fore- bodings ; as the dream of Judas Maccabeus when about to engage the Syrian army ; of Sylla before his engage- ment with Marius ; of Germanicus on the night before his victory over Arminius (as Tacitus records) ; and of
218 PROPHECY OF DREAMS.
Masilienus, the general sent by the emperor Honorius to oppose Gildo, and regain the possession of Africa. To him St. Ambrose, the late bishop of Milan, appeared in a dream, and striking the ground at the scene of the vision thrice with his crozier, said, " Here and in this place '" and on the same spot, the following morning, Gildo was conquered by Masilienus. Such are a few of the fatal prophecies of old.
There are others of illustrious births in the olden time, of which I will recount a few.
Plutarch writes of the dream of Agariste, announcing the birth of her son Pericles.
Sabellus, of the dream of Accia, the mother of Augustus.
The splendid impostures, as I confess them, of Ma- homet, were ushered in by a dream of Cadiga, that the sun entered her house, and that his beams illumined every building in Mecca.
In later days, the mother of Joan of Arc dreamed that she brought forth a thunderbolt ; and Arlotte, the mother of the Conqueror, that her intestines covered the whole land of Normandy.
But I waive a host of ancient dreams, as those of Astyages, the last king of Media ; Ertercules, and An- tigonus, and Simonides, and others, for I study to be brief, and pass to the professors of more modern belief.
Of Pascal Paoli, Boswell, in his account of Corsica, thus writes :
" Having asked him one day, when some of his nobles were present, whether a mind so active as his was em- ployed even in sleep, and if he used to dream much ; Signer Casa Bianca said, with an air and tone which implied something of importance, ' Si, si sogna,' Yes, he dreams. And upon my asking him to explain his meaning, he told me that the general had often seen in his dreams what afterwards came to pass. Paoli con-
PROPHECY OF DREAMS. 219
firmed this by several instances. Said he, « I can give you no clear explanation of it, — I only tell you facts. Sometimes I have been mistaken, but in general these visions have proved true. I cannot say what may be the agency of invisible spirits ; they certainly must know more than we do ; and there is nothing absurd in supposing that God should permit them to communi- cate their knowledge to us.' "
In Walton's life of Sir Henry Wotton, we read that his kinsmen, Nicholas and Thomas Wotton (whose family, by the by, were celebrated for their dreamings) had foretold their death most accurately.
In the beginning of the 18th century, a person in the west of England dreamed that his friend was on a journey with two men, whose persons were strongly pictured in his dream, and that he was robbed and mur- dered by these companions. It chanced that in a short time he was about to journey with two men, the very prototypes of his friend's dream. His earnest caution against this expedition so planned was slighted, and, on the spot marked in the dream, was this traveller robbed and murdered, and by the vivid description of the dreamer, the two men were identified and executed.
In other cases, the dream has been the means of re- tribution ; for instance, by the discovery of a murderer. In " Baker's Chronicle" we read of the conviction of Anne Waters, for the murder of her husband, through the circumstantial dream of a friend.
I believe the fate of Corder was decided by a dream ; and I may add, that Archbishop Laud dreamed himself that in his greatest pomp he should sink down to h— 11.
There is a chain of impressive visions, prophetic of the death of Villiers, Duke of Buckingham, as if some little spirit were flitting to and fro on a special mission from the realm of shadows.
220 PROPHECY OF DREAMS.
The sister of the duke, the Countess of Denbigh, dreamed she was with him in his coach, when the people gave a loud shout, and she was told it was a cry of joy at the dangerous illness of the duke. She had scarcely related her dream to one of her ladies, when the bishop of Ely came to tell her, her brother was murdered by the dagger of Felton. Shortly before this, a Scotch no- bleman asked a seer from the Highlands what he thought of this Villiers, Duke of Buckingham, then the court favourite : " He will come to naught," said he, " for I see a dagger in his heart."
But the most impressive presage were the visions of an officer of the wardrobe to the king, as related by the Earl of Clarendon and others. Parker had been an old protege of Sir George Villiers, the duke's father. On a certain night, in Windsor Castle, he saw, or dreamed of, an apparition of Sir George Villiers, who entreated him to warn his son not to follow the counsels of such and such persons, and to avert in every way the enmity of the people, as he valued his life. A second and a third night this vision was repeated, and at the last, the phantom drew a dagger from his gown, and said, " This will end my son, and do you, Parker, prepare for death." On a hunting morning this vision was imparted to Buckingham, at Lambeth Bridge, and, after the chase, the duke was seen to ride, in a pensive mood, to his mother's in Whitehall. The lady, at his departure, was found in an agony of tears, and when the story of the murder was told, she listened with an apathetic calm- ness, as if the brooding over the prophecy had half dulled her heart to the reality. Well, the duke ivas murdered, and Parker soon after died.
On that night when the Treasury of Oxford was broken open, Sir Thomas Wotton, then in Kent, dreamed circumstantially of the event, and, I believe, named and described the burglars.
PROPHECY OF. DREAMS. 221
A clergyman, whose name I forget, was once travel- ling far from his home, when he dreamed his house was on fire. He returned, and found his house a smoking ruin.
I may here cite a very curious dreaming, which, though not exactly fulfilled, displayed at least a strange coincidence in three minds. The mother of Mr. Joseph Taylor dreamed of the apparition of her son, who came to take leave as he was going a long journey. She started, and said, " Dear son, thou art dead." On the morrow, a letter came from his father, expressive of anxiety on account of this dream. The son instantly remembered his own dream, at the same hour, of hav- ing gone to his mother's room to bid farewell.
There are many warning visions, which, being hap- pily regarded, were blessed by the preservation of human life.
When our own Harvey was passing through Dover, on his continental travels, he was unexpectedly detained for a night by the order of the governor. On the next day, news came that the packet, in which Harvey was to have sailed, was lost in a storm ; and then it came out, that his excellency had, on the night before his arrival, a phantom of the doctor passing before him, which besought him to detain his substance in Dover for a day.
Alderman Clay, of Newark, dreamed twice that his house was on fire. From the second dream, he was induced to quit with his family ; and, soon afterwards, it was burned by the engines of Cromwell, which were bombarding the town. For this providential salvation, an annual sermon is preached, and bread given to the poor, in Newark.
The lady of Major Griffiths dreamed thrice of her nephew, Mr. D. The first vision imparted his inten- tion of joining a party of his companions on a fishing
•222 PROPHECY OF DREAMS.
excursion ; the second, that his boat was sinking ; the third, that it was actually sunk. At her entreaty, this gentleman was induced to remain on land ; and, in the evening, it was learned, that his ill-fated friends had been all drowned, by the swamping of the boat.
CAST. I pr'ythee, Astrophel, draw not too largely on our faith ; reserve yourself for a struggle, for I see in the glance of Evelyn's eye, that he has taken up your glove.
MORAL CAUSES OF DREAMING.
" I have had a dream, past the wit of man to say what dream it was Man is but an ass, if he f?o about to expound this dream."
MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM.
Ev. Listen, — it is my turn to speak.
Like confirmed insanity, the essence of the dream is usually a want of balance between the representative faculty and the judgment ; being produced, directly or indirectly, by the excitement of a chain of ideas, rational or probable in parts, but rendered in different degrees extravagant, or illusive, by imperfect association, — as in the dream of the " Opium Eater :" — " The ladies of Charles I.'s age danced and looked as lovely as the court of George IV. ; yet I knew, even in my dream, that they had been in the grave for nearly two cen- turies."
The relative complexity of these combinations includes the two divisions of dreams, — the plain, 0cw/Myiaraeocj and the allegorical, or images presented in their own form, or by similitude.
If we grant that certain faculties or functions of the mind are the result of nervous influence, we can as readily allow that an imperfection of these manifestations shall be the result of derangement of equilibrium in this
224 MORAL CAUSES OF DREAMING.
influence, as the material function of muscle shall be disturbed by primary or secondary disease about the brain ; of which we have daily examples among the spasmodic and nervous diseases of the body.
Referring to the calculation of Cabanis, on the falling to sleep of the senses, I can readily carry on this ana- logy to the faculties of mind. We may suppose that the faculty of judgment, as being the most important, is the first to feel fatigue, and to be influenced in the mode which I have alluded to by slumber. It is evi- dent, then, that the other faculties, which are still awake, will be uncontrolled, and an imperfect association will be the result.
Thus the ideas of a dream may be considered as a species of delirium; for the figures and situations of both are often of the most heterogeneous description, and both are ever illusive, being believed to be realities, and not being subject to the control of our intellect. Yet, if the most absurd dream be analyzed, its consti- tuent parts may consist either of ideas, in themselves not irrational, or of sensations or incidents which have been individually felt or witnessed.
So the remembered faces and forms of our absent friends, faithful though a part of the likeness may be, are associated with the grossest absurdity.
" Velut segri somnia, vanse Fingentur species, ut nee pes nee caput uni Reddatur formse."
Or, as Dryden has written, —
" Dreams are but interludes which Fancy makes : When monarch Reason sleeps, this mimic wakes ; Compounds a medley of disjointed things, A mob of cobblers, and a court of kings. Light fumes are merry, grosser fumes are sad, Both are the reasonable soul run mad ; And many monstrous forms in sleep we see, That neither were, nor are, nor e'er can be."
MORAL CAUSES OF DREAMING. 225
The little variations in the tissue of a dream are not rectified by judgment. So the vision may have led us to the very consummation of the highest hopes with love and beauty, and then, if an object even of degrada- tion or deformity shall cross the dream, an association shall be formed imparting a feeling of loathing and horror.
You may take Hobbes' illustration, Astrophel, which you will probably prefer to mine. Hobbes says of the compositions of phantoms, " Water when moved at once by divers movements, receiveth one motion compounded of them all ; so it is in the brain, or spirits stirred by divers objects; there is composed an imagination of divers conceptions that appeared single to the sense ; as sense at one time showeth the figure of a mountain, at another of gold, and the imagination afterwards com- poses them into a golden mountain."
I believe Parkhurst also will tell you, that the He- brew word for dream, refers to things erroneously viewed by the senses ; for each may assume, individually, an intimate accordance with another, although the first and last appear perfectly incongruous, as the Chinese puzzle will be a chaos, if its pieces be wrongly placed ; a faulty rejoining, in fact, of scenes and objects reduced to their constituent elements.
" I dreamed once," said Professor Maass, of Halle, "that the pope visited me. He commanded me to open my desk, and he carefully examined all the papers it contained. While he was thus employed, a very sparkling diamond fell out of his triple crown into my desk, of which, however, neither of us took any notice. As soon as the pope had withdrawn, I retired to bed, but was soon obliged to rise on account of a thick smoke, the cause of which I had yet to learn. Upon examination, I discovered that the diamond had set fire to the papers in my desk, and burnt them to ashes."
Q
•22G MORAL CAUSES OF DREAMING.
This dream deserves a short analysis, on account of the peculiar circumstances which occasioned it. " On the preceding evening," continues Professor Maass, " I was visited by a friend, with whom I had a livery con- versation upon Joseph II.'s suppression of monasteries and convents. With this idea, though I did not become conscious of it in the dream, was associated the visit which the pope publicly paid the emperor Joseph at Vienna, in consequence of the measures taken against the clergy ; and, with this again was combined, how- ever faintly, the representation of the visit which had been paid me by my friend. These two events were by the subreasoning faculty compounded into one, accord- ing to the established rule — that things which agree in their parts, also correspond as to the whole ; hence the pope's visit was changed into a visit paid to me. The subreasoning faculty, then, in order to account for this extraordinary visit, fixed upon that which was the most important object in my room, namely, the desk, or rather the papers it contained. That a diamond fell out of the triple crown, was a collateral association, which was owing merely to the representation of the desk. Some days before, when opening the desk, I had broken the glass of my watch, which I held in my hand, and the fragments fell among the papers ; hence no farther attention was paid to the diamond, being a representation of a collateral series of things. But afterwards, the representation of the sparkling stone was again excited, and became the prevailing idea; hence it determined the succeeding association. On account of its similarity, it excited the representation of fire, with which it was confounded ; hence arose fire and smoke. But, in the event, the writings only were burnt, not the desk itself, to which, being of compara- tively less value, the attention was not at all directed."
Impressions of memory may not perhaps appear con-
MORAL CAUSES. OF DREAM INC. -J27
sistent with imagination, but, on the principle I have advanced, it will be found that, although the idea ex- cited by memory be consistent, these ideas may, by fanciful association, become imagination ; appearing, on superficial view, to illustrate the doctrine of innate idea. But is this doctrine proved? We may seem to imagine that which we do not remember, as a whole ; but, as a curve is made up of right lines, — as a mass is composed of an infinity of atoms, — so may it follow, that what is termed " innate idea," if minutely divided, may be proved to arise from memory; made up of things, however minute, which we have seen or heard of. Ana- lysis may thus unravel many a " strange mysterious dream."
IDA. I have ever believed that there were incidents recorded, which left no doubt of the truth of innate idealism. Dr. Beattie has observed: "Men born blind, or who have lost all remembrance of light and colours, are as capable of invention, and dream as frequently, as those who see."
Ev. These, fair lady, are surely very imperfect data. If a person loses remembrance of individual colour, he does not lose the power of comparing or of judging variety of colour. And, again, although he may be congeni tally blind, yet if there be any other sense but sight, through which the mind can perceive or receive external impression, the objection must fail.
There are very strange communities of the senses, which you may smile at, yet are they perfectly true.
Dr. Blacklock, (who was very early in life struck blind,) expressed his ideas of colour, by referring to a peculiar sound, the two being as it were synonymous to him. And he fancied also, in his dreaming, that he was connected to other bodies by myriads of threads or rays of feeling.
I may assure you, too, that on the loss of any one Q2
228 MORAL. CAUSES OF DREAMING.
sense, the subsequent dreams, after a lapse of time, will not be referred to that sense.
Dr. Darwin will supply you with very illustrative in- stances of this ; from which you will learn, that after blindness had afflicted certain persons, they never dreamed that they saw objects hi their sleep: and a deaf gentleman, who had talked with his fingers for thirty years, invariably dreamed also of finger-speaking, and never alluded to any dreaming of friends having orally conversed with him.
ASTR. I believe that a black colour was disagreeable to Cheselden's blind boy, from the moment he saw it.
Ev. Because, from certain laws of refraction, the effect was instantly painful to his eye.
ASTR. I remember, Sir Walter Scott, in his "Letters on Demonology and Witchcraft," informs us that "those experienced in the education of the deaf and dumb find that their pupils, even cut off from all instruction by ordinary means, have been able to form, out of their own unassisted conjectures, some ideas of the existence of a Deity, and of the distinction between the soul and body."
Ev. And do you not see, dear Astrophel, the dilemma of this argument? Before the deaf and dumb pupil can adopt a language, by which to make his preceptor sensible of his thoughts or sentiments, he must have had certain facts or knowledge imparted to him, by signs or other modes of instruction. The modes of mutual understanding must first emanate from the tutor, and with these ideas may be excited, which, at first sight, may seem to be innate or unassisted.
Believe not that I deny a moral consciousness of the existence of the Deity and of our immortality; but how can we prove it, in those who have no sense to explain it?
If it were possible to find a creature so wretched as to
MORAL CAUSES OF DREAM1NC. J2Q
be endued with no external sense from his birth, such a being would neither dream nor think ; he would lead the life almost of a zoophyte, ceasing, of course, to be a re- sponsible agent !
Caspar Hauser never dreamed, till he slept at Pro- fessor Daunay*s, and had been introduced to intellectual society, and been taught ; and then, even, he could not comprehend the nature of his dreams.
The arguments in the " Phaedo" of Plato point to this truth, that the germ of all ideas is sown in the mind by the senses. So, also, the metaphysics of Kant teach that the senses are feelers or conductors, by which we obtain materials of our knowledge; and indeed that matter and sensation are synonymous ; that matter ex- ists a priori in the mind. This was the belief of Cole- ridge, that there can be nothing fancied in our dreams, without an antecedent quasi cause, a Roman having written, before him, the same sentiment : —
" Nihil in intellectu, quod non prius in sensu."
Remember still that this philosophy is apart from revelation.
I am aware that among the deaf and dumb high moral sentiments may exist. But if they can read essays, these sentiments may be imbibed in their read- ing. And yet a very learned lord has asserted, that a being, doomed to absolute solitude and estrangement from his very birth, could discover the principles of algebra ! At this sophism, oh shade of Epictetus ! thou mightest rise, to vindicate the importance of our beauti- ful senses ; of the eye, beyond all, that achromatic globe of brightest crystal, the contemplation of which first convinced thee of design in the Creator, and prompted thee to pen the first " Bridgewater Treatise."
On the opening, or even the restoration of a sense, in this forlorn " plant animal," all his associations
230 MORAL CAUSES OF DREAMING.
would be erroneous. He would, at first, see double; he would, like children, consider all bodies, however distant, within his grasp ; and, like the idiot, draw all his figures topsy-turvy, as they are really painted on the retina, until judgment and practice rectified his error.
I do not reason hypothetically, for these truths were illustrated in the youth whose pupils were opened by the operation of Cheselden.
There are romantic stories, not foreign to this subject, in which the creation of a Caliban is almost a truth ; and which exemplify to us the accordance of nature with habit and circumstance, and the dearth of mind when deprived of the light of instruction.
I allude to those unhappy creatures who, with the form and organs of man, have run wild in the woods, and fed on husks, and berries, and herded with the brute. We have some very curious histories of these beings, especially in the 17th and 18th centuries. Two were discovered in the Forest of Lithuania ; one in the Forest of Yuary, in the Pyrenees, by M. Le Roy ; two wild girls by a nobleman, near Chalons, in Champagne ; and Peter the wild boy, found by the escort of George I. in the woods of Hertswold, in Hanover. In these cases disease might have been discovered ; yet the effect of partial civilization, even in minute points, indicates some power of acquiring ideas not congenital.
But as to these dreaming flights of the spirit of good Sir Thomas Brown, I may confess, Astrophel, that you have some poets and metaphysicians, and even a few philosophers, on your side. You may read in Plato's " Phaedo," that " the body is the prison of the soul ; that the soul, when it came from God, knew all ; but, inclosed in the body, it forgets and learns anew.'1 And in Seneca :
" Corpus hoc aninii poudus cat."
MORAL CAUSES OF DREAM1M . 231
And in Petronius :
" Cum prostrata sopon*,
Urget membra quies, ct mens sine pondere ludit."
This sentiment Addison has very readily adopted; prating about " the amusements of the soul when she is disencumbered of her machine," and so forth. And yet Addison, I remember, thus qualifies his creed : — " I do not suppose that the soul, in these instances, is en- tirely loose and unfettered from the body ; it is sufficient if she is not so far sunk and immersed in matter, nor entangled and perplexed in her operations, with such motions of blood and spirits, as when she actuates the machine in its waking hours. The corporeal union is slackened enough to give the mind more play," &c.
In this conceit, deficient both in philosophy and psychology, you perceive the speculator draws in his horns, and concludes with that which means nothing. It is, indeed, a mere compromise ; an endeavour to ex- tricate from their perilous dilemma the metaphysical pathologists who talk so fluently of the diseases of the immaterial mind, forgetful, it would seem, of this truth — that which is diseased may die ; a consummation which would undermine the Christian faith, and blight the holiest hope of man — the prospect of immortality.
And yet my Astrophel will lean to the vagaries of our pseudo-psychologists, who believed the dream to be the flight of the soul on a visit to other regions ; and its ob- servation of their nature and systems from actual survey. Of the fruits of this ethereal voyage the dreamer, I pre- sume, is made conscious when the soul returns to the brain, its earthly pabulum or home. Were this so, it should enjoy visions of unalloyed beatitude ; and even were there a limit to its excursions, a thing so pure and perfect would select angelic communion only. I do not aver that such things are not, but that we cannot
232 MORAL CAUSES OF DREAMING.
know it here. We have no satisfactory remembrance of cities and temples thus surveyed, more gorgeous than the waking conceptions of the thousand and one nights ; or the legends of the genii ; no wonders or eccentricities which eclipse the exploits of Gulliver, Peter Wilkins, Friar Bacon, or Baron Munchausen.
Lavater carries out this caprice, by a very fine meta- physical thought, to illustrate the night-apparition. That it is their " transportive or imaginative faculty that causes others to appear to us in our dreams." And I myself was once gravely told by a visionary, that he dreamed, one night, of a certain old woman ; and she afterwards told him, that she dreamed she was, on that very night, in his chamber. So, you perceive, her imago, or material thought, entered into his mind, and caused his dream.
Is not this sublime ?
Now it is clear that these illusions cannot tend to advance the dignity of mind.' Nothing can be more convincing to prove a suspension of judgment. Re- member that during this life, — the incorporation of the soul, — we are conscious of it only through the brain. It is not yet emancipated ; and it is an error to think, because sometimes we have a brilliant vision, that there- fore^ if the body were more inactive, the soul would be more ethereal.
ASTR. And yet we are assured that Alexander, and Voltaire, and La Fontaine, and Condillac, and Tartini, and Franklin, and Mackenzie, and Coleridge, were wont to compose plans of battles, and problems, and poems, in their dreams, with a degree of vigour and facility, far exceeding their waking studies.
Ev. This very facility proves that there was associa- tion from memory, without volition or effort ; the mind being in a state of reverie, and the senses quiescent. In this consists the vivid and delightful visions lighted up
MORAL CAUSES OF DREAM I N
by our memory in slumber, especially when there is darkness and silence, so that there is no perception ; or when the mind is concentrated, and has been reposing, so that its fancy is a novelty.
But this identifying, by Sir Thomas Brown, of reason and fancy, is itself a proof of error. The energy of the first is exercised on data or facts ; that of the second, in mere hypothetic amusement.
It were indeed much better that we established either the material hypothesis of Priestley, or his antipodes, Berkeley, — that nature was but a compound of spirits, ideas unfettered by matter ; or the visionary scheme of Hume (borrowed indeed from the Hindoo philosopher, Abul Fazel), that there is nought but impression and idea in nature ; or even the absolute scepticism of Pyrrho ; — than that we should favour the rhapsody of Brown, that the consciousness of waking moments should thus deteriorate reason, and render the mind incompatible with sublunary duties. ' CAST. Coleridge, I believe, was so impressed with his own dreaming compositions, that he said, " the dullest wight might be a Shakspere in his dreams." What may he deserve for such presumption ?
Ev. Coleridge was an opium-eater, and the whole intellectual life of this mighty metaphysician was a dream. And you may forget that Coleridge was already a poet, and reasons thus from impressions in his own visions, during the elysium of his anodyne. But the contrasted feelings of Coleridge's nights at once confirm the monomania of his dreaming ; and if you read his "Pains of Sleep," Castaly, you will not deem them a slight penalty, even for his libel on your sweet Shakspere.
But the conclusions of three sage grave men on this subject will impress your belief more than mine. The mentor of Rasselas, Johnson himself, speaks by the of Imlac. —
234 MORAL CAUSES OF DREAMING.
" All power of Fancy over Reason is a degree of insa- nity. By degrees, the reign of Fancy is confirmed ; she grows first imperious, and in tune despotic. Then fictions begin to operate as realities, false opinions fasten upon the mind, and life passes in dreams of rapture, or of anguish."
And so convinced was the learned Boerhave of this, that he even held imagination and judgment to have different localities, because this influenced the mind asleep, and that, awake.
And why, Astrophel, dream we of strange things ? Because we cannot compare illusion with reality. So we may reverse the doctrine of Pyrrho (who doubted his own existence), and imagine ourselves possessed of ubiquity. We may fancy we are both old and young at the same moment, nay, that we are and are not; possess the hundred eyes of Argus, or the hundred arms of Briareus ; that Zoroaster, and Virgil, and Shakspere, and ourselves, are po-existent. Indeed, our thoughts and actions are all modelled on a principle of paradox, — as wild even as the visions in the " Con- fessions of an Opium-Eater."
Then turn to the words of Marmontel, which identify the wanderings of a dream with the flitting fancies of a mind prostrate from the effect of disorder. These words were written under extreme indisposition : —
" I was reduced so low, that I could read nothing but the Arabian Nights' Entertainments ; and it is ex- traordinary that often, while every other faculty, judg- ment, the will, association, perfection, even the memory itself, is in a state of almost total re-action, this volatile thing, imagination, should be the most robust and ac- tive ; it seems to rejoice at the release from companion- ship with its fellows, and darts off on seraph-wings, rambles through all space, visits all places, turning, and tossing, and jostling all things in its progress, or con-
MORAL CAUSES OF DREAMING. 235
joining them in the most grotesque shapes. The ima- gination in madmen is often of this description ; and there may be
" A pleasure in madness, that none but madmen know."
Then we may dream ourselves to be others, — an ideal transmigration ; this is error. We wake to a sense of our own reality ; this is truth.
CAST. Yet this truth may be often withheld by potent impression, as in the illusion of Rip Van Winkle, and the trances of Nourjahad. I believe the waking mind of Caspar Hauser knew not the difference between dream and reality ; he related his dream as fact.
Ev. If there were ever such a being as Caspar Hauser, his life was a dream ; for, without the culture of his mind, he would be reasonless.
ANACHRONISM AND COINCIDENCE OF DREAMS.
" Rom. I dreamt a dream to night. Merc. And so did I.
Rom. Well, what was yours ? Merc. That dreamers often lie."
ROMEO AND JULIET.
ASTR. Then we are to learn that the mind is ever imperfect in a dream. But, Evelyn, is not that rather perfection, which magnifies space and time a million- fold, completing the labours of years in a second ? The time occupied with the dream must be limited, often far short of the seeming duration of a scene. Like the wonderful velocity of atoms of light, the crude and heterogeneous ideas succeed each other with incalcula- ble rapidity. We appear to have travelled over a series of miles, or to have existed for a series of years, during a very minute portion of the night, — how minute it is perhaps impossible to determine. I believe it is the Opium-Eater, still, who thus confesses : — " I sometimes seemed to have lived for seventy or a hundred years, in one night ; nay, sometimes, had feelings representative of a millennium passed in that time, or however of a
ANACHRONISM AND COINCIDENCE OF DREAMS. 237
duration far beyond the limits of any human expe- rience."
This may be, as your smile implies, the dream of opium madness ; but let this dream of Lavalette, also, prove some truth in my illustration.
The count, during his confinement, had a frightful dream, which he thus relates : " One night, while I was asleep, the clock of the Palais de Justice struck twelve, and awoke me. I heard the gate open to relieve the sentry, but I fell asleep again immediately. In this sleep I dreamed that I was standing in the Rue St. Honore, at the corner of the Rue de PEchelle. A melancholy darkness spread around me ; all was still. Nevertheless a low and uncertain sound soon arose. All of a sudden I perceived, at the bottom of the street, and advancing towards me, a troop of cavalry ; the men and horses, however, all flayed. The men held torches in their hands, the flames of which illumined faces with- out skin, and with bloody muscles. Their hollow eyes rolled fearfully in their large sockets; their mouths opened from ear to ear, and helmets of hanging flesh covered their hideous heads. The horses dragged along their own skins in the kennels, which overflowed with blood on both sides. Pale and dishevelled women ap- peared and disappeared alternately at the windows in dismal silence; low inarticulate groans filled the air, and I remained in the street alone, petrified with horror and deprived of strength sufficient to seek my safety by flight. This horrible troop continued passing in rapid gallop, and casting frightful looks on me. Their march, I thought, continued for five hours, and they were fol- lowed by an immense number of artillery waggons, full of bleeding corpses, whose limbs still quivered. A dis- gusting smell of blood and bitumen almost choked me. At length the iron gate of the prison, shutting with great force, awoke me again. I made my repeater strike,
238 ANACHRONISM AND COINCIDENCE
— it was no more than midnight, so that the horrible phantasmagoria had lasted no more than ten minutes ; that is to say, the time necessary for relieving the sentry and shutting the gate. The cold was severe and the watchword short. The next day the turnkey confirmed my calculations. I nevertheless do not remember one single event in my life, the duration of which I have been able more exactly to calculate."
CAST. You are modest, Astrophel. Think of the wonders of fairyland. Our dainty Ariel will " place a girdle round the world in forty minutes." And, even more wonderful still, I have read, in the "Arabian Tales," of a monarch who immersed his head in a water bucket, and imagined he had in one minute traversed a space of infinite extent ; and (though perchance I should crave pardon for any thing Evelyn may term an im- puted miracle, or imposture, yet) for a moment listen to that exquisite passage in the " Spectator," which Addi- son pretends to have gathered from the Koran, although I believe there is in that book no such story. " The angel Gabriel took Mahomet out of his bed one morn- ing to give him a sight of all things in the seven heavens, in paradise, and in hell, which the prophet took a dis- tinct view of, and after having held ninety thousand conferences with God, was brought back again to his bed. All this was transacted in so small a space of time that Mahomet, at his return, found his bed still warm, and took up an earthen pitcher, which was thrown down at the very instant that the angel Gabriel carried him away, before the water ivas all spilt."
Ev. If all the circumstances of these dreams were rational, I might agree with you, Astrophel ; but the ideas are irrational which so far outstrip the facts of our experience; except in their estimation who, like the Hibernian, would value their watch because it went faster than the sun. Now the extent of velocity in the
OK DRKA.M*. 239
ideas of insane minds is equally extreme ; and, when these anachronisms occur in dreams, the ideas are, I believe, ever false. Deeply interesting, however, are tales of such curiosities of dreaming, as those which the two Scottish physicians, Abercrombie and Gregory, have recorded.
" A gentleman dreamed that he had enlisted as a soldier ; that he had joined his regiment ; that he had deserted; was apprehended and carried back to his regiment : that he was tried by the court-martial, con- demned to be shot, and was led out for execution. At the moment of the completion of these ceremonies, the guns of the platoon were fired, and at the report he awoke. It was clear that a loud noise, in the adjoining room, had both produced the dream and, almost at the moment, awoke the dreamer."
There was another gentleman who for some time, after sleeping in the damp, suffered a sense of suffoca- tion when slumbering in a recumbent position ; and a dream would then come over him, as of a skeleton which grasped him firmly by the throat. This dream became at length so distressing, that sleep was to him no bless- ing, but a state of torture ; and he had a centinel posted by his couch, with orders to awake his master when slumber seemed to be stealing o'er him. One night, ere he was awakened, he was attacked by the skeleton, and a long and severe conflict ensued. When fully awake, he remonstrated with the watcher for allowing him to remain so long in his dream, and, to his astonishment, learned that his dream had been momentary, and that he was awoke on the instant that he had begun to slumber.
But granting your notions of dreaming perfections, Astrophel, there are, to a certain extent, even here, analogies. You forget that in our waking moments our ideas are often so fleet as to be profitless to our judg-
6
240 ANACHRONISM AND COINCIDENCE
ment ; and why not in a dream ? In the estimation of distance, with what velocity the train of reasoning passes through the mind ! Ere we have formed our notions of
o
an object, how instantaneous our reflections on all its qualities — its brilliancy of colour, its apparent magni- tude, its form, &c., and the angle of inclination in regard to the axis of the eye; and our conclusions (for judgment is awake) are echoes of the truth. But in the dream is it so ? No. We get the idea (as Mr. Locke has written) of time or duration by reflecting on that train of ideas which succeed each other in the mind. In waking hours the judgment clearly regulates this ; but in dreams this course of reflection is impeded, and the measurement of time is imperfect and erroneous, so that it is the common characteristic of a dream, that there is no idea of time ; the past and the future are equally present.
Start not, if to strengthen this my illustration, I lead you again into the mad-house ; again unconsciously combine a dream with insanity, in quoting these ex- pressions of the Rev. Robert Hall (from " Green's Reminiscences"), in allusion to his first attack of mania. "All my imagination has been overstretched. You, with the rest of my friends, tell me that I was only seven weeks in confinement, and the date of the year corresponds, so that I am bound to believe you, but they have appeared to me like seven years. My mind was so excited, and my imagination so lively and active, that more ideas passed through my mind during those seven weeks than in any seven years of my life. What- ever I had obtained from reading or reflection was present to me."
IDA. The apparent anachronism of such dreams, Eve- lyn, refers to imperfect function. Yet he will remember we are reasoning as finite beings. True, Malebranche has asserted, that " it is possible some creatures may think
OF I) Id. AM-. 241
half an hour as long as we do a thousand years, or look upon that space of duration which we call a minute, as an hour, a week, a month, or a whole age. But in re- gard to the prospect of futurity, of a more perfect state, who of us can decide that this seeming illusion is not one evidence of the divine nature of mind ; a remote resemblance, if I may presume so to say, of one attri- bute of the Creator, to whom a thousand years are as one day?"
I have learned from your own theory, Evelyn, that mind is either imperfect or passive in the dream. Does not this passive condition itself imply inspiration ? For is not that, in which are produced results, while itself is inactive, under the special influence of some high power, as were the visions of the holy records ?
Although I may not yield my entire belief in the fallacy of modern inspiration because it is not proved, yet I have not listened to your learning, Evelyn, with- out some leaning to the apparent truth of your disser- tations. I might hesitate to confess myself your pupil ; still, the incidents you have adduced will make me pause, ere I again blend profane arguments with the truths of holy writ. Yet I cannot yield the feeling, that the dream is an emblem, at least, of immortality.
As a beautiful illustration of such philosophy, I re- member (in Fulgosius) a legend told by Saint Austin to Enodius : —
There was a physician of Carthage, who was a sceptic regarding immortality and the soul's separate existence. It chanced one night that Genadius dreamt of a beautiful city. On the second night, the youth who had been his guide reappeared, and asked if Gena- dius remembered him ; he answered, yes, and also his dream. ' And where/ said the apparition, 'were you then lying?' 'In my bed, sleeping/ 'And if your mind's eye, Genadius, surveyed a city, even while your
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body slept, may not this pure and active spirit still live, and observe, and remember, even though the body may be shapeless or decayed within its sepulchre ?'
The dreams of Scripture, those " thoughts from the visions of night, when deep sleep came upon men," were associated with the mission of an angel, or imme- diate communion with the Deity. For He has saidj in the twelfth of Numbers, that he would " speak to his prophets in a dream :" from the first and self-interpret- ing dream of Abimelech, the visions interpreted by the inspired propounder Joseph, the first dream of the New Testament, the fulfilment of the Annunciation, the im- pressive trance of Peter, in coincidence with the visions of the centurion, even to the holy visions of the Apoca- lypse.
Indeed, the surpassing evidence and truth in all, but especially in the inspired interpretation of Joseph of the dream of Pharaoh, and those of the still more in- spired oneirocritic, Daniel, cannot be compared with aught profane.
The prophet not only expounded, but reminded Ne- buchadnezzar of his dream, when he himself had for- gotten it. This was the result of special prayer to the Deity; and, remember, without this, the Chaldeans failed in their efforts. Even Josephus informs us, that Daniel "foretold good things and pleased, so that he was deemed divine." And you have read, that Saul also prayed for a dream, but HE dreamt not, because he was not holy. And there are holy precepts regarding dreams, which are recorded to curb our superstitious reliance on all. We have assurances of true dreamers in the first chapter of Matthew, the second of the Acts, in Deuteronomy, and the thirty-fourth of Ecclesiasticus ; the language of the son of Sirach was, that " common dreams only serve to lift up fools." With these reser- vations, I do believe that the real inspiration of a spirit
OF DREAMS. 243
is the gift only of the holy and the good ; so that the presumption of divination and prophecy by profane dreamers is an illusion ; yet, I acknowledge with John Wesley, that many have been converted by a dreaming conscience; as we read of impressive dreams, which have effected the conversion of others by the mere re- cital. Wilmot, Earl of Rochester, was a sceptic ; but, as we are informed by Burnet in his " Life and Death," his mind was first led to the conviction of an immaterial spirit, by the prophetic dream of his mother, the Lady de la Warre, foreboding truly his own death.
And I must ever admire the moral wisdom of Zeno, which (according to Plutarch) induced him to regard a dream as the test of virtue ; for, if in his dream his heart did not recoil from vicious suggestions, there was an immediate necessity of self-examination and repent- ance. I cannot forbear adding, that there is much wisdom in the estimation of his vision, by one of the shepherd kings of Egypt, Sabaco. He dreamed that the tutelary deity of Thebes enjoined him to kill the priests of Egypt, and, for this unmerciful injunction from the gods, that they deemed him unfit for the throne, he went into self-exile, to ^Ethiopia.
Ev. The conclusions of these moralists from dream- ing impressions were somewhat straightlaced : yet your reflections, Ida, point to the safest mode by which we may reconcile the conflict of the divine and the physio- logist, and, above all, evince our devotion to the Creator ; namely, to argue on creation as we see it, and on revela- tion as we see it recorded.
Yet, with a mock solemnity, dreams and apparitions have been first adduced as proofs of the soul's immor- tality ; and then, in the same argument, are themselves proved by this immortality ; the points of the syllogism are reversed, and we have petitio principii, a begging of the question.
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This hypothesis of dreaming has formed the basis of certain religious impostures. Among others, of Dubri- cius and Comedius ; and, above all, the fanatical visions of Emanuel Swedenborg, who founded his especial sect, by the declaration of having visited Paradise.
In our analysis of revelation, the conflict of two pow- erful minds might, on doctrinal points, attack, and in the end annihilate, the faith of each, in then* struggle for the victory ; which may remind you of the murders both of Protestants and Papists, especially in Ireland, resulting from the wild excitement of fanaticism and bigotry; and the persecutions which have, as history records, sprung from debates on holy subjects. Re- member the martyrdom of the amiable and beautiful Anne Ascue, who was burnt at the stake for dis- senting from the theological tenets of Henry VIIL, regarding the real presence. On the rack, her silence was a model of heroism, for she might have impeached the queen and her ladies ; and Wriothesly, the chan- cellor, it is said, in his rage to extort the secret, him- self stretched the wheel, so as almost to tear her body asunder.
And then the blasphemy of that convocation, sum- moned in the reign of Mary Tudor, to renew the dis- cussion on that sacred point of transubstantiation, between the Protestants and the Romanists; — but I leave this topic to the mild theologian, who will confess it would have withheld a stain from the page of history, had these mock religionists acknowledged, with the pious Pascal, that "the sublime truths of our religion and the essence of the immortal spirit are inexplicable by the deepest research of wisdom, and are unfolded only by the inspired light of revelation."
Now it was clear that the dreams of the classic poets were not all truly prophetic; and in accordance with this are their delineations of the house of sleep. Indeed
OF DREAMS. 245
we may almost fancy, for a moment, that there might be some reality in these poetical surveyors, until we reflect that the Roman notions were plagiaries from the Greeks.
It is true, the locality of this Palace of Somnus, like the site of Troy, is not a little diversified by Homer and the rest ; but, whether it be Lemnos, or Ethiopia, or Cimmeria, these are its descriptions :
First, of Homer, —
" Immur'd withiu the silent bower of sleep, Two portals firm the various phantoms keep : Of iv'ry one, whence flit, to mock the brain, Of winged lies a light fantastic train. The gate oppos'd, pellucid valves adorn, And columns fair incased with polish'd horn ; Where images of truth for passage wait, With visions manifest of future fate."
And Virgil's is a close copy.
In the " City of Dreams," of Lucian, the blasphemer (whose beauties are stained by their impieties), these eternal gates are again alluded to. But the dreams in this city are all deceivers ; for when a mortal enters the gates, a circle of domestic dreams in a moment unfold to him a budget of intelligence, which proves to be a tissue of lies.
Tertullian, and many others, have argued the notion of a special purpose of the Deity in every dream. And the " New Moral World " of the visionary Owen, asserts, that " one chief source of our knowledge is dreams and omens."
In the eras of inspiration, few will be sceptical enough to doubt the occurrence of divine mediations ; or not to believe, with Socrates, and other sages, in the divine origin of dreams and omens.
The evidence of Holy Scripture again proves the
246 ANACHRONISM AND COINCIDENCE
occasion, indeed the necessity, for such communication ; but, in our own time, I deem it little less than profane- ness, to imagine that the Deity should indicate the future occurrence of common-place and trivial incidents through the medium of an organ, confessedly in a state of imperfection, at the moment when the faculties of mind are returning from a state of temporary suspen- sion,— a death-like sleep.
Even John Wesley believed dreams to be " doubtful and disputable ;" and adds, with a half-profanation, — " they might be from God, or might not."
The Emperor Constantine, you know, denounced death to all who dared to look seriously into the secrets of futurity.
When we reflect that the proportion of events, seem- ingly the fulfilment of a dream, is to the myriads of forebodings which never come to pass (as the dreams recorded with some solemnity by Herodotus, of Alcibi- ades ; of Croesus, regarding his son Atys ; of Astyages and the vine ; of Cambyses, respecting Smerdis ; and of Hamilcar, at the siege of Syracusa ;) as a drop in the ocean, the fallacy of the doctrine must be evident. I marvel much that credulity, in this reflecting age, can gain a single proselyte.
The magi of Persia and the soothsayers of Greece and Rome were constantly in error; and Artemidorus Miraldus, who in the reign of Antoninus wrote his voluminous book " Oneirocriticus," has given us the most ridiculous interpretations.
When the pagan priesthood of old lay down on the reeking skins of their victims to rouse the inspiration of their dreams, it was to cheat their proselytes. Such were the mummeries in the Temple of ^Esculapius. The devotees were first purified by the " lustra! water ;" and then divine visions came over them, and priest- esses in snowy robes, and a venerable priest in the
OP DREAMS. 247
habit of JSsculapius, paraded round the altar, and the charm was complete.
You may learn from Martin something about the modern influence of such a charm.
" Mr. Alexander Cooper, present minister of North- uist, told me that one John Erach, in the Isle of Lewis, assured him that it was his fate to have been led by his curiosity to some who consulted this oracle, and that he was a night within the hide as above mentioned, during which time he felt and heard such terrible things that he could not express them ; the impression it made on him was such as could never go off, and he said for a thousand worlds he would never again be concerned in the like performance, for this had disordered him to a high degree. He confessed it ingenuously and with an air of great remorse, and seemed to be very penitent under a just sense of so great a crime : he declared this about five years since, and is still living in the Lewis for any thing I know."
In imitation of this spell for the divine inspiration of a dream, the modern Franciscans, after the ceremony of mass, throw themselves on mats already consecrated by the slumber of some holy visionary, and with all this foolery, they vaunt the divine inspiration of their dream.
Cicero, and Theophrastus, and many other sages, were sceptical of these special visitations, and explained ra- tionally dreams and divinations, as Cicero his dream at ^Etina, on his flight from Rome.
Then there is this anathema of Ennius : —
"Augurs, and soothsayers, astrologers, diviners, and interpreters of dreams I never consult, and despise their vain pretence to more than human skill." And also this caution bequeathed to you by Epictetus: " Never tell thy dream ; for though thou thyself mayest take a pleasure in telling thy dream, another will take no pleasure in hearing it."
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ASTR. Epictetus was himself a dreamer in this ; for the story of a dream is ever listened to with interest. And what would Epictetus think, were I to tell him that broad lands and mitres have been gained before now by the shrewd putting of a dream ?
Ev. I confess, as in the illusion of phantoms, there are records of very strange coincidences in dreaming, which may be startling to many superficial minds.
Pereskius, the friend of Gassiendi, after a severe fever, in 1609, was engaged in the study of ancient coins, weights, and measures. One night, he dreamed he met a goldsmith at Nismes, who offered him a coin of Julius Caesar for four cardecues. The next day this in- cident was repeated to him in reality. But he was a philosopher, and deemed it, as it was, but a rare coin- cidence.
There were two sisters, who (as a learned physician has recorded) were sleeping together during the ill- ness of their brother. One of these ladies dreamed that her watch, an old family relic, had stopped, and, on waking her sister to tell of this, she was answered by her thus : " Alas ! I have worse to tell you : our bro- ther's breath is also stopped" On the following night, the same dream was repeated to the young lady. On the morning after this second dream, the lady, on taking out the watch, which had been perfect in its movement, observed that it had indeed stopped, and at the same moment she heard her sister screaming; the brother, who had been till then apparently recovering, had just breathed his last.
These are sequences, and not consequences : and I might adduce a mass of these mere coincidences, which have been stretched and warped, to make up a pro- phecy. Such as the following legend of Sergius Galba, told by Fulgosius : " Galba had coquetted with two marble ladies, — the Fortune, at Tusculum, and the Capitoline
OF DREAMS.
Venus ; and, to adorn the neck of the first, he had pur- chased a brilliant diamond necklace. But the charms of the Venus of the Capitol prevailed over her rival, and the necklace was at length presented to the goddess of beauty. At night, the form of Fortune appeared to him in his sleep, upbraiding him with his falsehood, and telling him that he should be deprived of all the gifts she had lavished on him, and Galba, as the story goes, soon after died."
But, if dreams are essentially prophetic, why are they not all fulfilled ? and if one is not fulfilled, how know we if all will not be equally fallacious ? The ar- gument for the prophetic nature is merely a posteriori, the shallow " post hoc, ergo propter hoc," of the sophist. On the occurrence of any important event, all the auguries and dreams which bear the slightest semblance to a prophecy are immediately adduced, and stretched and warped to suit the superstition ; as the whimsical mother will account for the marks on her child by frights and longings. When we know that myriads of enthusiasts and hypochondriacs have, by the failure of their predictions, deserved the stigma of false prophets, we may surely class these phantasies among the popular errors of the time.
Yet the fulfilment of a prophecy may be consequence ; and that without the imputation of falsehood or impo- sition, or of any special interference. (I am not recant- ing my opinions, Astrophel.)
1st. Through the effect of an imparted impetus.
2nd. Foresight, from the study of events and cha- racter.
3rd. Constant thinking on one subject.
4th. Impressions of terror or alarm, from spectres, sybils, &c.
As there are dreams from impressions on the body during sleep, so are there diseased tissues in the brain,
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which light up phantoms of terror and death perfectly prophetic. But wherefore so? Merely because they are induced by that disease which usually terminates in death. Such were the dreams during the nightmare which preceded, and, I believe, still precede, the epi- demic fevers in Rome, and in those of Ley den, in 1669, when the patient fell asleep, and was attacked by incubus before each exacerbation. The impersonation of death was the prevailing phantom of their dream, and in reality death soon followed.
Among those heathen tribes, where superstition and ignorance form part of a national creed, there is a de- gree of blindness and inconsistency that may truly be termed mania. It is the doctrine, not of prophecy, but of debased and absolute fatalism. The North American Indians not only regard the dream as prophetic, but often receive it as a solemn injunction, and are them- selves the active agents in its fulfilment. " In what- ever manner," says Charlevoix, "the dream is con- ceived, it is always looked upon as a thing sacred, and as the most ordinary way in which the gods make known their will to men. Filled with this idea, they cannot conceive how we should pay no regard to them. For the most part they look upon them either as a desire of the soul, inspired by some genius, or an order from him, and, in consequence of this principle, they hold it a religious duty to obey them. An Indian, having dreamt of the amputation of his finger, had it really cut off as soon as he awoke, first preparing himself for this important action by a feast \"
Among more enlightened people there may be an in- ducement to action from the impression of a dream ; here, also, the consequence is the fulfilment of the pro- phecy. Such, Astrophel, were the dreams of Arlotte and Cadiga ; of Judas Maccabaeus ; of Sylla ; of Ger- manicus ; and of Masulenius ; and the dream of the
OF DREAMS. 251
priestess of Proserpine, on the eve of Timoleon's expe- dition from Corinth to Syracuse, that Ceres volunteered to be his travelling companion into Sicily. The dream of Olympia, that she was with child of a dragon, might both have suggested the mode of education, and incited the warlike spirit of Alexander.
We know that the city of Carthage was rebuilt by Augustus Caesar, in consequence of the dream of his uncle Julius.
And we read in the travels of Herbert, that Cangius, the blacksmith of Mount Taurus, aspired to, and gained dominion over the Tartars from a similar influence, and from his name has the title of " Chan" been since con- ferred on some of the most warlike monarchs of the East.
There was a dream of Ertercules that was warped, by Edebales, into the interpretation, that Oman should be born to him, and become a great conqueror.
I have known the dreams of young ladies often prove the inducement to their marriage.
I may remind you, too, that even a simple waking incident will impart this power of action. It is a record of history, that Robert Bruce slept, during his wander- ing, in the barn of a cottage. As he was lying, he saw a spider attempt to climb to the roof; twelve times the insect failed ere it gained its point. This potent lesson of perseverance instantly flashed across his mind, and in a few days was won the field of Bannockburn. Be sure the seers termed this an omen.
The seduction of Helen was the result of a dream of high promise, made to Paris by the phantom of Venus.
Scott (who was executed at Jedburgh, in 1823, for murder) confessed that he had dreamed of such a crime for many years ere its committal.
Of the result of constant dwelling on an interesting subject, I may add these illustrations.
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Antigonus, King of Macedonia, anticipated (according to Plutarch) the flight of his prisoner Mithridates to the Euxine.
Of such a nature were the dreams of the Emperor Julian and of Calphurnia, if indeed these were more than fable ; and such was the dream of Cromwell, — that he should be the greatest man in England. In all these, and a thousand more, the mere constant thinking excited the dream. The ambitious thought of Crom- well was constantly haunting his waking moments, pointing to personal aggrandisement, and, of conse- quence, imparted a like character to the dream of his slumbers. Could we have penetrated the privacy of Ireton, and Lambert, and other Presbyterian leaders, we should discover that such ambitious prepossessions were not confined to the bosom of the Protector.
The grandfather of the poet Goethe, on the death of an old counsellor at Frankfort, assured his wife of his confident belief, that the golden ball, which elected the vacant counsellor, would be drawn for him. And this belief arose from a dream ; in which he went in full costume to court, when the deceased counsellor rose from his seat and begged him to occupy the chair, and then went out of the door. Goethe was elected.
And yet divines especially are determined to look beyond nature for causes, and refer all this to divine foreknowledge, imparted to the mind of man. There is a solemn letter, written in 1512, by Cardinal Bembo, to one of the Medici, recounting how he was opposed in a suit against one Simon Goro, by Giusto, and how his mother dreamed that Giusto wounded him in the right hand, and besought him not to have altercation with him. It chanced that Giusto, who, it seems, was some- what deranged, snatched Bembo's papers from his hand, and afterwards, by the Rialto, wounded him in the second finger of the right hand. Now is not this a
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very shallow incident? and yet the sapient cardinal deems it essential to confirm his tale by a solemn attes- tation, thus : " The dream of my mother I look upon as a revelation ; and I declare to you, magnificent lord, by that veneration which we owe to God himself, that this recital is the pure and single truth."
The proofs of an apparent prophecy from foresight may be seen in those, who by reflection have attained either a worldly or a weather wisdom. The sea captain, who has looked out upon the sky at night, and has learned the foreboding signs of a storm, will often dream of shipwreck ; and the politician will dream of events, as well as predicate consequences, from an enlightened reflection on the motives of the human mind, and the general laws which indeed influence its actions. So that, with a little latitude, it were easy enough for us all to construct an almanac column, especially if there be granted to us a liberal allowance of " more or less about this time."
Above all, it is our duty to avert the impressions of evil from the superstitious mind. The apprehension of a misfortune or fatality may prove its cause. Ay, and if the intellect were really gifted with prescience, how oft would the happiness of life be blighted ?
The allegory of the tree of knowledge is a practic precept for our lives.
ASTR. And yet Virgil has thus alluded to the delight of peeping into futurity :
" Felix qui potuit rerum cognoscere causas."
Ev. / would rather echo the benevolent precept of Horace, to ensure the bliss of ignorance on this point :
" Tu ne qusesieris, scire (nefas) quern mihi, quern tibi, Finem Dii dederint."
in other words : " Seek not to know the destiny that awaits us."
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And Milton's wisdom, too :
" Let no man seek
Henceforth, to be foretold what shall befall Him or his children : evil, he may be sure, Which, neither his foreknowing can prevent ; And he the future evil shall, as less In apprehension than as substance, feel Grievous to bear."
Listen to the melancholy influence of the dream and death of Glaphyra, as told by Josephus :
" She was married when she was a virgin to Alex- ander, the son of Herod, and brother of Archelaus. but since it fell out so that Alexander was slain by his father, she was married to Juba, the King of Lydia ; and when he was dead, and she lived in widowhood in Cappadocia with her father, Archelaus divorced his former wife Mariamne, and married her, so great was his affection for this Glaphyra, who during her mar- riage to him saw the following dream : — she thought she saw Alexander standing by her, at which she re- joiced and embraced him with great affection, but that he complained of her, and said to Glaphyra: 'Thou provest that saying to be true, which assures us that women are not to be trusted. Didst not thou pledge thy faith to me? and wast thou not married to me when thou wast a virgin ? and had we not children be- tween us ? Yet hast thou forgotten the affection I bare to thee out of a desire for a second husband. Nor hast thou been satisfied with that injury thou didst me, but thou hast been so bold as to procure thee a third hus- band, and hast been married to Archelaus — thy husband and my brother. However, I will not forget my former affection for thee, but will set thee free from every such reproachful action, and cause thee to be mine again as thou once wast.' When she had related this to her
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female companions, in a few days' time she departed this life."
The fatality which coincided with the prophetic warn- ing of Lord Lyttelton, might well be adduced as another illustration, were it not for some imputation of suicidal disposition in that nobleman, which would more forcibly invalidate the prophetic dignity of his dream.
I may relate another story, not remotely illustrative of this influence, from Brand's " Popular Antiquities." — " My friend, the late Captain Mott, R. N., used fre- quently to repeat an anecdote of a seaman under his command. This individual, who was a good sailor and a brave man, suffered much trouble and anxiety from his superstitious fears. When on the night watch, he would see sights and hear noises, in the rigging and the deep, which kept him in a perpetual fever of alarm. One day the poor fellow reported upon deck, that the devil, whom he knew by his horns and cloven feet, stood by the side of his hammock on the preceding night, and told him that he had only three days to live. His messmates endeavoured to remove his despondency by ridicule, but without effect. And the next morning he told the tale to Captain Mott, with this addition, that the fiend had paid him a second nocturnal visit, announcing a repetition of the melancholy tidings. The captain in vain expostulated with him on the folly of indulging such groundless apprehensions. And the morning of the fatal day being exceedingly stormy, the man, with many others, was ordered to the topmast to perform some duty among the rigging. Before he ascended, he bade his messmates farewell, telling them that he had received a third warning from the devil, and that he was confident he should be dead before night. He went aloft with the foreboding of evil on his mind, and in less than five minutes he lost his hold, fell upon the deck, and was killed upon the spot."
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256 ANACHRONISM AND COINCIDENCE OF DREAMS.
Were an aversion to these gloomy fancies inculcated, it might avert many a fatal foreboding, which, even in our own enlightened era, has closely resembled the fate of the African victims of Obi ; that magic fascination, which its Syriac namesake, Obh, works by spell, until the doomed one pines to death, with the deep convic- tion that he is under the ban of an enchanter.
MATERIAL CAUSES OF DREAMS.
1 logo. Nay, this wag but his dream. Othello. But this denoted a foregone conclusion ,•
'Tis a shrewd doubt, tho' it be but a dream."
OTHELLO.
ASTR. We looked for more from you, Evelyn, than these proofs of a negative.
I presume still to think your philosophy is very weak in controversion of the inspiration of a dream, and its supernatural causes. / cannot but believe, with Baxter, that dreams may be " spirits in communion with us."
Ev. And you will define these shadowless ministers in the fashion of Master Richard Burthogge, Medicinae Doctor, (in his book, printed by Raven, in the Poultry, in 1694.) I have a smack, you see, of medical biblio- mania, Astrophel. Burthogge, although one of the most rational interpreters of dreams and spectres, thinks their internal causes purely metaphysical; and then re- futes his own opinion point blank by this sophistry, — that " there are things incorporated, but invisible, which we call spirits ;" as who should say, with Shakspere's fairies, " We have the gift of fern seed j we are invi- sible."
No ; we will account for the causes of dreams, Astro- phel, without the ministry of spirits.
258 MATERIAL CAUSES OF DREAMS.
Analyzing, then, the notions of all, it is clear that the essence of the dream is recurrence of ideas. In the words of Walpole, — " The memory retains the colour- ing of the day."
Now memory is the first faculty to fail in age, and you know old people seldom dream : the same objects are applied, but there is little or no association, for the brain is dull and feeble ; imbecility, indeed, is mad memory.
The two common periods associated with the dream, are the past and the future, involving memory and prognostication ; the latter being but the memory of an intention, — an image excited in the mind by analogy. Even when present sensations excite the dream, it is ever associated, as you remember, with something before seen or felt.
The waking thought will thus again modify the dream ; and Dr. Abercrombie has a curious illustration of this combining of two minds, — one waking subject, one dream, and one disturbing cause.
The French invasion was the universal topic in Edinburgh ; and the city was, indeed, one company of volunteers. It was decided that the tocsin of alarm on the approach of the enemy, was to be the firing of the castle guns, followed by a chain of signals. At two, an officer was awoke fr°*~ " .^ 'dream of guns and sig- nals, and reviews of troops, by his lady, who herself was affrighted by a similar dream, with a few associa- tions of a different nature. And whence all this alarm ? — the falling of a pair of tongs on the hearth, the noise of which was quite sufficient for the production of their dreaming associations.
ASTR. It would seem to me that Evelyn was too anxious to find employment for the brain, in thus im- puting so much to substantial causes.
There is a funny scrap, I remember to have read, and
MATERIAL CAUSES OF DREAMS. 259
of which I may shrewdly suspect my friend to he llu- scribbler. " Whence we may compare the powers of mind to a court of judicature : — the outward senses being as the solicitors that bring the causes ; the com- mon sense, as the master of requests, who receives all their informations ; and phantasy (or imagination), like the lawyers and advocates that bandy the business to and fro in several forms, with a deal of noise and bus- tle ; reason, as the judge, that having calmly heard each party's pretensions, pronounces an upright sentence ; and memory, as the clerk, records the whole pro- ceedings." But say, if the dream is but the memory of an impression, are metaphysics to be counted as a cypher, in our discussion of the nature of intellect ?
Ev. Nay, the psychologist must ever call metaphysics to his aid, especially when speaking of the health or disorder of mind : there is an intimate blending of meta- physics and philosophy. But believe not, Astrophel, that I presume to develope that mysterious influence which is going on between mind and matter, so essential to the manifestation of the former, during its earthly condition. The mystery will ever be a sealed letter to the intellect. It is enough that we have evidence of its existence without yearning for deeper insight of final causes. I have assured you that I do not believe thought or reflection, or any act of mind to be material, and speak even with all due courtesy to the abstract metaphysician, and the divine who, doubtless from pure and holy motives, would seek to cut the Gordian knot of this sublime enigma.
Even Dr. A.bercrombie is content with observing that the correction of illusions by the sane mind is by the comparing power of reason, but he leaves the illusion itself unexplained. Indeed, the most luminous of pa- thologists have ever feared to touch organization ; Sir Humphrey Davy leaves his beautiful imaginings
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2GO MATERIAL CAUSES OF DREAMS.
vague and inconclusive, because he stops short of the brain.
The mere psychologist will ever persevere in placing even the palpable causes of illusion beyond the reach of our inquiries.
Thus the rhapsodies of Lucretius were a series of professed fables, and the theories of Macrobius a tissue of capricious distinctions, as you may learn from his classification.
1st. ovtipos, somnium, dream. A figurative vision to be interpreted.
2nd. opafia, vision. A vision which has afterwards been exactly fulfilled.
3rd. x/>j/juaTt of what we ought to do.
(I suppose as the shade of Hector appeared to ^Eneas, warning him, the night before, to escape from the flames of Troy.)
4th. evvirviov, insomnium. A sort of night-mare.
5th. 0avra
Here is a perfect jumble of classification, the first three only being vaunted as prophetic, or inspired ; the fourth a night-mare ; and the fifth, if it be any thing, a spectral illusion.
Others have deemed themselves mighty wise in dis- covering dreams to be the " action of intellect on it- self."
Abercrombie, the most learned analyst of the mind since Reid and Stewart, has four varieties of the dream :
1st. From wrong association of new events.
2nd. Trains of thought from bodily association.
3rd. Revival of old associations.
4th. Casual fulfilment of a dream !
You perceive the first and third are merely memory, with right and wrong arrangements ; the second, excite- ment of ideas from present sensations ; . the fourth, if it
MATERIAL CAUSES OF DREAMS. 261
be not a mere coincidence, is the result, as I have ex- plained, of imparted impetus, or deep thinking on sub- jects presented to the mind. The eccentricities of dream- ing are not more curious than those of the reminiscent faculty when awake ; indeed, memory itself may seem to be sometimes dreaming, and at others even fast asleep. Those who survived the plague in Athens (as we read in Thucydides), lost for a time the recollection of names, their own and those of their friends, and did not regain it until their health was re-established.
Mori, during his frequent moods of excitement, quite lost his memory of music, so that, for many minutes, he could neither read a note nor play from memory.
There have been persons who have very suddenly forgotten their own names, which they were about to announce on a visit to a friend.
(( Mr. Von B , envoy to Madrid, and afterwards
to Petersburg, a man of a serious turn of mind, yet by no means hypochondriacal, went out one morning to pay a number of visits. Among other houses at which he called, there was one where? he suspected the servants did not know him, and where he consequently was under the necessity of giving in his name, but this very name he had at that moment entirely forgotten. Turn- ing round immediately to a gentleman who accompanied him, he said, with much earnestness, ' For God's sake, tell me who I am.' The question excited laughter, but
as Mr. Von B insisted on being answered, adding
that he had entirely forgotten his own name, he was told it ; upon which he finished his visit."
The eccentric impressions of this faculty will be often intermittent, or marked by sudden yet regular remis- sions.
There is a very curious case on record, of a lady whose "memory was capacious, and well stored with a copious stock of ideas. Unexpectedly, and without
262 MATERIAL CAUSES OF DREAMS.
any forewarning, she fell into a profound sleep, which continued several hours beyond the ordinary term. On waking, she was discovered to have lost every trait of acquired knowledge; her memory was a blank. All vestiges, both of words and things, were obliterated and gone; it was found necessary for her to learn every thing again. She even acquired by new efforts the art of spelling, reading, writing, and calculating, and gradu- ally became acquainted with the persons and objects around, like a being for the first time brought into the world. In these exercises she made considerable pro- ficiency ; but, after a few months, another fit of somno- lency invaded her. On rousing from it, she found herself restored to the state she was in before the first paroxysm ; but she was wholly ignorant of every event and occurrence that had befallen her afterwards. The former condition of her existence she now calls the old state, and the latter the new state ; and she is as un- conscious of her double character as two distinct persons are of their respective natures. For example, in her old state, she possesses all hejr original knowledge ; in her new state, only what she acquired since. If a lady or gentleman be introduced to her in the old state, and vice versa (so indeed of all other matters), to know them satisfactorily she must learn them in both states. In the old state she possesses fine powers of penmanship, while in the new she writes a poor awkward hand, not having had time or means to become expert ! During four years and upwards, she has had periodical transi- tions from one of these states to the other. The alter- ations are always consequent upon a long and sound sleep. Both the lady and her family are now capable of conducting the affair without embarrassment; by simply knowing whether she is in the old or new state, they regulate the intercourse, and govern themselves accordingly !"
MATERIAL CAUSES OF DREAMS. 263
Other instances are more protracted ; the impressions previous to a certain moment only being capable of renewal.
Mrs. S , an intelligent lady, belonging to a re- spectable family in the state of New York, some years ago undertook a piece of fine needle-work. She de- voted her time to it almost constantly for a number of days ; but before she had completed it she became sud- denly delirious. In this state, without experiencing any material abatement of her disease, she continued for about seven years, when her reason was suddenly re- stored. One of the first questions which she asked on this convalescence related to her needle-work. It is a remarkable fact that, during the long contimiance of her delirium, she said nothing, so far as was recollected, about her needle-work, nor concerning any such sub- jects as usually occupied her attention when in health.
We read in Dr. Abercrombie, of a lady reduced by disease, in whose mind the memory of ten years was lost. " Her ideas were consistent with each other, but they referred to things as they stood before her removal (to Edinburgh)."
In these instances it is probable that the fault may be referred to the original impression, some disorder or state of the brain causing it to be only superficially im- pressed during these ten years of oblivion.
There is a curious story in the history of the Royal Academy of Sciences, which Beattie has recorded in these words : —
" A nobleman of Lausanne, as he was giving orders to a servant, suddenly lost his speech and all his senses. Different remedies were tried, without effect, for six months ; during all which time he appeared to be in a deep sleep or deliquium, with various symptoms at dif- ferent periods, which are particularly specified in the narration. At last, after some chirurgical operations, at
264 MATERIAL CAUSES OF DREAMS.
the end of six months his speech and senses were sud- denly restored. When he recovered, the servant to whom he had been giving orders when he was first seized with the distemper, happening to be in the room, he asked whether he had executed his com- mission ; not being sensible, it seems, that any interval of time, except, perhaps, a very short one, had elapsed during his illness."
IDA. I have read two stories of melancholy romance, which are not mal-a-propos to your arguments, Evelyn, in which the memory of one intense impression has " gone into a being," influencing the current of every after-thought, and the mind seeming ever after uncon- scious of all past or present, but the incident of one moment.
A gentleman, on the point of marriage, left his in- tended bride for a short time. He usually travelled in the stage-coach to the place of her abode ; but the last journey he took from her was the last of his life. Anxiously expecting his return, she went to meet the vehicle, when an old friend announced to her the death of her lover. She uttered an involuntary scream, and one piteous exclamation, " He is dead !" From this fatal moment, for fifty years, has this unfortunate female daily, in all seasons, traversed the distance of a few miles to the spot where she expected her future husband to alight from the coach, uttering, in a plaintive tone, " He is not come yet ; I will return to-morrow."
A young clergyman, on the eve of marriage, received a severe injury. During his future life of celibacy, which was protracted to the 80th year, this one idea only possessed his mind, that his hour of happiness was approaching, and to the last moment he talked of his marriage with all the passion of a devoted lover.
Ev. Thanks to your own memory, Ida, for these in- cidents. That the possession of the .faculty of this
MATERIAL. CAUSES OF DREAMS. 265
impression of memory can be demonstrated, we might doubt, were verbal description only employed ; but when we see the artist trace the features of a person long lost to us from memory, we know that such ideas existed, and were then re-excited in his mind.
The power of the intellect in retaining these impres- sions is wonderful. Cyrus is said to have remembered the names of all his soldiers, and Themistocles those of two thousand Athenians.
We have records from Seneca and others, that some will remember, after one perusal or hearing, very long poems; and even have repeated, word for word, the unconnected jumble of a newspaper. Pascal, as we are told by Locke, never forgot anything. Almost equally retentive was the memory of my excellent teacher, Sir Astley Cooper, and hence his nearly unexampled accu- mulation of facts. The memory of Ben Jonsoii was retentive to perfection, until the fortieth year of his age. In his youth, he could repeat an entire volume after its perusal ; nay, even the whole of his own works, or as he quaintly writes, " All that ever I made." We know that Bloomfield composed his "Farmer's Boy" in the bustle of a shoe manufactory, and wrote from his memory.
ASTR/. I have heard that the particles of the body are constantly changing : if so, how can memory exist in the brain ?
Ev. The answer is easy. Because particles of exact similarity are deposited as others are removed. The parts thus regenerated, of whatever structure they may be, still being identical and unchanged in func- tion.
If the dream be an inspiration, Astrophel, it is like " a spirit of the past," and does not " speak like sybils of the future."
But ere I offer some analogies of wakiny memory, in
266 MATERIAL CAUSES OF DREAMS.
illustration of the causes of the dream. I must again fatigue you by a glance at the physiology of memory ; the origin or mode of impression of a sense, and the mode of recurrence of such impression, i.e. the excitement of the dream.
Aristotle has asserted that senses cannot receive material objects, but only their species, or ttSwAov; and Mr. Locke entertained the same idea. For this effect, however, matter must have touched a sense, and its impression, as Baron Haller thought, must have been mechanical. For instance, the rays emanating from a body, and impinging on the retina, or an undu- lation of sound on the labyrinth of the ear, stamp an image on the brain, by which, (in accordance with a prior observation on illusion,) some minute change is inevitably effected; some minute cerebral atoms are displaced.
If you propose to me that curious physiological ques- tion,— hi what consists the function of a nerve — in os- cillation, or in undulation of a fluid, in electricity, or in magnetism ? or how the nerve carries this impression to the brain ? or if you desire me to meet the subtle objec- tion, which Dr. Reid advanced against the opinion of Aristotle and of the more modern psychologists, — I might weary you with conjectures like those of Newton and Hartley, that some ethereal fluid was, by the im- pulse of peculiar stimulus to its nerve, the cause of the senses ; or that the mental phenomena are an imparting, or influence of the immaterial soul by corporeal vibra- tion; or that dreams are fl motions of fibres :" and at length, with humility confess this to be a mystery we cannot yet fathom. And this I do the more willingly, as it may prove my devotion to the proper limits cf our study ; moreover, the question itself is not essential to my argument.
Yet it is certain that external impressions of every
MATERIAL CAUSES OF DREAMS. 26?
object or subject, reach the brain through the medium of a nerve; and when the same fibrils of those nerves, or that spot of brain on which the original image rested, are again irritated by their proper stimulus, or by the same or a similar body, an association is produced, and memory is the result.
For the insurance of this sense of touch, and feeling, and perception, it is essential that the impression at the end of a nerve shall be perfectly transmitted along its course to the brain, so that the brain shall be con- scious, or sensible of this impression. For if a nerve be cut asunder, or a ligature be placed on any portion of it between the skin and the brain, the sensation instantly ceases. It is not essential, however, that the contact should take place at the moment of the perception ; and the explanation of this involves one of the most curious phenomena of the body's feeling ; and, indeed, the me- taphysical mystery of the nature of memory, which is too abstruse a point to be touched by us here. After amputation, the patient may still complain of pain, and heat, and cold, in the dissevered limb', he experiences the memory of a sensation ; he feels, as it were, the ghost of his arm or leg. On the night succeeding the operation, the groaning patient has often cried out to me, with tiain in the toe or finger of that limb ; and when Jjeas moved or shifts his position, he will attempt to hold his leg, or will beg his nurse to take care that she does not touch or run against it. Nay, I have fre- quently, on asking a patient how he felt, even after the lapse of many months from the operation, been an- swered, that he was well, but had not lost the pain in his leg ; or that his leg or his arm were lying by his side, when perhaps the limb was undergoing the process of maceration in the dissecting-room, or the bones were bleached and dangling in the museum.
The pain, or common feeling of the limb, has stamped
268 MATERIAL CAUSES OF DREAMS.
an image or eidolon on the brain, which is not easily effaced ; there remains an internal sensibility on this point of memory. If the subject be subsequently pre- sented to the mind by a touch at the end of the stump, or even by a thought, the idea of the limb that had lain dormant, will be re-excited by that wondrous sympathy of brain and nerve, and the result will be a conscious- ness of having once possessed, or of having experienced a pain in this leg.
And, on this principle of the force of memory, we may explain many of our excited feelings : those which remain after we have been wafted in a boat, or rolled along in a carriage, or whirled aloft in a swing ; the nervous impression in the brain is re-excited ere it was exhausted.
Now, an image may be stamped on the brain, in a tumult, without our cognizance or perception, and then revived in slumber ; — we wake in wonder at having seen what we never saw or though^ of before. Such is the dream of Lovel, in the " Antiquary ;" and such the rationale of that tale of mystery, respecting the £6. in the Glasgow bank, which a dream seems certainly to have developed.
And it is evident that these impressions may recur the easier in slumber, because there is no fresh impres- sion on the senses to produce confusion. But then all these images may be presented at one time ; so that we may have either a chaos, or a correct concatenation, — an incident, which Hobbes and other early metaphysi- cians confess to be inexplicable to them.
In the words of Spurzheim, " Memory is the repro- duction of a perception ;" and Gall believed that " Re- membrance is the faculty of recollecting that we have perceived impressions ; and memory, the recollection of the impressions themselves"
I read, that Esquirol has drawn a distinction between
MATERIAL CAUSES OF DREAMS. 2G9
hallucination and illusion, — the first is from within, the second from without. The argument I have adduced of memory and impression, — the one at the beginning, the other at the end, of nerves,— will, I think, illustrate this perfectly. Hallucination, being internal, is of the past ; illusion, external, — of the present.
Another metaphysician, Bayle, it is clear, was not ignorant of the basis of phrenology, or of this difference, when he alludes to " certain places on the brain, on which the image of an object, which has no real exist- ence out of ourselves, might be excited."
INTENSE IMPRESSION.— MEMORY.
' The dream 's here still : even when I wake, it is Without me as within me; not imagined, felt."
CYMBELINE.
Ev. I believe, then, that waking and slumbering asso- ciation is memory ; and I have interposed the glimpse of metaphysics to break the monotony of my illustra- tions, for they are not yet exhausted.
A gentleman, as we read in Dr. Pritchard's work, was confined, after a severe accident, for several weeks, and the accident was not once during this period re- membered by him ; but, on his convalescence, he rode again over the same ground, and all the circumstances instantly flashed across his mind.
In their youth, Dr. Rush escorted a lady, on a holi- day, to see an eagle's nest. Many years afterwards, he was called to attend her in the acute stage of typhus ; and, on his entrance into her chamber, she instantly screamed out, " Eagle's nest !" and it is said, from this moment, the fever began to decline.
We ourselves have witnessed these flashes of memory more than once, during the acuteness of brain fever, where journeys, and stories, and studies, have been re- newed after they had been long forgotten.
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There arc many romantic incidents in illustration which have been beautifully wrought into a poem, or drama, as that play of Kotzebue, written to illustrate the happy success of the Abbe de 1'Epee in France, in im- parting knowledge and receiving sentiments from the deaf and dumb. In this, the young Count Solar, by gestures, unfolds, step by step, his birth-place, and at length screams with joy, as he stands before the palace of his ancestors.
Then there is the story of little Montague, who was decoyed by the chimney sweep. Some time after this, the child was engaged to clean the chimney of a man- sion, and, descending into a chamber, which had been indeed his own nursery, lay down, in his sooty clothes, on the quilt, and, by this happy memory, discovered his aristocratic birth. This is the incident which still enlivens the pageantry of May-day.
These reminiscences will occur sometimes in the most sudden and unexpected manner. In one of the American journals, we are told of a clergyman, who, at the termination of some depressing malady, had com- pletely lost his memory. His mind was a blank, and he had, in fact, to begin the world of literature again. Among other During his/classical readings with his brother, he one day suddenly struck his head with his hand, and stated that he had a most peculiar feeling, and was convinced that he had learned all this before.
Boerhave, in his " Prelectiones Academic. Institut. Med.," relates the case of a Spanish tragic writer, whose memory, subsequently to an acute febrile dis- ease, was so completely impaired, that not only the literature of various languages he had studied was lost to him, but also their elements, the alphabets. When even his own poetic compositions were read to him, he denied himself to be the author. But the most inte-
6
272 INTENSE IMPRESSION. — MEMORY.
resting feature of the case is this : that, on becoming again a votary of the Muse, his recent compositions so intimately resembled his original productions in style and sentiment, that he no longer doubted that both were the offspring of his own imagination.
Even Priestley's master-mind was sometimes sleeping thus, being subject (to quote his own words) "to hum- bling failures of recollection ;" so that he lost all ideas of things and persons, and had so forgotten his own writ- ings, that, on the perusal of a work, he sat himself to make experiments on points which he had already illus- trated, but on which his mind was then a " tabula rasa."
Above all, the superlative memory of Sir Walter lay in a deep sleep, after a severe indisposition. It is re- corded by Ballantyne, that when " the Bride of Lam- mermoor, in its printed form, was submitted to his perusal, he did not recognize, as his own, one single incident, character, or conversation it contained ; yet the original tradition was perfect in his mind. When Mrs. Arkwright, too, sung some verses of his, one even- ing, at Lord Francis Egerton's, the same oblivion was o'er his mind, and he whispered to Lockhart, f Capital words ;— whose are they ? Byron's, I suppose ; but / don't remember them.' "
My friend, Dr. Copland, informed me (in May, 1839) of a lady of fifteen, Miss D — , who, in consequence of extreme exhaustion from disorder, forgot all her accom- plishments, and had to begin her education afresh.
The Countess of Laval had, in her childhood, been taught the Armorican of Lower Brittany (which is a dia- lect of the Welch), but had, as she believed, forgotten it. On attaining the adult period, this lady had an acute fever, and, during her delirium, she ceased to speak in her native language, and chattered fluently in the bastard Welch.
A foreign gentleman, as we were told by Mr. Aber-
INTENSE IMPRESSION. — MEMORY. 273
nethy, after an accident on the head, spoke French only, and quite forgot the English, which he had before this spoken very fluently.
A Welch patient, in St. Thomas's Hospital, some years since, having received an injury, began to speak in Welch, and ever after continued to do so, although before his accident he constantly conversed in English.
On the contrary, we learn, from Dr. Pritchard, of a lady who, after a fit of apoplexy, forgot her original language (the English), and spoke only in French, so that her nurses and servants conversed with her only by interpreters.
There may be a partial derangement of memory, one set of impressions only being erased.
A friend of Dr. Beattie, in consequence of a blow on the head, lost only his attainments in Greek; and Professor Scarpa (whose corpus striatum was disor- ganised) lost only the memory of proper names.
You may now comprehend how instantaneously ma- terial impressions derange and destroy memory, and its converse, the production of memory by material im- pressions, will be far less mysterious to you.
But creatures to which the gift of intellect is not granted, in which innate ideas cannot arise, still evince the faculty/of memory. It is, therefore, possible that fish and insects, possessing memory, dream. Of course the doctrines of Pythagoras, and Simonides, and the story of the interpretation of the language of birds by the vizier of Sultan Mahmoud, are mere fables, and the cackling of the Roman geese was accidental; yet the bird does possess the memory of language, and the power of imparting ideas.
Nightingales' notes (as Bechstein has beautifully re- corded them) seem to me like the Mexican language, and to express variety of sentiments of adoration and love. The parrot, magpie, jackdaw, jay, starling, and
T
274 INTENSE IMPRESSION. — MEMORY.
bullfinch, are prattlers ; and the exquisite little canary,
the pupil of my friend, Mrs. H , the pet, indeed,
not only of its mistress, but of statesmen and learned physiologists, warbled its words in purest melody. From Sir William Temple we learn the faculty of the wonderful parrot of Prince Maurice, of Nassau, at the Hague, that responsed almost rationally to promiscuous questions. Granting, then, this faculty of memory, it is clear the bird may dream, and I may add one other quotation from the "Domestic Habits of Birds," in proof of this.
" We have, however, heard some of these night-songs which were manifestly uttered while the bird was asleep, in the same way as we sometimes talk during sleep — a circumstance remarked by Dryden, who says,
" ' The little birds in dreams their songs repeat.'
" We have even observed this in a wild bird. On the night of the 6th April, 18J.1, about ten o'clock, a dunncock (accentor modularis) was heard in a garden to go through its usual song more than a dozen times very faintly, but distinctly enough for the species to be recognised." The night was cold and frosty, but might it not be that the little musician was dreaming of sum- mer and sunshine ? Aristotle, indeed, proposes the question whether animals hatched from eggs ever dream. Marcgrave, in reply, expressly says, that his " parrot, Laura, often rose in the night, and prattled while half asleep."
Among quadrupeds, it is probable that those which, by their half-reasoning instinct, approach nearest to the power of comparison, and those which, in contrast to the callous-hoofed, possess an acuteness of feeling, and therefore the nearest approximate intelligence, are the most prone to dream.
Although we know nothing of the dreams of that
INTENSE IMl'HKSSION. MEMOKY.
very learned dog, which Leibnitz assures us he saw, and which uttered an articulate language, and often enjoyed a chat with his master ; yet, of the slumbering visions of the canines I have many illustrations. Fzc, a fat terrier, was a somniloquist. She would bark, and laugh, and run round the room, or against tables; th. surest proof of somnambulism. Indeed dogs are cele- brated by many poets for their dreaming propensities. Ennius writes —
" Et ranis in somnis leporis vestigia latrat."
And Lucretius has left us a very comprehensive poetical account of the dreams of brutes.
Even Chaucer refers to these dreams ; and in the Hall of Branksome,
" The stag-hound, weary with the chace, Urged in dreams the forest race."
It is probable that the dreams of brutes are very short.
From simple, unassociated memory, too, springs the dream of the infant ; pure and innocent as the thought of a cherub. For delight is the common feeling of a dreaming child ; and when its lips are touched in sleep, the memory of its mother's bosom will excite its lips and tongue to the congenial action of suction, though a fright of the previous day will change its slumbers into moments of terror, and it will murmur and cry in its dream.
I believe it is Sir H. Wotton who lays much stress on the adoption of plans of education for a child, grounded on the discovery of its secret thoughts during its simple somniloquent dream.
CAST. It is wonderful how vividly are revived in our dream those scenes of our early life, which our waking efforts could not recollect.
276 INTENSE IMPRESSION. MEMORY.
This did not escape Chaucer, as I remember in Dry- den's version of a fable :
" Sometimes forgotten things, long cast behind, Rush forward in the brain, and come to mind. The nurse's legends are for truths receiv'd, And the man dreams but what the boy believ'd. Sometimes we but rehearse a former play, The night restores our actions done by day."
Ev. Yet do not associate this brilliancy of infantine reminiscence with vigour of the thought. The brain in children is, as it were, like wax, easily impressible. And remember, the ideas of children are more resembling the imperfect associations of our dreams ; the tutorage of our advancing mind fills it with more serious and ra- tional images characterized by judgment.
The first impressions of childhood are bright as fancy ; so that we think in waking more of things pre- sent. But, in dreams of things long agone there is, in fact, no complete oblivion, in a healthy mind, for any one of our infantile impressions may chance to be brought to us in our dream.
But if impression be intense, it may assimilate that of childhood, and become as permanent. My friend, Dr. Uwins, told me of a patient who, in a joke, once amused himself by throwing stones at the gibbeted pirates on the bank of the Thames. An epileptic ten- dency succeeded ; and ever after this, his dreams were of gibbets and chains, and to that degree, that his judg- ment and philosophy were powerless in controlling his fears.
And in the book of the Prussian, Greding, we read of J. C. V., a youth, who, in his eighth year, had been at- tacked by a dog. His future, and, indeed, nightly dreams, were of this creature, and these so intense, as to reduce his health to a very low degree.
Now it is easy to believe the period of slumber so
INTENSE IMPRESSION. MEMORY. 277
limited, that the subject of reflection shall not have dis- appeared, that the thought had scarcely time to cool :
" Latent scintillula foraan."
Thus Moses Mendelssohn had all the sounds, heard during the day, reverberating in his slumbering mind.
Or we may suppose, that the idea last imprinted on the mind, or by which it had been exclusively occupied, and the thoughts which are so much modified by our temperament, study, and contemplation, would be the first to influence as the mind awakened, ere the image of fresh objects had been again perceived.
Sir Walter, in his diary, thus writes : " When I had in former times to fill up a passage in a poem, it was always when I first opened my eyes that the desired ideas thronged upon me. I am in the habit of relying upon it, and saying to myself when I am at a loss, ( Never mind, we shall have it all at seven o'clock to- morrow morning.' ''
Warton, the professor of poetry at Oxford, after par- taking of a Sunday dinner with a friend, repaired to his service at his Church. On his way, he was powerfully saluted "tffitlra-cry of " Live mackarel." He slumbered in his pulpit during the singing of the psalm, and, on the organ ceasing, he arose, half awake, and instead of his solemn prayer, cried with a loud voice, " All alive, all alive oh !"
I remember the storytellers in the coffee-houses at Aleppo, as if aware of this last impression, used to run out when they perceived they bad excited a deep in- terest.
IDA. It is curious to hear, even by your own quota- tions, Evelyn, that poets have so revelled in the luxury of dreams, from Homer to Pope, chiefly employing them, however, as the materiel of their poesy. Have they condescended to glance at their causes ?
278 INTEXSE IMPRESSION. MEMORY.
Ev. Lucretius, Claudian, George Stepney, Dryden, and a few others. Apropos as to causes.
In the "Anatomy of Melancholy" we have the fol- lowing quaint summary : " As Tully notes, for the most part our speeches in the daytime cause our phantasy to work upon the like in our sleep, so do men dream on such subjects they thought on last :
" ' Somnia quse mentes ludunt volitantibus urnbris, Nee delubra deum nee ab aethere numina mittunt, Sed sibi quisque facit,' " &c.
For that cause, when Ptolemy, king of Egypt, had posed the seventy interpreters in order, and asked the nineteenth man what would make one sleep quietly in the night, he told him ' ' the best wray was to have divine and celestial meditations, and to use honest actions in the daytime." Lod. Vives wonders how schoolmen could sleep quietly and were not terrified in the night, they had such monstrous questions and thought of such terrible matters all day long. They had need amongst the rest to sacrifice to god Morpheus, whom Philostratus paints in a white and black coat, with a horn, and ivory box full of dreams of the same colours, to signify good and bad."
CAST. These are the manufacture, I presume, of two of those sons of sleep, born to him by a beautiful but erring grace, " Phantasus," or Fancy, and " Phobetor," or Terror. With the relations and illustrations of these good and bad dreams, the pages of both fiction and authentic history abound : another poetical batch of causes, Ida. Lucia exclaims :
" Sweet are the slumbers of the virtuous man, Oh Marcia ! I have seen thy godlike father — A kind refreshing sleep is fallen upon him. I saw him stretch'd at ease, his fancy lost In pleasing dreams. As I drew near his couch, He smil'd, and cried : ' Caesar, thou caus't not hurt inc.' "
INTENSE IMPRESSION. — MEMORY. 279
Another poet writes thus :
** But most we mark the wonders of her reign, When sleep has lock'd the senses in her chain : When sober judgment has his throne resign 'd, She smiles away the chaos of the mind ; And, as warm fancy's bright elysium glows, From her each image springs, each colour flows. She is the sacred guest, th' immortal friend ; Oft seen o'er sleeping innocence to bend, In that dead hour of night, to silence giv'n, Whispering seraphic visions of her heav'n."
Then Richmond exclaims : " My heart is very jocund in the remembrance of so fair a dream." While the coward conscience of Richard thus speaks :
" By the apostle Paul, shadows to-night Have struck more terror to the soul of Richard, Than could the substance of ten thousand soldiers."
Aufidius thus recounts his slumbering memory of the prowess of Coriolanus :
" This happy Roman, this proud Marcius, haunts me. Each troubled night, when slaves and captives sleep, ForgetfuTofiheir chains, I hi my dreams Anew am vanqtiish'd ; and beneath his sword With horror sinking, feel a tenfold death — The death of honour."
And yet another :
" Tho' thy slumber may be deep, Yet thy spirit shall not sleep. There are shades that will not vanish ; There are thoughts thou canst not banish."
And, lastly, Crabbe, in his " World of Dreams :"
" That female fiend, why is she there ? Alas ! I know her. Oh, begone !
280 INTENSE IMPRESSION. MEMORY.
Why is that tainted bosom bare ? Why fixed on me that eye of stone ? Why have they left us thus alone ? I saw the deed "
ASTR. You will drown us in a flood of Helicon, fair lady, if you thus dole out the thoughts of these maudlin poets. The records of national and domestic history, the dreams of the conqueror of thousands, and of the midnight assassin, are replete with incidents, if we will search for them, more impressive, ay, and more roman- tic, than all this rhyming ; and from the legends of his- tory alone I could select a legion of dreaming mysteries, which would dissolve all these fine-spun theories of Evelyn, regarding the essence, as he terms it, of the dream. He must adopt a clearer course, in showing us his causes, than by harping on this favourite theme of memory; and we must listen through another moon- light, ere we be made wiser, by the unfolding of this grand secret of visions.
INFLUENCE OF DARK BLOOD IN THE BRAIN.
" I talk of dreams, Which are the children of an idle brain."
ROMEO AND JULIET.
Ev. That I may explain to you the predisposition of a dream, — in other words, the state of broken slumber, — it is essential that I recur to the physiology of the brain ; and I must humble our pride, by combining some of the debasing conditions of our nature, as in- fluential on the divine mind, through the medium of its chambers of marrow ; for to the intimate condition and function of theBrain and its nerves, and its contained bloody we must chiefly look for elucidation of the phy- sical causes of a dream.
Yet I may even grant you, for an argument, Astro- phel, the flight of an immortal spirit, and all the amiable vagaries of Sir Thomas Brown ; reserving to myself to prove at what moment we become conscious of this flight.
In natural actions, there are ever three requisites, like the points of a syllogism :
1. A susceptibility of influence ;
2. The influence itself ;
3. The effect of this influence :
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And these I call the predisposing, the exciting, and the proximate causes.
1. The brain is brought to this susceptibility by ex-
cited temperament, study, intense and undivided thought ; in short, by any intense impression.
2. The influence or excitement is applied ; congestion
of blood producing impression on extremities, or origin of a nerve, at the period of departing or returning consciousness. At these periods, the blood changes, and I believe, as it changes, the phenomena of mind, as in the waking state, obey these changes : — rational and light dreams being the effect of circulation of scarlet blood ; dull and reasonless visions and " night-mare," that of crimson, or black blood.
3. The effect of this influence is recurrence of idea,
memory, — more or less erroneously associated, as the blood approximates to the black or scarlet state, or as the brain itself is constituted.
Now it is essential to the perfect function of the brain, not only that it shall have a due supply of blood, but that this blood shall be of that quality we term oxy- genated. If there be a simple deficiency of this scarlet blood, a state of sound undisturbed sleep will ensue (slightly analogous to the condition of syncope, or faint- ing). This may be the consequence of any indirect impression, or the natural indication of that direct debi- lity, which we witness in early infancy, and in the "second childishness and mere oblivion" of old age. But this deficiency of arterial blood may be depending on a more positive cause, venous congestion, impeding its flow ; for in sleep, the breathing being slower, the blood becomes essentially darker. Even arterial blood itself will become to a certain degree carbonized, by lentor, or stagnation. Venous congestion and diminu-
IN THE DRAIN. 283
tion of arterial circulation are not incompatible ; indeed, Dr. Abercrombie reasons very ably on their relative nature, implying the necessity of some remora of venous circulation to supply that want or vacuum which the brain would otherwise experience from the deficiency of the current in the arterial system. Thus will the languid arterial circulation of the brain, which causes sleep in the first instance, produce, secondarily, that congestion of blood in the veins and sinuses, which shall reduce it to disturbed slumber, and excite the dream. May we not account, on this principle, for the difficulty which many persons experience in falling into a second slumber, when they have been disturbed in the first ?
IDA. Combe, I believe, observed, through a hole in a fractured skull, that the brain was elevated during an apparent dream.
Ev. This is a matter of frequent observation with us. There was, in 1821, at Montpelier, a woman who had lost part of the skull, and the brain and its membranes lay bare. When she was in deep sleep, the brain lay in the skull almost motionless ; when she was dreaming, it became elevateoTp~aQd when her dreams (proved by her relating them when awake) were on vivid or ani- mating subjects, but especially when she was awake, the brain was protruded through the cranial aperture.
Blumenbach states that he, himself, witnessed in one person a sinking of the brain, whenever he was asleep, and a swelling with blood when he awoke. David Hartley, therefore, may be half right and half wrong when he imputes dreams to an impediment to the flow of blood, a collapse of the ventricles, and a diminished quantity of their contained serum.
We thus have not only a deficiency of proper stimulus, but a deleterious condition of the blood, which acts as a poison to the brain. In fatal cases of coma and de-
284 INFLUENCE OF DARK BLOOD
lirium, we observe deep red points, chiefly in the cine- ritious part of the brain, from this congestion of its vessels. Sound sleep is thus prevented, but the con- gestion of carbonized blood acting as a sort of narcotic, depresses the energy of the brain so far as to prevent waking, inducing that middle state, drowsiness or slum- ber ; so that sleep may thus depend on congestion /row exhaustion ; and " spectral illusion" from congestion in that state short of slumber ; and insanity itself from con- gestion still more copious and permanent.
From this results a disturbed condition of the brain ; it is irritated, not excited, by its healthy or proper stimulus ; and it follows that such derangement of the manifestations of mind ensues as we term a dream. Waking, however, soon takes place, and the blood is more scarlet, and the faculties themselves gradually awake. As this is more perfect, we remember the dream, and are enabled to explain it, and know that it was a dream. The mind is now restored, so that scarlet blood indicates healthy thought, and black blood its re- verse. Your pardon for this prolixity and dulness. The healthy or unhealthy crisis of the blood is a most important subject in our argument, and too constantly slighted in the question of illusion.
Monsieur Denis records the story of a young man of Paris, in the 17th century, who was cured of a stubborn and protracted lethargy, by the transfusion of the arterial blood of a lamb ; and another of a recovery from madness, by that of the arterial blood of a calf, and these in presence of men both of science and high quality.
I do not affirm my implicit faith in this statement, of the effect of gentle blood, but I am certain of the poisonous influence of that of another quality ; and I will cite a passage from Hoffman, the German poet, whom Monsieur Poupon, in his " Illustrations of Phrenology,"
IX THE BRAIN. 285
adduces as a specimen of marvellousness, ere I offer my cases.
"Why do my thoughts, whether I am awake or asleep, always tend, in spite of all my efforts, to the gloomy subject of insanity ? It seems to me as if I felt my disordered ideas escaping from my mind, like hot blood from a wounded vein"
This was figurative, but it was true ; for of itself this black blood may be suddenly the cause of furious and fatal mania. When Dionis, in his " Cours d'Operations de Chirurgie," is referring to that operation that has lately, by its revival, occupied so much of the attention of the medical world (the process of transfusion) he says : " La fin funeste de ces malheureuses victimes de la nouveaute, detruisit, en un jour, les hautes idees qu'ils avoient cogues ; ils devinrent foux, furieux, et moururent ensuite"
The relief of the brain, by the escape of this blood, is of deeper interest to science than the mere romancer may imagine.
Sir Samuel Romilly was for a moment, I believe, in a state of sanity, when blood had flowed from the di- vided vessels of his^hroat ; for he attempted, it appeared, to stop its flow by thrusting the towel with some force into the wound.
So diseases of the heart, by keeping the black blood in the brain, predispose to dreaming. During the age of terror in France, organic diseases of the heart and cases of mania were most prevalent.
I may for a moment indulge in analogies regarding this arrest of the blood. Cases of inflammation of the ear are often seen in confirmed maniacs (the helix being usually the part most inflamed), and black blood often oozes from the part.