Philosophical ingenuity has long been displayed in the most learned disquisitions in an endeavour to account for the nature of these phenomena. The strangeness of these visionary perturbations of our rest—their supposed influence on our destinies—their frequent verification by subsequent events—have always shed a mystic prestige around them; and superstition, ignorance, and craft, have in turns characterized them as the warnings of the Divine will, or the machinations of an evil spirit. Macrobius divided them into various categories. The first, the mere dream, somnium, he considers a figurative and mysterious representation that requires to be interpreted. Dion Cassius gives an example of this in the case of Nero, The second distinction he terms a vision, visio, or a foreboding of future events. The third he deemed oracular, oraculum, and this was the case when a priest, or a relative, a deity, a hero, or some venerable person, denounced what was to happen, or warned us against it. As an example of this inspiration, for such it was considered, an anecdote of Vespasian is related. Having heard that a man in Achaia had dreamt that a person unknown to him had assured him that he should date his prosperity from the moment that Nero should lose a tooth,—a tooth just drawn from that emperor being shown to him the following day, he foresaw his destinies: soon after Nero died, Galba did not long survive him, and the discord that reigned between Otho and Vitellius ultimately placed the diadem on his brow. These inspirations were considered by Cicero, and various philosophers, as particularly appertaining to the shrine of the gods; those who sought that heavenly admonition were therefore recommended to lie down in temples. The LacedÆmonians sought slumber in the temple of Pasithea; Brizo, the goddess of sleep and dreams, was worshipped at Delos, and her votaries slept before her altars with their heads bound with laurel, and other fatidical symbols; hence divination by dreams was called Brizomantia. Supplications were offered up to Mercury for propitious visions, and a caduceus was placed for that purpose at the feet of beds; hence was it called ???e?. Diodorus informs us that dreams were regarded in Egypt with religious reverence, and the prayers of the devout were often rewarded by the gods with an indication of appropriate remedies. But the confidence in supernatural agency and the power of magic, was only deemed a last resource, when human skill had been baffled. Some persons promised a certain sum of money for the maintenance of sacred animals, consecrated to the divinity whose aid they implored. In the case of infants, a certain portion of their hair was cut off and weighed, and when the cure was effected an equal quantity of gold was given to the successful intermediator. The fourth division was insomny, insomnium, which was characterized by a disturbed repose, caused either by mental or bodily oppression, or solicitude. The fifth class of dreams was the phantasm or visus, which takes place between sleeping and waking, in a dozing and broken slumber, when When these notions prevailed, the interpretation of dreams became a profitable trade; and it is a lamentable truth, that, to the present day, it is considered a speculation upon credulity. We find in Plutarch’s Life of Aristides that there were tables drawn out for this purpose; and he speaks of one Lysimachus, a grandson of Aristides, who gained a handsome livelihood by this profession, taking up his station near the temple of Bacchus. Rules of interpretation were formed by Artemidorus, who lived in the reign of Antoninus Pius, and he drew his conclusions from circumstances considered either propitious or sinister. Thus, to dream of a large nose, signified subtlety; of rosemary or sage, trouble and weakness; of a midwife, disclosure of secrets; of a leopard, a deceitful person. These interpretations became so multiplied, that at last it was decreed that no dreams which related to the public weal should be regarded, unless they had visited the brains of some magistrates, or more than one individual. But what limits can any enactment assign to the influence of credulity and superstition? Cicero informs us that the Consul Lucius Julius repaired to the temple of Juno Sospita, in obedience to a decree of the senate regarding the dream of CÆcilia, daughter of Balearicus. In more modern times we have often seen dreams resorted to, in order to assist the speculations of policy and priestcraft; some of them as absurd in their nature as revolting in their interpretation. Monkish records relate that St. Bernard’s mother dreamed that she had a little white dog barking about her, which was interpreted to her by a religious person as meaning “that she should be the mother of an excellent dog indeed, who should be the hope of God’s house, and would incessantly bark against its adversaries, for he should be a famous preacher, and cure many by his medicinal tongue.” Our Archbishop Laurence, to whom we owe the church of Our Lady at Canterbury, was about to emigrate to France under the discouragement of persecution, until warned in a dream, and severely scourged by St. Peter for his weakness. It was on the relation not only of this dream, but on actually exhibiting the marks of the stripes he had received, that Eadbald was baptized, and became a protector of the church. It was in a dream of this The Peripatetics represented dreams as arising from a presaging faculty of the mind; other sects imagined that they were suggestions of dÆmons. Democritus and Lucretius looked upon them as spectres and simulacra of corporeal things, emitted from them, floating in the air, and assailing the soul. A modern writer, Andrew Baxter, entertained a notion somewhat similar, and imagined that dreams were prompted by separate immaterial beings, or spirits, who had access to the sleeper’s brain with the faculty of inspiring him with various ideas. Burton divides dreams into natural, divine, and dÆmoniacal; and he defines sleep, after Scaliger, as “the rest or binding of the outward senses, and of the common sense, for the preservation of body and soul.” Gradually released from the trammels of superstition, modern philosophers have sought for more plausible explanations of the nature and causes of dreams, but perhaps without having attained a greater degree of certainty in this difficult question than our bewildered ancestors. Wolfius is of opinion that every dream originates in some sensation, yet the independent energies of the mind are sufficiently displayed in the preservation of the continued phantasms of the imagination. He maintains that none of these phantasms can prevail unless they arise from this previous sensation. De Formey is of the same opinion, and conceives that dreams are supernatural when not produced by these sensations. But of what nature are these sensations? Are they corporeal impressions received prior to sleep, and the continuances of reflection, or are they the children of an idle brain? Although it is not easy to trace an affinity between the subjects of our dreams and our previous train of thought, yet it is more than probable that dreams are excited by impressions experienced in our waking moments, and retransmitted to the sensorium, however difficult it may be to link the connexion of our ideas, and trace their imperceptible catenation. Moreover, there does not exist a necessary and regular association in the state of mind that succeeds any particular impressions. These impressions only predispose the mind to certain ideas, which act upon it with more or less subsequent energy, and with more or less irregularity, Dugald Stewart has endeavoured to account for these phenomena by the doctrine that in sleep the operations of the mind are suspended, and that therefore the cause of dreams is the loss of power of the will over the mind, which in the waking condition is subject to its control. Now, if this be the case, dreams must consist of mental operations independent of the will. However, it is not the suspension of the will and of the powers of volition that alone constitutes sleep; it is the suspension of the powers of the understanding,—attention, comparison, memory, and judgment. It is in consequence of this suspension of all our active intellectual faculties that we never can will during our dreams; in that state there appears to be a resistance of the powers of volition with which the mind struggles in vain, and which is expressed both by moans, and the character of the sleeper’s every feature, which portrays a state of anguish and impatience. In all dreams that are not of a morbid nature, every action is passive, involuntary. This state is widely different from delirium, in which the brain is in a morbid state of excitement; and the body is more susceptible than usual of external agency, while the mind is perplexed by hallucinations of an erroneous nature. Dr. Abercrombie considers insanity and dreaming as having a remarkable affinity when considered as mental phenomena; the impressions in the one case being more or less permanent, and transient in the other. Somnambulism he considers an intermediate state. Dreams, according to his theory, are divided into four classes: the first, when recent events and recent mental emotions are mixed up with each other, and with old events, by some feeling common to both; the second class relates to trains of images brought up by association with bodily sensations; the third, the result of forgotten associations; and the fourth class of dreams contains those in which a strong propensity of character, or a strong mental emotion, is imbodied in a dream, and by some Regarding the first class, Dr. A. relates the following: “A woman, who was a patient in the clinical ward of the infirmary of Edinburgh, under the care of Dr. Duncan, talked a great deal in her sleep, and made numerous and very distinct allusions to the cases of other sick persons. These allusions did not apply to any patients who were in the ward at the time; but, after some observation, they were found to refer correctly to the cases of individuals who were there when this woman was a patient in the ward two years before.” The following is an instance of phantasms being produced by our associations with bodily sensations, and tends to show how alive our faculties continue during sleep to the slightest impressions: The subject of this observation was an officer in the expedition to Louisburg in 1758, who had this peculiarity in so remarkable a degree, that his companions in the transport were in the constant habit of amusing themselves at his expense. They could produce in him any kind of dream by whispering in his ear, especially if this was done by a friend with whose voice he had become familiar. One time they conducted him through the whole progress of a quarrel, which ended in a duel; and when the parties were supposed to have met, a pistol was put into his hand, which he fired, and was awakened by the report. On another occasion they found him asleep on the top of a locker in the cabin, when they made him believe he had fallen overboard, and exhorted him to save himself by swimming. They then told him that a shark was pursuing him, and entreated him to dive for his life. He instantly did so, and with so much force as to throw himself from the locker upon the cabin floor, by which he was much bruised, and awakened of course. After the landing of the army at Louisburg, his friends found him one day asleep in his tent, and evidently much annoyed by the cannonading. They then made him believe that he was engaged, when he expressed great fear, and showed an evident disposition to run away. Against this they remonstrated, but at the same time increased his fears by imitating the groans of the wounded and the dying; and when he asked, as he often did, who was hit, they named his particular friends. At last they told him that the man next himself in his company had fallen, when he instantly sprung from his bed, rushed out of the tent, and was only roused from his danger and his The third class of dreams relates to the revival of forgotten associations. The person in question was at the time connected with one of the principal banks in Glasgow, and was at his place at the teller’s table, where money is paid, when a person entered demanding payment of a sum of six pounds. There were several people waiting, who were in turn entitled to be attended to before him; but he was remarkably impatient and rather noisy, and being besides a remarkable stammerer, he became so annoying, that another gentleman requested him to pay the money and get rid of him. He did so accordingly, but with an expression of impatience at being obliged to attend to him before his turn, and thought no more of the transaction. At the end of the year, which was eight or nine months after, the books of the bank could not be made to balance, the deficiency being exactly six pounds. Several days and nights had been spent in endeavouring to discover the error, but without success, when he returned home much fatigued, and went to bed. He dreamt of being at his place in the bank, and the whole transaction of the stammerer, as now detailed, passed before him in all its particulars. He awoke under the full impression that the dream would lead him to the discovery of what he was so anxiously in search of, and on examination he soon discovered that he had neglected to enter the sum which he had thus paid. The following singular dreams are examples of the fourth class. A clergyman had come to Edinburgh from a short distance in the country, and was sleeping at an inn, when he dreamt of seeing a fire, and one of his children in the midst of it. He awoke with the impression, and instantly left town on his return home. When he arrived in sight of his house, he found it on fire, and got there in time to assist in saving one of his children, who in the alarm and confusion had been left in a situation of danger. A gentleman in Edinburgh was affected with aneurism of the popliteal artery, for which he was under the care of two eminent surgeons, and the day was fixed for the operation. About two days before the appointed time, the wife of the The following dream is still more remarkable. A lady dreamt that an aged female relative had been murdered by a black servant, and the dream occurred more than once. She was then so impressed by it, that she went to the house of the lady, and prevailed upon a gentleman to watch in an adjoining room during the following night. About three o’clock in the morning, the gentleman, hearing footsteps on the stairs, left his place of concealment, and met the servant carrying up a quantity of coals. Being questioned as to where he was going, he replied, in a hurried and confused manner, that he was going to mend his mistress’s fire, which at three o’clock in the morning in the middle of summer was evidently impossible; and, on further investigation, a strong knife was found concealed beneath the coals. Dreams, to whatever causes they may be attributed, vary according to the nature of our sleep: if it is sound and natural, they will seldom prevail; if, on the contrary, it be broken and uneasy, by a spontaneous association dreams will become fanciful, and might indeed be called visions, so fantastic and chimerical are all the objects that present themselves in motley groups to the disturbed mind. This derangement in the sensorium may be referred to various physical causes,—the sensations of heat or of cold, obstruction in the course of the circulation of the blood, as when lying upon the back, a difficult digestion. In a sound sleep our dreams are seldom remembered except in a vague manner; whereas, in a broken sleep, as Formey has observed, the impression of the dream remains upon the mind, and constitutes what this philosopher called “the lucidity of dreams.” It not unfrequently happens to us that we have had a similar dream several times, or at least we labour under this impression; nay, many persons fancy that particular events of their life at the moment of their occurrence had clearly taken place at a former period either in reality or in a dream. Morning “winged dreams” are more easily remembered in their circumstantial vagaries than those of the preceding night, for at that period (the morning) our sleep is not sound, and dreams become more lucid. These rÊvasseries, as the French call them, are admirably described by Dryden:
That we are more or less impressionable in our sleep is rendered evident by the facility with which even a sound sleeper is disturbed by the slightest noise: the sparkling of a fire, or the crackling produced by the wick of our night-lamp when coming into contact with the water in the glass, the sting of an insect, the slightest admission of a higher or lower temperature, will occasion a broken sleep and its dreams. It has been remarked that the sense of seeing is more frequently acted upon in dreams than that of hearing, and very seldom do we find our smell and taste under their influence. It is possible that this peculiarity may arise from the greater variety of impressions with which the sight is daily struck, and which memory communicates by association or retransmission. Next to feeling, vision is the first sense brought into relation with external objects. When we hear noises, explosions, tumultuous cries, it is more than probable that our dreams partake of a delirious and morbid nature, or of sensorial or intellectual hallucinations, in which the mind is actually diseased, and our perceptions become erroneous: then we speak loudly to others, and to ourselves. When these hallucinations prevail after sleep, the invasion of mania may be apprehended. Cabanis, in his curious investigations on the mind, has endeavoured to fix the order in which the different parts of our organization go to sleep. First the legs and arms, then the muscles that support the head and back: the first sense that slumbers, according to his notions, is that of sight; then follow in regular succession the senses of taste, smell, hearing, and feeling. The viscera fall asleep one after the other, but with different decrees of soundness. If this doctrine be correct, we may easily conceive the wild and strange inconsistencies of our dreams, during which the waking and the sleeping organs are acting and reacting upon each other. Corporeal sensations and different organic actions frequently attend our dreams; but these may be attributed to our mode of living, or the indulgence in certain unruly desires and conversations. That man and animals dream of the pursuits of the preceding day there can be no doubt: hence the line, Et canis in somnis leporis vestigia latrat. The effects of a heavy meal, more especially a supper, in Our ancestors had recourse to various devices to procure sound sleep. Borde recommends a good draught of strong drink before going to bed; Burton, a nutmeg and ale, with a good potation of muscadine with a toast; while Ætius recommends a sup of vinegar, which, according to Piso, “attenuat melancholiam et ad conciliandum somnum juvat.” Oppression from repletion will occasion fearful dreams and the night-mare; and bodily sufferings, when exhaustion has brought on sleep, will also be attended with alarming and painful visions. Levinus Lemnius recommended to sleep with the mouth shut, to promote a regular digestion by the exclusion of too much external air. The night-mare is admirably described in Dryden’s translation of Virgil: And as, when heavy sleep has closed the sight, In the Runic theology it was regarded as a spectre of the night, which seized men in their sleep, and suddenly deprived them of speech and of motion. It was vulgarly called witch-riding, and considered as arising from the weight of fuliginous spirits incumbent on the breast. Somnus ut sit levis, sit tibi coena brevis, is the ancient axiom of our distich, That your sleep may be light, Notwithstanding this rule of health, it is nevertheless true that many persons sleep more soundly after a hearty supper; and, most unquestionably, dreams are more frequent towards morning than in the beginning of the night. In my opinion, I should apprehend that the sound sleep of supper-eaters is to be attributed to the narcotic nature of their potations, more than the meal, although the siesta of southern countries might be advanced in favour of a contrary opinion. My brain I’ll prove the female to my soul, Volition has no more power over thought when we are awake than sleeping; and, despite all metaphysical and psychological speculations, it cannot be demonstrated that the mind does not retain its full energies during sleep, only they cease to be regulated by judgment, and are not, to use Locke’s words, under the rule and conduct of the understanding; and even on this opinion it has been fairly observed, that much of incongruity which is supposed to prove suspension of reason, and much of the wild discordancy of representation which appears to prevail during our sleep, may arise from the defect of memory when we are awake, that does not retain the impression of images which have passed across the mind in light and rapid succession, and which, therefore, exhibit but a partial and imperfect sketch of the picture that engaged the attention in sleep. The well-known fact that the impressions of our dreams are oftentimes more vivid and correct, when some time has elapsed, than on our awakening, tends to confirm this hypothesis; and these recollections are the more vivid when they bear any analogy to circumstances that come to pass. Sir Thomas Brown was of opinion that sleep was the waking of the soul; the ligation of sense, but the liberty of reason; and that our waking conceptions do not match the fancies of our sleep. He thus expresses himself in his Religio Medici: “At my nativity my ascendant was the watery sign of Scorpius; I was born in the planetary hour of Saturn, and I think I have a piece of that leaden planet in me. I am no way facetious, nor disposed for the mirth and galliardise of company; yet in one dream I can compose a whole comedy, behold the action, apprehend the jests, and laugh myself awake at the conceits thereof. Were my memory as faithful as my reason is then fruitful, I would never study but in my dreams, and this time also would I choose for my devotions; but our grosser memories have then so little hold of our abstracted understandings, that they forget the story, and Dreams have been considered as prescriptive in various diseases. Diodorus Siculus relates that a certain Scythian dreamed that Æsculapius had drawn the humours of his body to one place, or head, to have it lanced. When Galen had an inflammation of the diaphragm, we are told that he was directed in a dream to open a vein between the thumb and the fourth finger—an operation which restored him to health. Marcus Antoninus asserted that he learned in his dreams various remedies for spitting of blood. It is related of Sir Christopher Wren, that, when at Paris, in 1671, being disordered with “a pain in his reins,” he sent for a physician, who prescribed blood-letting, but he deferred submitting to it, and dreamed that very night that he was in a place where palm-trees grew, and that a woman in a romantic habit offered dates to him. The next day he sent for dates, which cured him. Now, although this cure, brought about by a dream, was considered wonderful, its circumstances offer nothing supernatural. It is more than probable that Sir Christopher had frequently read in foreign works on medicine, that dates were recommended as an efficacious remedy in nephritic complaints; and, moreover, had met in his daily perambulations female quacks, who exhibit themselves to this day in the French metropolis, fantastically attired, and vending their far-famed nostrums. That he should have remembered dates, and that the phantasm of the she-mountebank might at the same time have struck his fancy, were two associations by no means improbable. It is very likely that all the strange stories of prophetic dreams might be traced to a similar connexion of ideas. I have before observed that dreams do not always assume their complexion from recent occurrences, and our bodily sufferings during sleep bring to our recollection every circumstance that regards the malady. A patient who had a bottle of hot water placed at his feet dreamed that he was walking in great agony in the burning lava of Vesuvius. Similar associations exist when awake: the man whose arm has been amputated constantly refers the pain he experiences to the lost hand, or to that part of the limb which received the injury; and the very same nervous illusion prevails during his slumbers. A case is recorded of an officer who had lost his leg, and, when cold, felt comfort and warmth by wrapping the stump of his wooden leg in flannel. If proof were wanting that dreams arise from our waking thoughts, it might be found in the circumstance of those sleepers who divulge their secrets, and verify the lines of Shakspeare: There are a kind of men so loose of soul, Reason, therefore, prompts us to reject the idea of dreams being preternatural suggestions. In general, we may consider them as a morbid excitement of the brain, arising either from moral or physical causes, and depending essentially on the condition of our mind and body. Our most lively hopes are ever linked with fears that prey upon us even when most secure; and these apprehensions, recurring in our dreams, prove too often prophetic of the very events we dreaded. The prejudices of early education shed around these forewarnings circumstantial incidents; and fear is the greatest ally of superstition. If our visions by night are fraught with such singular circumstances, our “day dreams,” or reveries, are frequently attended with strange associations. The impressions received during these ecstatic visions or trances will occasionally act so powerfully upon the mind, that during our waking hours and the usual pursuits of life we cannot divest ourselves of the existence of their reality. Dr. Arnould has given the following curious account of a case of this kind, as narrated by the individual himself:—“One afternoon in the month of May, feeling himself a little unsettled and not inclined to business, he thought he would take a walk into the city to amuse his mind, and having strolled into St. Paul’s Churchyard, he stopped at the shop window of Carrington and Bowles, and looked at the pictures, “They had not been there many minutes, when, while he was gazing on the extensive prospect and delighted with the splendid scene below him, the grave gentleman pulled out from an inside coat-pocket something like a compass, having round the edge some curious figures; then having muttered some unintelligible words, he placed it in the centre of the ball. He felt a great trembling, and a sort of horror came over him, which was increased by his companion asking him if he should like to see any friend at a distance and to know what he was at that time doing, for if so, the latter could show him any such person. It happened that his father had been for a long time in bad health and for some weeks past he had not visited him. A sudden thought came into his mind, so powerful, that it overcame his terror, that he should like to see his father. He had no sooner expressed the wish than the exact person of his father was immediately presented to his sight in the mirror, reclining in his armchair and taking his afternoon sleep. Not having fully believed in the power of the stranger to make good his offer, he became overwhelmed with terror at the clearness and truth of the vision presented to him, and he entreated his mysterious companion that they might immediately descend, as he felt himself very ill. The request was complied with, and on parting under the portico of the northern entrance, the stranger said to him, ‘Remember you are the slave of the man of the mirror.’” Dr. Pritchard remarks on this singular case of insanity, that this gentleman had actually ascended to the top of St. Paul’s, and that impressions there received being afterwards renewed in his mind when in a state of vivid excitement, in a dream or ecstatic revery, became so blended with the creation of fancy, as to form one mysterious vision, in which the true and the imaginary were afterwards inseparable. It is also possible that this person, being of a nervous and susceptible disposition, had been struck, when on the dizzy height of the cupola, with a vertigo, or fit, during which these phantasms had struck him in so vivid a manner as to derange his intellects—the loud and terrific sound of the bell adding to the horror of his situation. It is well known that persons have recollected circumstances that occurred around them during an epileptic and an apoplectic attack. Our worthy visionary was for two years an inmate of a private asylum. In regard to the verification of dreams, they may be easily accounted for by that proneness that most men, especially if of a weak and impressionable state of mind, experience in courting the object of their hopes or fears. Thus have the absurd prognostications of fortune-tellers been too frequently fatal, as we may work up our thoughts to such an intensity as to bring on the very death that we apprehend. Dr. Pritchard relates the case of a clergyman, in an indifferent state of health, who, when standing one day at the corner of a street, saw a funeral procession approaching him. He waited till it came near him, saw all the train pass him, with black nodding plumes, and read his own name on the coffin, which was carried by, and entered, with the whole procession, into the house where he resided. This was the commencement of an illness which put an end to his life in a few days. During a severe fever, in the peninsula, my nightly rest was constantly disturbed by the threatening appearance of animals with fearful horns and antlers, incessantly hovering about me. For a long time after my recovery the spectral It is to be feared that, notwithstanding the ingenuity of the many physiologists who have sought to investigate the nature of dreams, we shall never come to any satisfactory conclusion, since we follow too frequently the example of the German philosopher, Lesage, who, in his endeavour to throw some light on this obscure subject, sought to ascertain the intermediate condition of the mind when passing from the waking state into sleep, a transition which never has been, and, most probably, never can be ascertained, since sleep, to a certain degree, is a suspension of all power of attention, perception, volition, and every spontaneous faculty. |