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

DREAM-INSPIRATION.

43

first canto of the "Henriade;" the "Divina Commedia" is said to have been inspired by a dream; Coleridge's "Kubla Khan" was unquestionably composed during a dream; and Tartini's "Sonata du Diable" is a plagiarism from a violin played by a dream-devil.

In regarding the phenomena of dreams, it may perhaps be remarked in the first place, that generally we are not conscious of being asleep. We say generally, in contradistinction to those persons who make the assertion as if it were universally true, and admitted of no exception. The fact is, that men have been known to debate the question of waking or sleeping, which has now been decided in one way, and now in another. The case of a person who dreams of dreaming, who wanders or divaricates from a standard of propriety which his dream allows, may be quoted as evidence of the same nature. This consciousness is probably a deceitful one.

That our dreams present the marks of incoherence and incongruity, has been referred by some to the fact of the loss or withdrawal of the control of the will over our sleeping thoughts. But a more profound and truthful view of the matter is probably taken when it is stated that we have no consciousness of incoherence or incongruity. In sleep we get out of the laws of time and space; and being in chaos we find nothing chaotic. The mind makes any combinations, but it is with elements that have been previously supplied. It cannot exercise itself upon what it has not received. The imagination, the grotesque representative power, is that which is occupied, rather than the phantasy or fancy; although the latter is loosely and incorrectly spoken of as the great dreamagent. The faculties of the mind, and all the entities with which these exercise themselves in dreams, are just as much anteriorly in the mind as the counters are within the framework of a calculating machine. But here is the calculating machine run mad or disordered,-the shuffling of a deranged kaleidoscope. It is not fair to degrade the name of invention or of creation by applying such terms to the hap-hazard

combinations which, on account of their wildness, popularly' and even to some scientific thinkers, suggest the notion of fancy rather than imagination. If we are right, imagination, uncorrected by judgment and volition, asserts its claim to be considered even wilder than its more airy sister when under the restraint of vigilant and waking taste.

In

To the dreamer there is nothing scenic or false in the action of his dreams. He does not assist at an unreal phantasmagoria; he does not witness the ghosts of the Polytechnic; nor is his drama a shadow dance. His spectacles are not "airy nothings" compressed into "a local habitation;" his feasts are not the offering of shadowy viands to feigned guests; nor are his battles waged between serried ghosts that go forth to encounter armed phantoms in illusive war. short, relatively to the dreamer, there is nothing fictitious about his persona; the reality of which, indeed, is rather intensified by his exclusion from the world of sense. How, then, are we to account for the greater vividness of dream impressions? Are we to suppose that we are more closely en rapport with substance than when we are let and hindered by the conscious trammels and disabilities of the body? Is there, indeed, a more emphatic connection established in dreams between our interior "self-hood"-to quote a rather awkward expression of the followers of Swedenborg-and the very essence and substratum of other entities? Such questions, in truth, are not absurd; and, indeed, it is on this very groundapart, at least, from the ethics and religion of dreams—that the theory of their being often authoritative messengers from what is vulgarly called another world—as if there were any difference of divine dynasty supposable either in time or space— has been sought to be established. A message from above would, cæteris paribus, carry its own voucher, just in proportion as the avenues and inlets of the senses were closed against grosser or more palpable impressions.

The apparent reality of dreams-nay, the startling reality of dreams-has been an argument valid to many sober and