CHAPTER IV. CAUSES, USES, AND PHENOMENA OF DREAMS. And Phansie, I tell you, has dreams that have wings, BEN JONSON. WE are now upon the plateau of ordinary life. It is, for the time, an indifferent matter whether exceptional dreams have anything or nothing of divine or angelic sanction; we have now to do with those dreams which are indigenous to the thinking systems of men asleep. What, then, is sleep? It is "primarily and chiefly an affection of the nervous system, in which, through exhaustion, the senses become inactive, and, as it were, dead; while at the same time, the nutritive systems and the functions essential to life, go on." In consequence of this inactivity of the sensorium, there arise, (1) loss of consciousness, so far, at least, as regards all connection with, and relation to, external things; (2) loss of voluntary power over the physical and muscular frame; and (3) loss of voluntary control over the operations of the mind; the mind still remaining active, however, and its operations going on, uncontrolled by the will. "The proximate cause of sleep has ever been a disputed question. Depressed nervous energy, exhausted irritability, congestion in the cerebral sinuses, afflux of blood into the pia mater, its reflex towards the heart, deposition of fresh matter in the brain, cerebral collapse, deficiency of animal spirits, vapor quidem benignus, these and many other hypotheses may be merely convertible terms, and they explain nothing."* Perhaps this is the place to propound another question; What is a dream ?-what is the word, and what the thing? Etymologically the word has a scant history. In our language and its Teutonic relatives, it is a simple and radical one. One or two improbable attempts at classical derivation may be noticed. Skinner, with some ingenuity, would derive it, by metathesis, from the Latin dormire. Casaubon, with more poetry, and even less probability, from the Greek Spâμa Toû Biov, dreams being, as plays are, a representation of something which does not really happen. Moses Amyraldus and Junius have each enlarged upon this conceit. Another philologer would derive it from the Celtic word trem. Such formal similarities amongst vocables of various significations, and in languages more remotely of kin to one another, are to be regarded as the result of accident rather than as being of any etymological value. Casaubon's derivation, for instance, includes a proposition to the effect that it is likely that the drama had emerged into human experience before the dream; which is inconceivable. It will be enough for us to exhibit a few forms from which the affinities of our word dream may be understood, and from which it may be concluded that a settlement of ethnological precedence carries with it, in this case, a decision also of philological priority. Dream is an Anglo-Saxon noun, in Saxon, dream, and in both languages having a primary meaning of melody, joy or gladness. The Dutch form is droom, the Swedish dröm, with a direct sub-assumption of idleness and vacuity; and the German traum. Dismissing the word, we may in one sentence epitomize all the current definitions of the thing. For all men are so well agreed upon this matter, that it is rather that their expressions vary, than that their ideas are dissimilar. We shall find enough contrariety of opinion by and by; but it will not be now and here. Every lexico * "Journal of Psychological Medicine," article The Pathology of Sleep, vol. v. 1852. ✓ 40 COUNTLESS CAUSES OF DREAMS. grapher, from the time of Suidas, has consented that an ordinary dream is the intellectual activity of a sleeping person which leaves its traces in the waking consciousness. Dreaming would seem to be an abnormal operation of the mind; the result of a want of thoroughness of that absolute unconsciousness which is the characteristic of ideal repose; of a certain preponderance of particular faculties, a certain default of symmetry in antecedent mental activity; or, again, of physiological functions of the bodily organisms, hindered, disturbed or overdone. The causes of dreaming are thus shown to be as numerous as the several faculties of the mind, the feelings of the soul, the functions of the body, and the several accidents to which any of these are liable; nay, infinitely more numerous, being as multitudinous as the combinations of which these are capable. Dreams are accustomed to take shape and character, as we have said, from a limitless variety of circumstances; yet, freakish as they appear, they are not altogether the children of accident and inconsequence. Even when the connection cannot readily be traced, or cannot be traced at all, there is reason to infer from our experience of other members of the family, that a connection does exist between the dream, and the then or former state of the body, or condition of the mind, or both, such as, if it were ascertained, would give intelligibility to the form and complexion of the dream. In short the two principal sources, or-seeing that final causes have an ugly habit of hiding themselves away out of sight-as we should rather say, the influences that modify our dreams, are (1) our present bodily sensations, and especially the internal state of the physical system; and (2) our previous waking thoughts, dispositions, and prevalent states of mind. Under the influence of the first, a hard bed or an uncomfortable position will cause a dream of fractured bones, or become suggestive of the rack or the wheel. The throat, say, is tightly compressed by a too affectionate button, and the dream is of Calcraft and public perpendicular suffocation. DREAM-SUGGESTIVENESS. 41 A hearty supper lies heavy on the conscience and the digestion, and the dream assumes the shape of nightmare; fiends and furies squat cross-legged upon you, just below the diaphragm, like tailors in one of Alton Locke's sweating shops; or the Monument of Fish Street Hill, "like a tall bully lifts its head and lies" upon your much-enduring stomach. A mustard plaster suggests the idea of being flayed alive; a slight scalpwound and a bandaged head, call up touching associations of the tomahawk; a bottle of hot water at the feet will make the dreamer believe that he is walking arm in arm with Satan, who uses him conjointly with his spear To support uneasy steps Over the burning marle which Milton assigns him for a promenade. A sudden noise, if it do not positively awaken the sleeper to the extent of allowing him to understand the real cause, will, to the partially aroused sensorium, resemble the report of a gun, and at once his martial ardour rouses him to take the shilling under Wellington, and "to seek the bubble reputation at the cannon's mouth," at Badajoz or Waterloo; or to slay with much-revolving muzzle, half a dozen Italian brigands. It is not by any means without precedent that the earliest symptoms of an unsuspected disease may be afforded by the kindly hints of dreams, which are modified by the greater susceptibility of the system to internal impressions. This providential phenomenon is the result of concentration and exclusion, just as we see the senses of hearing and touch eminently developed in the blind-a fact of which we take advantage when we close our eyes whilst listening to some heart-moving or heart-composing melody. The second principal prolific source of our dreams is to be found in the character, direction, and intensity of our immediately antecedent waking thoughts, or even in our habitual forms of mental activity, and in the prevalent disposition and tone of morals. The action of the mind does 42 INTELLECTUAL ACTION IN DREAMS. not terminate with the last waking moment. As a locomotive will travel long after its impelling power has ceased to put forth new energy; as a vessel will plough its way through the waters long after the furling of the sail, or the last revolution of the paddle or the screw; so will the activity of the waking mind project itself into the intellectual operations of the sleeping person. But now, if the mind be a locomotive, it will very likely run off the rails; if a vessel, it will very likely discharge its pilot and unship its rudder. Frequently the tragedy or the comedy of the day will resolve itself into the burlesque afterpiece of the night. The occurrences of business or pleasure or daily occupation will frequently indulge in a repetition in travestie. But, singularly enough, the mind will not always go off the rails, or out of its course. The waking train of thought will occasionally be pursued in sleep with as much precision and with greater success. Even when the problem of the evening before has not been completely solved during the night, we find it still marvellously advanced towards solution by one or two important stages. In such cases it would seem that there has been no real abandonment of intellectual action. That has been busy about the difficulty during the night; and in the morning it is solved easily, not alone because the faculties are fresh, but because they have been occupied upon it throughout the night, or portion of it. Thus we often find the brain so very fruitful just after awaking; there is the rushing result of a concentrated experience and observation during sleep, ready to the hand of the waking man. Further, Sir Thomas Browne is by no means the only man who is free to confess that his sleeping self transcended his waking self. The mathematician has solved the problem which before was difficult even to forlornness and despair; the poet has indited the inimitable poem, and on waking been but the amanuensis of his dream; the painter has seen the model of a goddess floating on a cloud half-way to heaven, and the musician has rifled Paradise itself of an angelic melody. Thus Voltaire wrote a duplicate of the |