CHAPTER V.

DREAMS.

Behold, this dreamer cometh!

GENESIS, XXXVII, 19.

The harmonious activity of all parts of the nervous system is

indispensable to the highest exercise of the conscious mind. Healthy

intellectual life is the perfectly balanced outcome of the complex polygon

of forces which has its seat within the brain. In the waking condition

this “moving equilibrium,” as it has been happily termed,[57] is sustained

by the convergent impulses which are continually entering the brain

through the pathways afforded by the several senses. Our waking hours are

occupied with the ideas and with the associated trains of thought which

are thus projected upon the field of consciousness. As a consequence of

the harmonious function of the organs of sense, each one supplementing and

correcting the information furnished by the others, a continuous process

of perception and logical thought is maintained. But, along with the

procession of ideas which are clearly conceived by the mind, the field of

consciousness is also invaded by a cloud of half formed perceptions, which

are too imperfect and fleeting to occupy the attention. As in the act of

vision, though the periphery of the visual field is crowded with a whole

world of objects dimly perceived without challenging particular attention,

only the center of that field furnishing clear images to the brain, so the

eye of the mind comprehends only a few of the impressions which enter the

sphere of consciousness. The swarm of unnoticed perceptions, however, is

none the less the result of abiding sensory impressions graven in the

substance of the brain, from which, through the action of memory, they may

at any favorable moment reënter consciousness. Sleep does not wholly

arrest this process. A certain amount of projection into the field of

consciousness continues, even during profound repose; and the ideas thus

aroused form the material of our dreams.

It has already been remarked that the invasion of sleep is not an

instantaneous process. One by one the senses fall asleep, and long before

the final cessation of their activity, sleepiness hinders their function.

Hence a progressive narrowing of the range of external perception; hence a

reduction of the vividness of impressions derived from the outside world;

hence, also, a simplification of the actions and reactions which

constitute the “polygon of forces” active within the brain. But the

suppression of certain lines in this polygon does not suppress life, nor

does it necessarily destroy consciousness. It only occasions a

redistribution of force, and a proportionate narrowing of the stream of

related ideas. Since this process of suppression, just mentioned, is not

an absolute quantity, but a variable factor, the polygon of physical

forces within the brain and the corresponding succession of ideas in

consciousness must necessarily be in a state of continual change.

Consequently, our dreams must be as variable as the clouds that drift upon

the currents of the air. As, on a hot day in summer, when the equatorial

draught has ceased to guide the wind, we may observe all manner of local

tides among the masses of vapor which arise from the earth, so, in sleep,

when the guiding influence of the senses is withdrawn, the ideas that

still arise are chiefly dependent for their origin and association upon

the automatic and endogenous activities of the brain. Undisturbed by

impulses from the external world, the brain seems then to become more

sensitive to impressions that have their origin within the body. An

overloaded stomach, an enfeebled heart, a turgid sexual apparatus, or an

irritable nervous ganglion, may become the source of irregular and

uncompensated impulses which, without disturbing the organs of special

sense, may invade the cerebral cortex, and may there set in motion a whole

battery of mechanisms whose influence upon consciousness would remain

quite unnoticed were the external senses in full operation.

Still another cause for the production of dreams is to be found in the

more or less complete suspension of the power of volition which

accompanies sleep. Every act of attention is the result of exercise of the

will. But the perfect exercise of the will is dependent upon the perfect

development and wakefulness of the brain. So soon as sleep begins to

invade the brain, the will begins to lose its normal incitement to action,

and finally it becomes almost wholly disconnected from the muscular

organs. In this state the sleeper may desire to perform some act--he may

wish to move his limbs or to cry out aloud, but he can move neither hand

nor foot, he cannot utter a sound. In other instances a partial connection

between the will and the locomotive organs persists, and various orderly

movements can still be produced. In like manner the control of the will

over the succession and association of ideas may be either wholly, or only

partially, lost in sleep. The deeper the sleep the more complete the loss

of such control; hence the greater incoherence as well as feebleness of

impression which is characteristic of dreams when sleep is profound. The

vivid and panoramic succession of visual conceptions which constitutes a

“vision,” occurs during light and partial sleep, when the will is still

capable of in some measure guiding the procession of ideas.

For a similar reason the higher faculty of judgment, and especially the

power of arriving at moral conclusions, is in great measure suspended

during sleep. Like the power of volition, the activity of the moral sense

is dependent upon a certain functional perfection in the brain. When the

capacity of the brain is depressed by drugs or by disease, or by sleep,

the moral sensibilities are the first to disappear. Hence the non-moral

character of the impressions usually experienced during the act of

dreaming. We feel neither surprise nor regret at the incidents of ordinary

dreams. It is only when the border line of wakefulness is reached that the

dreamer feels ashamed of walking naked in his dream, or feels compunction

for an act of crime, or experiences emotions of joy or sorrow in

connection with the incidents of his vision.

A dream may, therefore, be defined as the occupation of the field of

consciousness during sleep by a succession of ideas more or less

completely withdrawn from the guidance of the senses and from the control

of the will. A great variety of dreams may thus be admitted, ranging all

the way from those products of mere absence of mind which constitute

_revery_, down to the faintest and feeblest stirrings of consciousness

which have been always observed during the act of waking from the

profoundest sleep.

Considerable light may be thrown upon the production of dreams if we

consider attentively the manner in which illusions and hallucinations are

excited by the use of drugs or by disease during the waking state. When

engaged in experimenting upon myself with different medicines, I once took

a dose of hasheesh sufficient to produce the peculiar effects of the drug.

Sitting quietly in my chair, the first unusual sensation was an agreeable

feeling of coolness diffusing itself over the surface of the body, as if

some one were gently fanning me on a hot day. A feeling of causeless

amusement began to occupy my mind. I seemed to be smiling all over without

any apparent reason for hilarity. Then the walls of the room in which I

sat seemed to recede to a vast distance. My attention became riveted upon

a little picture which hung against the wall before me. It was a sunset

scene, painted upon a canvas scarcely larger than my hand. As the wall

upon which it was placed seemed to recede, the canvas expanded until I

beheld a glorious landscape bounded by a range of snow-capped mountains

flushed with purple light from the setting sun. As I sat, admiring this

splendid scene, the gilded frame of the painting became alive with winged

fairies and cherubs, peeping out from behind the moulding, and bending

over its margin to look into the picture. Then the ceiling of the room and

the sky of the picture seemed to blend in one common expanse of ethereal

blue; the sunlight faded from the mountain peaks; stars began to appear in

the firmament; the little imps and fairies disappeared; and, presently,

everything resumed its natural appearance.

In this experience the departure from healthy cerebral function consisted

in an exaltation of certain forms of sensibility while others were

depressed. The succession of visual images was initiated by the visible

objects around me, but it was enriched by the association of ideas

furnished through the stimulation of memory. The sunset glow, the

snow-capped mountains, the starry sky, were familiar objects, suggested

from memory by the items grouped in the picture. In like manner, the

cherubs who climbed upon its gilded frame were merely the glorified

products of memory, probably suggested by the fact that it was a _picture_

upon which my attention was fixed--one picture reminding me of others

which I had seen. The loss of proportion in the view--the exaggeration and

distortion of all the relations of time and space, which made the unreal

seem real, and conferred grandeur upon commonplace objects, was

undoubtedly occasioned by a modification in the molecular structure of the

organs of special sense and of perception under the influence of hasheesh.

The change thus effected was of a character to diminish the force of

sensory impressions derived through the aid of the muscles and nerves of

the eye and the ear and the skin, while at the same time exaggerating the

processes of memory and association in connection with impressions

originating within the brain. In this way was produced a sort of confusion

between the external world and the ideal world within, rendering it

difficult to distinguish the one from the other. Hence the impossibility

of estimating aright the relation of time and space to the visual

impressions upon which attention was fixed. The result was a waking dream

which differed from ordinary revery chiefly in the intensity of the

impressions that occupied the mind.

A somewhat similar process is sometimes experienced as a consequence of

cerebral disorder unconnected with the effects of drugs. During the

invasion of measles, having taken no medicine but sage tea, I remember, as

night approached, a strange succession of illusions. My head seemed to

expand to the size of a bushel basket; then it would slowly contract

again. My body seemed to grow out of shape into the most distorted forms

of rickets. Audible sounds seemed to come from the most remote distances.

Impending shadows of a great darkness hovered over the bed. Waves of heat,

and tingling darts of numbness traversed my limbs. These singular and

rather uncomfortable sensations continued until relieved by an ordinary

Dover’s powder.

In this experience the confusion of ideas, though less agreeable, was

essentially similar to that occasioned by the action of the hasheesh. In

both cases there was the same diminution of the intensity of external

sensation accompanied by an exaggeration of internal impressions. The

brain and the nerves were in a condition of irritable weakness, caused by

disease, which interfered with the normal generation and association of

ideas. Having thus partially escaped from the control of the senses and

the will, the mutilated succession of ideas which reached the field of

consciousness could only be perceived as a series of illusions. Here,

again, was a waking dream, of origin and course analogous to the illusions

and hallucinations which accompany every form of delirium.

It is not alone under the influence of disease or of drugs that the

automatic action of the brain furnishes ideas for the inspection of the

mind. Riding, one day, in a street-car, and reading a philosophical work,

I came upon a paragraph devoted to a discussion of the doctrine of the

association of ideas. Immediately, out of memory, flashed a momentary

vision of the quarter deck of the old frigate, United States, upon which

appeared the figure of a very small midshipman, talking to a gigantic

personage, the captain of the ship. This was an incident which I had

actually witnessed forty years before. I was, at first, somewhat puzzled

in the attempt to account for the occurrence of a vision so apparently

incongruous with the subject matter of the book; but a little reflection

convinced me that the exciting cause of this seemingly involuntary act of

memory was really the idea of association suggested by the book. This had

unconsciously aroused the apparatus of association in the brain, and the

particular scene thus brought before the mind had been further suggested

by the circumstance that the last object, external to the printed page,

upon which I had fixed my attention, was a large ship, lying in the river,

near the bridge, just crossed by the car in which I rode.

Numerous other examples of a similar character might be related to

illustrate the fact that the brain is a reservoir of sensory impressions,

some of which, at the moment of their original incidence, have aroused the

mind to a greater or less degree of conscious attention, and have then all

lapsed into a latent or potential condition. But, though latent, they are

none the less persistent, and only await the suppression of other

inhibitory forces to become once more capable of arousing attention. Such

inhibitory impulses are continually furnished by the action of the sensory

organs on the one hand, and by the energy of the mind upon the other. So

soon, therefore, as the organs of sense and of voluntary impulse are

sealed with sleep, if the remaining portions of the brain are still

operative, and are left to their own unrestrained activity, a more or less

disorderly series of ideas occupies the mind. This constitutes a dream.

The difference, therefore, between waking thought and a dream is analogous

to the difference between a page upon which the words have been arranged

in a rational order, and another page upon which some of the same words

have been set down at random. Inasmuch as the majority of our sensations

are derived through the organs of sight, and since the larger portion of

the sensory region of the cortex of the brain is concerned in the act of

vision, it is no more than might be expected that the ideas suggested in

sleep should generally proceed from the visual apparatus of the brain. The

superior power of visual impressions to attract attention may also serve

to explain the fact that the majority of dreams are composed of images

that were originally perceived in the act of vision. Hence our dreams, for

the most part, constitute a series of pictures undisturbed by sound, or by

other forms of sensation. But this is not always so. It is highly probable

that when the organs of external sense are allowed to sleep without

disturbance, our dreams consist of visual impressions alone. But, if any

unusual sound, or smell, or other sensation is experienced during sleep,

it may penetrate the field of consciousness, and may become the starting

point of a dream quite filled with sounds. Thus a young lady, who had

passed the evening at a musical concert, was aroused, soon after retiring,

by the striking of a clock which had been recently placed in her chamber.

At the moment of waking, she was dreaming of an orchestral performance of

Wagner’s music. Doubtless the dream was suggested by the unaccustomed

sound of the clock.

The possibility of thus suggesting, and in some degree guiding, the form

and course of a dream, has been often demonstrated.[58] One of my early

schoolmates, a boy of remarkably susceptible nervous temperament,

furnished an excellent example of this species of direction. Tickling his

nose with a straw made him dream that a dragon-fly was assaulting his

face. On another occasion, a few drops of vinegar placed upon his tongue

caused him to dream of eating oranges. Again, one of his companions

roguishly breathing in his ear the statement that the schoolmaster was

after him with a long rattan, he bounded out of bed, and could scarcely

be restrained from bursting out of doors in his evident alarm. I was

myself awakened, one night, by the ringing, as it seemed, of my doorbell;

but, hastening at once to the door, no one was there. As I was expecting a

call from a certain patient, I concluded that the bell had been rung by an

impatient messenger who could not wait. Falling again asleep, I was a

second time startled by a similar ring. Looking out of the window above

the door, it was evident that no one was there. I finally concluded that

the sound must have been perceived in a dream, and I recalled the fact

that each time, as I woke, the sound of a carriage, passing the house, had

attracted my attention. Undoubtedly, the state of expectancy in which I

was sleeping had operated as the predisposing cause of dreaming, and the

noise of wheels upon the pavement had served as the exciting cause of a

dream in which the sound-vibrations communicated to the brain had produced

by an association of ideas the particular perception which, though asleep,

I was waiting to receive.

In certain cases the impression produced by a dream is so vivid that a

considerable time after waking must elapse before it can be relegated to

its true position in the world of hallucinations. Dreaming, once, that my

wife called to me from another room, I instantly awoke; and only the fact

that she was with me could satisfy me that it was all a dream. Taine[59]

relates that “M. Baillarger dreamed one night that a certain person had

been appointed editor of a newspaper; in the morning he believed it to be

true, and mentioned it to several persons who were interested to hear

it;--the effect of the dream persisted all the forenoon, as strongly as

that of a real sensation; at last, about three o’clock, as he was stepping

into his carriage, the illusion passed off; he comprehended that he had

been dreaming.”

The following incident from the experience of Prof. Jessen, physician to

the insane asylum in Homheim, near Kiel,[60] still further illustrates

this form of hallucination:

“On a wintry morning,” writes the professor, “between five and six

o’clock, I was aroused, as I thought, by the head nurse, who reported to

me that some people had come for one of the male patients, and who at the

same time asked me whether I had any particular orders to give. I replied

that the patient might depart, and after he had left the room I turned

around to go to sleep again. All at once it struck me that I had

previously not heard anything regarding the intended departure of this

patient, but that only the prospective departure of a woman of the same

name had been reported to me. This compelled me to inquire more

particularly after the circumstances, and accordingly I lighted a candle,

rose, dressed myself, and went to the room of the head nurse. To my

surprise I found him only half dressed, and, in reply to my inquiry after

the people who had called for the patient, he said, with an expression of

astonishment, that he did not know anything of it, as he had but just left

his bed, and no one had called him. This answer did not arouse my

consciousness, but I rejoined that then the steward must have been in my

room, and that I should accordingly go to see and ask him regarding the

matter. When descending a few steps in the middle of the corridor which

led to the room of the steward, I suddenly became conscious of having

dreamed only what until that moment I had believed to be an experience

whose reality I had not doubted in the least.”

In some instances the fact of having dreamed is never recognized, and the

dreamer carries through life the delusion that his vision was an actual

occurrence. Among the Indians of Guiana, and the same thing is true of

many other savages, dreams are looked upon as actual events in which the

dreamer is visited by spirits or even by other living men. A recent

English traveler[61] says: “It becomes important, therefore, fully to

recognize the complete belief of the Indian in the reality of his

dream-life, and in the unbroken continuity of this with his working life.

It is easy to show this belief by many incidents which came under my

notice. For instance, one morning, when it was important to me to get away

from a camp on the Essequibo River, at which I had been detained for some

days by the illness of some of my Indian companions, I found that one of

the invalids, a young Macusi, though better in health, was so enraged

against me that he refused to stir, for he declared that, with great want

of consideration for his weak health, I had taken him out during the night

and had made him haul the canoe up a series of difficult cataracts.

Nothing could persuade him that this was but a dream, and it was some time

before he was so far pacified as to throw himself sulkily into the bottom

of the canoe. At that time we were all suffering from a great scarcity of

food, and hunger having its usual effect in producing vivid dreams,

similar effects frequently occurred. More than once the men declared in

the morning that some absent men, whom they named, had come during the

night and had beaten or otherwise maltreated them; and they insisted upon

much rubbing of the bruised parts of their bodies.”

It is highly probable that from these facts, and from others of a similar

character, may be derived the true explanation of many of the supposed

examples of intercourse with divine or angelic persons which occupy so

important a place in early mythology. An incident in the childhood of the

prophet Samuel can scarcely admit of any other interpretation. In other

cases, notwithstanding the intensity of the dream, its true character is

recognized by the dreamer during the very act of vision. Thus, I once

dreamed that I saw a young girl standing before me. So vivid was the

perception, that the actual presence of such a person could not have

produced a more perfect impression upon the waking brain. Yet, at the same

instant, I comprehended the fact that it was merely a dream, and remarked

the difference between the intensity of the visual image in this and in

other dreams. Such speedy recognition of the hallucination does not always

accompany the act of waking out of a dream. In some cases, as we shall

have occasion to see, the images which have figured in a dream are still

perceived for a certain period of time after awaking.

The majority of dreams are composed of visual images. The dreamer looks

upon a picture which changes silently before his eyes, without appealing

to any other sense than that of sight. But in certain cases any other

sense may become excited, producing illusions or hallucinations as perfect

as the images of healthy vision. They may be suggested by external

impressions, as in my dream of a ring at the door bell, which proved to be

an auditory illusion excited by the sound of passing carriage wheels; or

they may, at least apparently, find their starting point in accidental

states of the bodily organization. If attention be paid to this matter, it

will be observed that all unusual modes of dreaming, and all extraordinary

vividness of dream-impressions can be connected with some departure from

the physiological conditions of quiet sleep. Either disease, or

exhaustion, or emotional disturbance, or narcotic intoxication of the

brain may be noted as the immediate cause of such derangement of the

cerebral functions. After drinking several cups of coffee before retiring,

I dreamed of a large yellow flower which exhaled a very fragrant odor.

During the same night I also dreamed of drinking wine, which agreeably

excited the senses of taste and of smell. Upon another occasion, having

been disturbed by the entrance of burglars into my house, I dreamed that a

burglar was fumbling under my pillow, and was raising my head and

shoulders with the mattress upon which I slept. I seemed to feel the

changes of pressure and of contact as distinctly as if awake. The

connection of voluptuous illusions with erotic dreams is too familiar to

require particular mention.

Dreams are not always limited to the revival and combination of the images

of sensation. Intellectual combinations are sometimes thus presented to

the mind. The most familiar illustrations of this fact are furnished by

the experience of mathematicians who have worked out mathematical problems

in their dreams. One of my patients, an expert book-keeper, dreamed of

adding up six columns of figures at once. In the morning he still

remembered his dream; and, on adding up the columns, found that he had

actually produced the right sum in each case. A college student of my

acquaintance, who was puzzled by a geometrical proposition, wrote out the

correct solution during his sleep. This was something more than simple

dreaming; it trenched upon actual somnambulism. Another acquaintance

dreamed of being in heaven, and, while there, experienced relief from

doubt regarding certain theological doctrines which had previously

exercised his mind. I have myself composed several sentences during the

course of a dream, and have, while dreaming, sometimes esteemed them

worthy of preservation; but my waking recollection has never coincided in

this particular with the opinions formed during sleep.

Great difference between dreams may be remarked in their coherence and

continuity of evolution. Some are composed of the most inconsistent

elements without order or logical arrangement. In others the incidents

follow very closely in the line of a natural and rational development, so

that the dreamer seems to be present as a spectator of a perfectly

coherent drama. It is probable that these differences depend upon

variations in the degree of completeness with which the different parts of

the brain and of the body are overwhelmed by sleep. If different and

widely separated portions are sufficiently wakeful to suggest ideas to the

mind, the resulting congeries will consist of discordant and incoherent

elements. But if wakefulness is limited to a particular organ of the body

or to a circumscribed territory of the brain, the resulting impressions in

consciousness should be correspondingly restricted, and will manifest a

more orderly connection with each other. In some cases a tendency to

simultaneous wakefulness of particular portions of the cerebral register

seems to become habitual, so that the same set of ideas may be often

renewed in the same order during sleep, constituting a repetition of the

same dream. In this way I have frequently dreamed of a volcanic eruption

of molten lava from a lofty mountain. This frequent revival of the same

train of images is probably due to the fact that in childhood I actually

witnessed a volcanic outbreak, and that a very highly colored picture of

Vesuvius in eruption hangs in my sitting room, so that my brain has become

profoundly impressed with this particular image. When other portions of

the brain are asleep, if the special region concerned with this picture be

aroused, the mind receives the same impression which it received when

first excited by that portion of the organ of memory.

As a general thing, however, dreams do not possess any such compactness

and coherence. They are usually derived from many different portions of

the cerebral organ, even when they seem to exhibit a fluently connected

course. Thus, I dreamed, one night, that I was walking in a garden filled

with peculiar oriental shrubbery. In this garden I discovered one of my

brothers and a friend, who is widely known in literary circles, engaged in

flying a kite. With great adroitness they had succeeded in causing the

kite-string to describe in the air the outline of the letter Z. I

congratulated them on the adoption of so truly scientific a method of

kite-flying; telling them, also, that I had once succeeded in making a

kite-string describe a fourth line, thus: [Symbol] As they expressed

surprise at this, I told them that in the May number of the Atlantic

Monthly, for 1883, they would find an article on this method of

kite-flying, written by Oliver Wendell Holmes.

Nothing can seem more absurd than such a sequence of ideas. They follow

each other without a break, yet without any logical coherence, very like

the order in which ideas arise to occupy the mind of an insane person.

Indeed, such dreams suggest the doctrine that the condition of a dreamer’s

brain is functionally identical with what obtains in certain forms of

insanity. At first sight it would seem as if such a dream could have no

possible basis in fact. But a brief retrospection enabled me to trace each

individual item to its source in memory, and I was able to construct the

following key to the vision: During the previous evening I had been

examining a number of East Indian photographs. Among the most remarkable

of them was a picture of the glorious gardens of the Taj, at Agra. Another

represented the ruined Buddhist tower at Sarnath, a structure remarkable

for the numerous triangular figures carved as ornaments upon its sides.

Hence the garden and the zigzag kite-string in the dream. During the day

before, while conversing with a neighbor regarding the financial

misfortunes of an acquaintance, I had remarked that if he had stopped

kite-flying, and had settled down to legitimate business at last, he would

doubtless do well in the future. Hence the kite. I had recently received

an interesting letter from my literary friend in which he had mentioned my

brother. Hence the two principal actors of the dream. Just before

retiring, that night, I had discussed with my wife the subject of

subscribing for a number of periodical magazines. Hence the Atlantic

Monthly; and, as the celebrated Oliver Wendell Holmes was the author most

intimately associated in my mind with that periodical, his introduction

among the characters of the dream followed most naturally in accordance

with the law of the association of ideas.

The question is continually asked, why are certain dreams so vivid and so

easily remembered, while others are of the faintest and most evanescent

character? My own experience leads me to believe that there is a morbid

element underlying all unusually vivid dreams. It is not merely because of

differences in the depth of sleep. The flitting fancies which occupy the

introduction and the termination of sleep, rarely possess any power to fix

the attention or to linger in memory. But, if the body be disturbed by

anything which causes a departure from the even course of health, such as

follows unusual or violent emotion, or an attack of illness, or an

insufficient alimentation, or great and sudden changes of atmospheric

pressure, the visions of the night become wonderfully exaggerated in every

particular. During a voyage at sea, while suffering considerably with

thirst, one night I dreamed that a fountain of sparkling water suddenly

appeared before me. A young girl dipped a pitcher in the flowing stream,

and held it out, all dripping with delicious coolness, for me to drink.

Pressing eagerly forward, I awoke, to find myself sitting up in my narrow

berth, with hands extended for the draught. Every narrative of shipwreck

is filled with similar experiences. Slow starvation is always accompanied

by dreams of singular intensity and persistence. As an illustration of the

corresponding influence of previous emotion, I may cite the experience of

a friend who had been greatly shocked by reading the account of the manner

in which the lunatic, Freeman, had killed his little son in imitation of

Abraham’s contemplated sacrifice of Isaac. This gentleman dreamed that he

was about to sacrifice his favorite daughter. He called her to him; told

her that he was about to cut off her head as a religious sacrifice; and

took up the knife for that purpose. She exclaimed, “Oh, papa! I have never

disobeyed you yet!” and extended her neck, to receive the fatal stroke,

when he awoke, trembling in every limb, and drenched with perspiration.

For a long time the horror of this dream affected him as terribly as if it

had been an actual experience.

It is usually difficult to arrive at any exact estimate of the time

occupied by a dream; but it appears certain that in some instances the

succession of images excited during sleep must be exceedingly rapid.

Abercrombie, in his work on the “_Intellectual Powers and the

Investigation of Truth_,” p. 275, has related several illustrative

examples of this fact. In my own experience, one night, as I lay half

asleep, I heard the watchman on his round, as usual, examining the

fastenings of my front door. At once I began to dream that I was

revisiting my father’s house, the home of my childhood. The family were at

breakfast in the front parlor, while I walked through the back rooms,

examining the doors and the windows, and found it impossible to close and

to fasten them. I then took a bath, dressed myself, and walked out into a

large garden behind the house. It was filled with tropical trees, of which

some were young. The old ones, which I recognized after an absence of

thirty years, astonished me by their surprising luxuriance. A lovely,

trailing convolvulus, in full bloom, attracted my admiration. After

walking for some time I came upon a plum tree which was very small when I

left home, and had now reached a height not exceeding twelve feet. This

slow growth excited considerable surprise on my part. Returning to the

house, I passed the day with my parents, and, at night, undertook to shut

up the house, but could not fasten any of the doors or windows. This

caused me great uneasiness, for there was a large gypsy camp not far from

the east end of the building. My anxiety was presently justified by a

noise in the parlor. Hastening to the door, and looking into the room, I

saw a large painting disappearing through a hole in the wall next to the

encampment of thieves. I immediately cried out, to frighten away the

robbers; and was awakened by my wife, shaking me, and asking what was the

matter, just in time to hear the watchman walking down the front steps,

after the completion of the investigation which had suggested my dream.

Another experience may serve to illustrate the fact that dreams are

greatly intensified by illness, and that their duration may be exceedingly

brief. Suffering, one night, from an attack of intestinal colic, marked by

a rapid succession of painful paroxysms, between which, however, I fell

asleep without the aid of medicine, I dreamed in one of these snatches of

slumber that I was walking with my brother on the road to the volcano of

Kilauea. In my hand were four diamond shirt buttons. They were white, and

were covered with fine asbestos wool. My brother’s wife expressed serious

doubts regarding their value; but I at once reminded her that the Emperor

of China had given to the English Ambassador, for presentation to the

Queen of England, a number of diamonds which were so rough and so cheap in

appearance that the ambassador, who was also a marquis, could not suppress

his contempt as he received the gift. But, when carried to London, and cut

by the royal jewelers, their brilliance had astonished everyone. I now

desired to deposit my diamonds with a jeweler, for safe-keeping. My

brother recommended a house near the volcano, but I had seen another, a

few squares further up the road, and accordingly resorted thither. Not

finding any satisfactory evidence of business, I retraced my steps to the

place first recommended. Entering the door, I found myself in a narrow

room, with a long, low counter on one side. Behind this were several men,

and several cases filled with jewelry. I handed my buttons to a large,

good-looking fellow, who was bustling around in his shirt-sleeves. He

immediately put one of the jewels into his mouth, when I heard something

crack, as if either his teeth or the diamond had split. Consoling myself

with the recollection that, if broken, a diamond could be mended with

cement, I asked for a certificate of deposit. While this was being

written, the entire building slipped away from over us, and glided down

the slope of the mountain, towards the ocean, leaving us, and all that had

been within the house, uncovered in the open air. This did not disconcert

any one. The jeweler finished his writing; I pocketed the receipt, and

with my brother pursued our walk through the mountain forests beyond the

crater of the volcano. Presently we arrived at an eminence from which we

could look down upon the ocean, and could see the line of the coast

prolonged for many miles on either side of a cape of land. The western

coast was very grand--mountain promontories rising behind each other as

far as the eye could reach. Having feasted our eyes with this magnificent

panorama of earth and sea and sky, we turned away in the direction of a

grove, in which was visible a large building of stone, with castellated

walls, and turrets with pointed roofs at the corners. My brother informed

me that this was a German settlement, called Little Clacius. Approaching

the castle, we were received in a magnificent hall by a beautiful woman

who offered to conduct us through the building. She led us through a

series of lofty rooms, splendidly painted, gilded, frescoed, and furnished

with inlaid tables and polished chairs. On either side were ranged large

vases, in which grew what I seemed instinctively to recognize by the name

of the Lace Mimosa--each plant consisting of a flat sheet of green

lace-work, like a coralline, studded with lovely pale yellow blossoms.

Passing through three such rooms, we entered a fourth, across the floor of

which our fair guide whirled herself with a pirouette into the presence of

a young woman clad in a richly figured dressing-gown, drawn lightly around

her form as she sat in an easy chair, nursing her baby. We were formally

introduced to this lady, who received us with the most evident

indifference, a circumstance which gave us no concern, for the view from

the open window at once engrossed my attention. Directly before me was a

shining river, pouring down the mountain side and falling about fifteen

feet into a deep dark pool that widened beneath the window from which I

gazed. High banks, covered with magnificent trees, sloped down into the

water, and cast their shadows across its rippling surface, forming a most

charming landscape. The breadth of the scene, the depth of the coloring,

the perfection and the multiplicity of all the details that pressed upon

the attention, could not have been surpassed in vividness by any real

existence. I was admiring the view, and was beginning to feel surprised

that so large a river could exist in such a place, when I was suddenly

awakened by a renewal of the intermittent pain.

In this example each individual detail could have been easily traced to

its source in memory. Pictures, and actually existent scenery furnished

the detached items which were combined in a brain that for the time being

was released from the control of the reason and the will. Irritated by

painful sensations the brain was inordinately excitable, and sleep was

less profound. Hence the remarkable intensity of the pictures which were

presented to the eye of the mind. The indescribable richness and variety

of the vision was probably due to the fact of extensive bodily

disturbance, opening a wide range of territory from which impressions were

communicated to the morbidly sensitive brain. The unusual permanence of

the whole dream in memory may be explained by the observation of Maury,

that the ease with which dreams are recollected varies inversely with the

depth of the sleep in which they occur. Dreams which are produced in sound

sleep are seldom recalled after waking, because they are but slightly

connected with impressions received by the brain during wakefulness.[62]

But dreams which occupy the mind when sleep is light and partial are

excited by cerebral movements which are closely associated with external

impressions that originate either at the moment of awaking or immediately

after that event; consequently, the bond of union between the ideas of the

dream and our waking ideas is nearly if not quite as perfect as the bonds

which serve to connect the thoughts that occupy any portion of our

conscious life. Hence such dreams are more easily reproduced from memory

by any disposition that arouses a retrograde association of ideas.

The dream above related, though excited by an unhealthy condition of the

body, was not at all disagreeable. But it is often the case that disorders

of particular organs serve to originate visions with special and evident

characteristics related to their source. Thus, one of my patients, during

an attack of uterine and hemorrhoidal congestion, would dream that a heavy

weight had been laid upon the lower part of the abdomen. On another

occasion, having gone to sleep, apparently in perfect health, she dreamed

of a terrible pain in the head, and that her husband and a physician were

applying a cupping glass to the back of her neck. This woke her up, and

she found that she was actually suffering with a very severe headache.

Another lady, shortly after confinement, dreamed that her baby had teeth,

and that it was biting her nipple. Next day she discovered a tender spot

in the breast, which rapidly developed a mammary abscess. Forbes

Winslow[63] has collected a considerable number of similar cases. In

certain instances not only have dreams been originated by special local

pain, but the incipient stages of insanity have been revealed by

exaggerated dreams. One of my patients, for a considerable time before the

evolution of an attack of melancholia, would dream, every night, that a

big black dog came into her bed. Another, who suffered with cardiac

palpitation, caused by excessive tea-drinking, was often visited in sleep

by a mocking imp who seated himself upon the pit of her stomach, and

pressed her ribs together with his hands.

The distress or alarm which accompanies such dreams is sometimes

sufficient to arouse the sleeper. Often, however, he strives, in his

vision, to escape from some impending horror, or to lift up his voice in

a cry for help, but the will is powerless to reach the necessary muscles,

and no movement results. In such cases the portion of the brain in which

the will resides is awake, but the conducting fibres which intervene

between the cortex of the brain and the locomotive ganglia in the

cerebro-spinal axis are asleep, and cannot be sufficiently aroused to

transmit the impulses derived from the action of the will.

In all ages of the world a belief in the prophetic character of certain

dreams has prevailed. Numerous examples are recorded in which a warning

intimation of approaching disaster has been thus received. Thus the holy

evangelist, St. Matthew, relates that Joseph, the husband of Mary, was

guided by dreams to escape with his family from the murderous designs of

Herod and of his son Archelaus. The literature of the middle ages is

filled with similar narratives. Coming down to recent times, it is not

difficult to gather numerous examples of dreams which have been excited by

presentiments of good or evil. A lady who was about to embark upon the

ill-fated steamer Arctic, dreamed so vividly of shipwreck that she refused

to take passage, and thus escaped the frightful disaster which overwhelmed

the ship and its numerous passengers. Max Simon[64] relates the case of a

lady who, in spite of a similar warning, embarked upon a steamship and

lost her life, through the explosion of the boiler during the voyage. On

another occasion[65] a noble lady dreamed that a wing of the palace in

which her children were sleeping was about to fall down. Starting up, she

called her waiting maids, and insisted that they should bring the children

to her chamber. The women endeavored to calm her agitation, quoting an old

proverb to the effect that “dreams go by contraries.” As she persisted in

her commands, they feigned obedience, but soon returned to say that the

young princes were sleeping too quietly to be removed. The princess would

not be thus composed; and at last the servants reluctantly brought the

little boys from their room. They had scarcely reached their mother’s

apartments, when the disaster of which she had dreamed was realized, and

the bedroom from which they had just been carried, was crushed into a mass

of ruins.

The ancient explanation of such events consisted in a reference to the

Deity, who was supposed to address his favorites through the medium of

dreams. The modern skeptical explanation views all such revelations as

mere accidents. Among the myriads of dreamers, say the “five-sense

philosophers,” the infinite variety of combinations which disturb the

brain during sleep, cannot fail to produce occasionally such coincidences.

When these are of a striking character, the seemingly prophetic vision is

remembered, but the cases of discrepancies between vision and result are

not recorded, and are soon forgotten. This opinion may very probably be

correct in the vast majority of instances; but, if so, we are not in a

position to assert any scientific demonstration of the fact. There is,

moreover, so far as the ancient religious view is concerned, a certain

transcendental sense in which it is true that God may guide his creatures

through the agency of dreams, as well as in a thousand other different

ways; but this metaphysical process we can no more comprehend than we can

understand or explain the interaction of mind and matter in the brain. The

psycho-physiologist must content himself, at present, with the attempt to

show that it may not be incompatible with natural law for coming events to

cast their shadows before them through the forms of a dream. The following

observations lend color to such a possibility.

The extraordinary susceptibility of the brain during certain conditions of

sleep has already been noted as a cause for the superior vividness of

coloring and intensity of action which sometimes characterizes our dreams.

In this respect a slightly morbid condition of the brain, comparable to

the effects of hasheesh, probably exists. In such cases the brain may be

disturbed to a degree sufficient for the awakening of consciousness by

causes that would ordinarily be powerless to reveal themselves. Recording

his experience of an earthquake at Lesina, in the night of Sept. 8, 1884,

Buschick states, in the Journal of the Austrian Meteorological Society,

that a few seconds before the shock he was awakened with a feeling of

strange discomfort and apprehension. Once before, on a similar occasion,

he had been in like manner aroused from sleep just before the commencement

of an earthquake, probably by a feeble and ordinarily imperceptible

agitation of the soil. At a time when I was for many months severely

overtasked, I always woke up in the night whenever about to receive a call

to a patient. Before the sound of footsteps became audible on the

sidewalk, I would wake. Presently some one would be heard, approaching the

house, and then the doorbell would ring. So often was this experience

repeated, that I learned to expect a summons whenever awakened during the

night. Gradually, however, as my health improved with rest, this morbid

excitability disappeared, and has never been renewed. It seems probable

that in this example the sensitiveness of the brain during sleep was so

great that audible impressions were received with vigor sufficient to

awake consciousness before they were sufficiently strong to arrest the

attention when actually awake. The extreme sensibility of the brain, under

certain conditions, to impressions from a distance, is further illustrated

by the experience of persons laboring under diseases which produce serious

departures from a healthy cerebral circulation. Thus, one of my patients,

while suffering with cerebral hyperæmia, could hear children talking half

a mile away, at a distance where no one else could hear them. This

susceptibility is doubtless the foundation of many well authenticated

cases of presentiment. Another of my patients, a lady of remarkably

sensitive nervous organization, though otherwise in apparently good

health, was one evening lying alone upon her bed. Suddenly, she became

greatly agitated with the conviction that something had happened to her

husband, who had not yet returned from his place of business. He

presently, however, came quietly into the house, and greeted his wife as

usual. She exclaimed at once, “What has happened to you, my dear?”

“Nothing,” he replied. “Yes,” she said, “something has happened, just now;

I felt that you were in trouble.” “Oh, yes,” answered he, after a moment’s

reflection, “as I was passing by the park, on my way home, two men tried

to stop my horse, but I whipped up, and got away from them without any

trouble.”

On another occasion the same patient was one day suddenly oppressed by a

conviction that something had happened to her mother and sister, who were

driving together at some distance from home. After a short time they

actually returned in a sorry plight, without their carriage. The horse had

run away, upsetting them upon the road.

In all these cases it is worthy of remark that there was present an

unusual degree of cerebral erethism. Solicitude, weariness, anxiety,

inordinate irritability of the brain. It is possible that under such

conditions one may hear premonitory sounds, may in some sort feel distant

agitations which our healthy organs are usually incapable of apprehending.

When such a brain during sleep is unoccupied with the ordinary objects of

sensation, feeble impulses, which usually remain unnoticed, may sometimes

suffice to arrest the attention. We may thus explain the possibility of

impressions derived from distant events passing into the consciousness of

a dreamer, and arousing hallucinations of which the immediate cerebral

mechanism is the same as that of the ordinary hypnagogic hallucination.

Thus, the Rev. Canon Warburton relates the following experience[66]:

“Somewhere about the year 1848 I went up from Oxford to stay a day or two

with my brother.... When I got to his chambers I found a note on the table

apologising for his absence, and saying that he had gone to a dance

somewhere in the West End, and intended to be home soon after one

o’clock. Instead of going to bed, I dozed in an arm-chair, but started up

wide awake exactly at one, ejaculating, ‘By Jove, he’s down!’ and seeing

him come out of a drawing-room into a brightly illuminated landing,

catching his foot in the edge of the top stair, and falling headlong, just

saving himself by his elbows and hands. (The house was one which I had

never seen, nor did I know where it was.) Thinking very little of the

matter, I fell a-doze again for half an hour, and was awakened by my

brother suddenly coming in and saying, ‘Oh, there you are! I have just had

as narrow an escape of breaking my neck as I ever had in my life. Coming

out of the ball-room, I caught my foot, and tumbled full length down the

stairs.’”

An incident of this character might very properly be ranked as a mere

coincidence, were it not for the fact that it is one only of a

considerable number of well attested acts of vision connected either with

the hypnagogic state or with the act of dreaming itself. The comparative

rarity of such events lends them a marvelous aspect; yet there is really

nothing about them any more wonderful or preternatural than the

demonstrated possibility of telegraphic signaling across the sea without

the intervention of an electric wire.[67] Under ordinary circumstances a

metallic conductor must serve as the avenue of communication between

distant stations; but if a sufficiently sensitive piece of apparatus be

placed in contact with the water on either side of an arm of the sea,

communications may be transmitted from one to the other by a diffusion of

impulses through the entire body of water.

In like manner we ordinarily see and hear and feel as a consequence of

cerebral excitement occasioned by specific impressions concentrated

through the organs of sight and hearing and touch. But it is quite

reasonable to believe in the possible existence of a brain so delicately

organized as to be capable of reacting to impressions which are too

diffuse and too feeble to arouse the ordinary apparatus of sensation. With

such a brain it might be possible to experience perception without

eye-sight. Evidence furnished by the facts of somnambulism and hypnotism

indicates that the receptivity of the brain may become temporarily exalted

to a degree which warrants the inference that clairvoyance itself may be

thus brought within the capacity of certain peculiarly sensitive

organizations. The same extraordinary receptivity occasionally seems to

attend the act of dreaming. For example, one of my acquaintances, a lady

of a highly wrought nervous temperament, the wife of a distinguished

physician in a neighboring State, dreamed one night that a favorite

cousin, a beautiful little girl, who lived at a distance of twelve or

fifteen miles, was very dangerously ill. She saw the child lying on its

mother’s lap, evidently at the point of death, when some one brought a tub

of warm water and proceeded to give the patient a bath. This revived the

little one so that she recovered. The dream made a very considerable

impression upon my friend, by reason of its peculiar character, and

because dreaming was for her a very unusual experience. Next morning she

rose as usual, but during the forenoon she was startled by the receipt of

a message requesting her to come at once to the house of her uncle, as his

little daughter had been taken suddenly ill with the croup, and had

expired during the preceding night. Hastening to the bereaved household,

she found her aunt sitting with the dead child on her lap, precisely as

she had appeared in the dream. The little girl had been suddenly attacked

during the night, and, as she lay gasping in her mother’s arms, some one

advised a warm bath, and brought a tub of water into the room for that

purpose. Unfortunately, just as they were hopefully preparing to dip the

child into the water, she had ceased to breathe.

The lack of conformity between the conclusion of this dream and the actual

fact reminds one of the blurring of the images that are transferred from

one brain to another in the acts of telepathy recently investigated by the

Society for Psychical Research. Something similar is frequently observed

in connection with the phenomena of hypnotism. The hypnotised subject does

not always perceive clearly or wholly the sensation that is suggested by

the agent who operates upon his brain.

For another example of apparently clairvoyant dreaming, I am indebted to a

friend, a well-known gentleman of unimpeachable veracity, who, when a

young man in the army, during the war of the great rebellion, was taken

very ill, and was sent home to New England from one of the most remote

outposts of the campaign. No one of his family had the slightest

information or suspicion of his illness, until the night before his

arrival, when his father dreamed that the absent son was sick, and would

arrive the next day, at an hour unusual for travelers coming from the

South. So vivid was this dream, and so powerful was its influence upon the

mind of the dreamer, that he went at the specified hour to the railway

station, with a carriage full of blankets and pillows, to receive his son.

When the train arrived, and the invalid actually appeared, the mutual

astonishment of father and son can better be imagined than described.

In a recent work on hypnotism,[68] Fischer has related several personal

experiences of a similar transfer of impressions during the waking state.

It is highly probable that if such impressions are received by a sleeping

brain, they may operate like other suggestive irritants to produce dreams,

which may be sometimes so vigorously projected upon the consciousness of

the dreamer that he may be awakened, and may still perceive the evolution

of his dream as an hallucination, even after waking. Thus, on one

occasion, during a malarial fever, I dreamed of seeing a friend who lived

at a great distance. So vivid was the impression that I started up awake;

and there, at the foot of the bed, in broad daylight, was my friend,

looking calmly at me. Several seconds, at least, were required to

dissipate the vision. In an article already quoted,[69] Sir Edmund Hornby,

late Chief Judge of the Supreme Consular Court of China and Japan, “who

describes himself as ‘a lawyer by education, family, and tradition,

wanting in imagination, and no believer in miracles,’” relates his

experience of a similar spectral visitation. After stating that “it was

his habit at Shanghai to allow reporters to come to his house in the

evening, to get his written judgment for the next day’s paper,” he says:

“They generally availed themselves of the opportunity, especially one

reporter, who was also the editor of an evening paper. He was a peculiar

man, reticent about himself, and I imagine had a history. In appearance he

was also peculiar. I only knew him as a reporter, and had no other

relations with him. On the day when the event occurred, in 1875 or 1876, I

went to my study an hour or two after dinner, and wrote out my judgment.

It was then about half-past eleven. I rang for the butler, gave him the

envelope, and told him to give it to the reporter who should call for it.

I was in bed before twelve. I am a very light sleeper, and my wife a very

heavy one. Indeed, it is difficult to rouse her out of her first sleep.

The bed--a French one--faced the fire-place; on the mantel-piece was a

clock, and the gas in the chandelier was turned down, but only so low as

to admit of my seeing the time at any time of the night, for--waking

easily and frequently--I often smoked a cigarette before I went to sleep

again, and always desired to know the hour.

“I had gone to sleep, when I was awakened by hearing a tap at the study

door, but thinking it might be the butler--looking to see if the fire were

safe and the gas turned off--I turned over with the view of getting to

sleep again. Before I did so, I heard a tap at my bed-room door. Still

thinking it might be the butler, who might have something to say, I said,

‘Come in.’ The door opened, and, to my surprise, in walked Mr. ----. I sat

up and said, ‘You have mistaken the door; but the butler has the judgment,

so go and get it.’ Instead of leaving the room he came to the foot edge of

the bed. I said, ‘Mr. ----, you forget yourself! Have the goodness to walk

out directly. This is rather an abuse of my favor.’ He looked deadly pale,

but was dressed in his usual dress, and was certainly quite sober, and

said, ‘I know that I am guilty of an unwarrantable intrusion, but finding

that you were not in your study I have ventured to come here.’ I was

losing my temper, but something in the man’s manner disinclined me to jump

out of bed to eject him by force. So I said, simply, ‘This is too bad,

really; pray, leave the room at once.’ Instead of doing so he put one hand

on the foot-rail, and gently, and as if in pain, sat down on the foot of

the bed. I glanced at the clock, and saw that it was about twenty minutes

past one. I said, ‘The butler has had the judgment since half-past eleven;

go and get it.’ He said, ‘Pray forgive me; if you knew all the

circumstances, you would. Time presses. Pray give me a _précis_ of your

judgment, and I will take a note in my book of it,’ drawing his reporter’s

book out of his breast pocket. I said, ‘I will do nothing of the kind. Go

down stairs, find the butler, and don’t disturb me--you will wake my

wife--otherwise I shall have to put you out!’ He slightly moved his hand.

I said, ‘Who let you in?’ He answered, ‘No one.’ ‘Confound it,’ I said,

‘What the devil do you mean? Are you drunk?’ He replied, ‘No, and never

shall be again; but I pray your lordship give me your decision, for my

time is short.’ I said, ‘You don’t seem to care about _my_ time, and this

is the last time I will ever allow a reporter in my house.’ He stopped me

short, saying, ‘This is the _last_ time I shall ever see you anywhere.’

“Well, fearful that this commotion might arouse and frighten my wife, I

shortly gave him the gist of my judgment in as few words as I could. He

seemed to be taking it down in short-hand; it might have taken two or

three minutes. When I finished, he rose, thanked me for excusing his

intrusion and for the consideration I had always shown him and his

colleagues, opened the door and went away. I looked at the clock; it was

on the stroke of half-past one.

(Lady Hornby now awoke, thinking she had heard talking; and her husband

told her what had happened, and repeated the account when dressing next

morning.)

“I went to the court a little before ten. The usher came into my room to

robe me, when he said, ‘A sad thing happened last night, sir. Poor ----was

found dead in his room.’ I said, ‘Bless my soul! dear me! What did he die

of, and when?’ ‘Well, sir, it appears he went up to his room as usual at

ten to work at his papers. His wife went up about twelve to ask him when

he would be ready for bed. He said, “I have only the judge’s judgment to

get ready, and then I have finished.” As he did not come, she went up

again, about a quarter to one, to his room and peeped in, and thought she

saw him writing, but she did not disturb him. At half-past one she again

went to him and spoke to him at the door. As he did not answer she thought

he had fallen asleep, so she went up to rouse him. To her horror he was

dead. On the floor was his note book, which I have brought away. She sent

for the doctor, who arrived a little after two, and said he had been dead,

he concluded, about an hour.’ I looked at the note book. There was the

usual heading:

“‘In the Supreme Court, before the Chief Judge.

---- _v._ ----

“‘The Chief Judge gave judgment this morning in this case to the

following effect’--and then followed a few lines of indecipherable

shorthand.

“I sent for the magistrate who would act as coroner, and desired him

to examine Mr. ----’s wife and servants as to whether Mr. ---- had

left his home, or could possibly have left it without their knowledge,

between eleven and one on the previous night. The result of the

inquest showed he died of some form of heart disease, and had not, and

could not have left the house without the knowledge of at least his

wife, if not of his servants. Not wishing to air my ‘spiritual

experience’ for the benefit of the press or the public, I kept the

matter at the time to myself, only mentioning it to my Puisne Judge

and to one or two friends; but when I got home to tiffin I asked my

wife to tell me as nearly as she could remember what I had said to her

during the night, and I made a brief note of her replies and of the

facts.

“As I said then, so I say now--I was not asleep, but wide awake. After

a lapse of nine years my memory is quite clear on the subject. I have

not the least doubt, I saw the man--have not the least doubt that the

conversation took place between us.

“I may add that I had examined the butler in the morning--who had

given me back the MS. in the envelope when I went to the court after

breakfast--as to whether he had locked the door as usual, and if any

one could have got in. He said that he had done everything as usual,

adding that no one could have got in if even he had not _locked_ the

door, as there was no handle outside--which there was not. I examined

the coolies and other servants, who all said they opened the door as

usual that morning--turned the key and undid the chains, and I have no

doubt they spoke the truth. The servants’ apartments were separated

from the house, but communicated with it by the gallery at the back,

some distance from the entrance hall.

“The reporter’s residence was about a mile and a quarter from where I

lived, and his infirmities prevented him from walking any distance

except slowly; in fact, he almost invariably drove.

“EDMUND HORNBY.”

The publication of this remarkable story led to its correction in several

important particulars. From the _North China Herald_ (August, 1884) it

appears that not only was Sir Edmund’s memory defective in connection with

several of the minor details of the narrative, but he had also been either

wholly misinformed, or was quite forgetful regarding the actual time of

the editor’s death. That person was, in fact, alive and in his usual

health at the time of his supposed apparition in the judge’s chamber, and

did not die till between eight and nine o’clock on the same morning. He

had “attended a temperance committee meeting the night before, and had

left about half-past ten in good health and excellent spirits.... He

slept at home, rose shortly before eight, and visited his office to

arrange some _matter_ for that day’s paper. He then returned to his room

to dress, and in a few minutes afterward was found dead upon the floor.”

Between these conflicting witnesses it is of course impossible to decide.

But for our purpose that is quite unnecessary. It is clear that Sir Edmund

believed that the visible image of an acquaintance had appeared before him

in his chamber at night. It is also evident that the judge was a man whose

nerves had been damaged, probably by tobacco--for he was a “light

sleeper”--waking often, and indulging in the luxury of a cigarette during

the course of the night. If we may credit the writer in the _Herald_, his

brain was in a process of deterioration, proved by the decidedly

treacherous character of his memory. The whole story, therefore, becomes

exceedingly instructive as an illustration of the manner in which a belief

in apparitions may be originated. The most probable explanation of the

incident is found in the hypothesis of a dream excited in an irritable

brain that had been aroused by the preparation of the manuscript which had

occupied the thoughts of the judge immediately before retiring for the

night. The course of this dream was so vivid that the sleeper awoke, but

continued, like some other dreamers similarly awakened, to witness the

evolution of his vision in the form of a genuine hallucination. A

remarkable example of a similar production of hallucination through

disease of the brain is related by the late Dr. E. H. Clarke.[70] One of

his patients, a vigorous old gentleman, of eighty years, a great lover of

music, and a frequent attendant at operas and concerts, retired one night

at the usual hour, and in his usual health. He soon fell asleep, “and

slept well till about two A. M., when he was awakened by the sound of

music, which seemed to come from the street near his house. Thinking a

serenade was going on, he got up to ascertain where it was, but discovered

nothing. The sound ceased when he arose. On returning to bed, he heard the

sound of music again, and was at the same time surprised by the appearance

of three persons, standing near each other in his chamber, opposite the

foot of his bed. It was his habit to sleep with the gaslight burning

feebly, near the head of his bed. He turned the gas on to its full power,

and inspected the intruders. They appeared to be musicians, who were

humming and singing, as if in preparation for a musical performance. He

rang a bell, which summoned his man servant. John soon arrived, and was

ordered to put the strangers out. ‘There is nobody here, sir,’ was John’s

reply to the order. For a moment Mr. A. was not only amazed, but alarmed.

‘What!’ he exclaimed, ‘do you see no one there?’ ‘No one,’ said John. ‘Go

where those chairs are, and move them,’ was Mr. A.’s next direction. John

did so. The strangers stepped aside, but did not go out. By this time Mr.

A. had gathered his wits about him, and was satisfied that he was the

victim of a hallucination; and he determined to observe its phenomena

carefully. Accordingly, he bade his servant depart, and prepared to watch

his visitors. But they were so life-like and human, that he was again

staggered, and recalling John, told him to go for the house-keeper. She

soon came, and on being interrogated, confirmed John’s statements that

there were no strangers in the chamber and no sounds to be heard.

Convinced by the testimony of two witnesses, Mr. A. yielded to the

decision of his reason, and again resolved to go on with the investigation

of the strange phenomena. The musicians had now resumed their position,

near the window and opposite the foot of the bed. Mr. A. turned the light

of the gas full upon them. He looked at his watch, which marked the hour

of half-past two. He then arranged his pillows, so as to sit almost

upright in bed, and waited for the next scene of the play. He was able to

note the size, form, dress, and faces of the performers. One was a large

man, who bore some resemblance to Brignoli. The two others were of less

size, and shorter stature than their companions. All were habited in dress

coats, with white waist coats, and wore white cravats and white gloves.

After a little time spent in coughing and clearing their throats, they

began to sing. They sang at first a few simple airs, ‘Sweet Home’ among

others. They then attempted more difficult music, and gave selections from

Beethoven and Mozart. Between the pieces they chatted with each other in a

foreign language, which Mr. A. took to be Italian, but they did not

address him. Occasionally they changed their position, turned in various

directions, and part of the time sat down. Mr. A. said the singing was

excellent; he had rarely heard better. After the first feeling of surprise

and amazement had passed away, he enjoyed the music exceedingly. The

performance continued in this way for some time, when it suddenly came to

an end. The singing ceased, and the singers vanished. He looked at his

watch, and found that the time was four o’clock. The concert in his brain

had lasted nearly an hour and a half, almost the length of an ordinary

concert. He reflected for a while upon this strange occurrence, but not

being able to arrive at any satisfactory explanation of it, he turned his

gas down and went to sleep. The next morning he called at my office, as

previously stated, to ascertain if possible what pranks his brain had been

playing, and if he should regard them as warning of his approaching

departure.”

In this case the patient was suffering from “a moderate degree of

deafness, persistent tinnitus aurium, occasional vertigo, and slight loss

of memory.” Towards the close of life, two or three years later,

“incoherence, delirium, stupor, and the like, indicated with sufficient

certainty the presence of severe cerebral disease.” The remarkable

hallucination which he experienced was undoubtedly the product of the

morbid changes which were progressing in his brain.

These cases form an ascending series which illustrates the receptive and

constructive capacities of the human brain when its sensory apparatus has

become unusually or morbidly excitable. But this preternatural mobility

may display itself in other departments besides those of mere

sense-perception. The sphere of pure intellect may thus be invaded by

ideas springing from impressions which address the reasoning faculties

alone, so that in sleep a dream may lead the judgment to decisive

conclusions that were scarcely recognized or heeded during the hours of

wakefulness. In this way we may learn to understand how the anxieties

experienced by the husband of the Virgin Mary may have ripened into a

dream, of intensity sufficient to guide his subsequent action. Nothing

could be more natural for one, like him, ignorant of physiology and of

second causes in general, than the ascription of such an event to the

immediate intervention of the Great First Cause--the only cause which he

could rationally apprehend. Hence the universal primitive belief that in

dreams God spake to man. Upon this belief was laid the foundation of many

of the religious convictions which have grown and ripened with the

progress of the race until their shadowy origin has been well nigh

forgotten.

Many are wont to affirm that the age of illumination through the

intervention of dreams is past, but there is no good reason for the belief

that such dreams may not still occur. A lady, carefully educated in the

doctrines of the popular theology, had been very much distressed by the

unruly behavior of her only child, a little imp who had scarcely learned

to talk. While thus depressed in spirits she dreamed that the Day of

Judgment had come. She found herself with her husband and child and the

whole human race assembled upon the face of the earth, waiting in agony

for the awful decision of their fate. Finally the heavens were opened, and

Jesus appeared, dividing the wicked from the good. As he drew near the

place where she was standing, she could no longer endure her anxiety

regarding the destiny of her daughter; she rushed forward, and implored

the Divine Judge to spare her child. With a look of ineffable compassion

he assured the trembling suppliant that her prayer was granted, and she

awoke in a state of great agitation, but much comforted as to the future

of her little girl, who in due course of time grew up to be a very

exemplary young woman. Now, if the dream of Joseph was a revelation, a

dream like this is quite as worthy of similar estimation. They both

occurred as the result of analogous conditions of the brain and mind, and

were both excited by second causes of a similar character. It is

impossible for any one to show that the relation between the First Cause

and either set of second causes was any more intimate and special in one

case than in the other.

The wonderful exaltation of certain faculties during the unequal sleep of

the different organs of the mind, is usually to be considered as something

relative rather than absolute. But there is little reason to doubt that

sometimes the excitement of the waking portions of the brain does really

transcend the ordinary functional capacity of the structure. Under such

conditions the undivided concentration of attention upon the comparatively

limited circle of ideas which are thus produced, greatly increases the

intensity of the resulting impressions upon the mind in consciousness.

Hence the grandeur of the visions which may thus arise; hence, also, the

possibility of their construction in accordance with fact rather than with

fancy; as in the case of the visions of the ancient Hebrew prophets. As

the darkness of night, by shutting out the earth from sight, opens our

eyes to the glory of the starry sky, so, in like manner, sleep, by closing

the senses against the distractions of the external world, may sometimes

afford the conditions enabling a richly gifted intellect to comprehend the

course and the destination of those deep and silent streams of thought

which move on, unnoticed during the hours of wakeful life.

Whatever may be true of this matter of fore-sight, it is certain that

under similar conditions the memory of past events may be so quickened as

to yield results quite comparable with actual clairvoyance. A good

illustration of this has been recorded by Abercrombie.[71] A gentleman

named Rowland had been prosecuted for certain arrears of tithe which he

believed had been long previously paid by his deceased father. “But, after

an industrious search among his father’s papers, an investigation of the

public records, and a careful inquiry among all persons who had transacted

law business for his father, no evidence could be discovered to support

his defence. The period was now near at hand when he conceived the loss of

his lawsuit to be inevitable, and he had formed his determination to ride

to Edinburgh next day and make the best bargain he could in the way of

compromise. He went to bed with this resolution, and, with all the

circumstances of the case floating upon his mind, had a dream to the

following purpose: His father, who had been many years dead, appeared to

him, as he thought, and asked him why he was disturbed in his mind. In

dreams men are not surprised at such apparitions. Mr. R. thought that he

informed his father of the cause of his distress, adding that the payment

of a considerable sum of money was the more unpleasant to him because he

had a strong consciousness that it was not due, though he was unable to

recover any evidence in support of his belief. ‘You are right, my son,’

replied the paternal shade; ‘I did acquire right to these teinds, for

payment of which you are now prosecuted. The papers relating to the

transaction are in the hands of Mr. ----, a writer (or attorney), who is

now retired from professional business, and resides at Inveresk, near

Edinburgh. He was a person whom I employed on that occasion for a

particular reason, but who never, on any other occasion, transacted

business on my account. It is very possible,’ pursued the vision, ‘that

Mr. ---- may have forgotten a matter which is now of a very old date; but

you may call it to his recollection by this token--that when I came to pay

his account there was difficulty in getting change for a Portugal piece of

gold, and that we were forced to drink out the balance at a tavern.’

“Mr. R. awoke in the morning with all the events of the vision impressed

on his mind, and thought it worth while to ride across the country to

Inveresk, instead of going to Edinburgh. When he came there he waited on

the gentleman mentioned in the dream, a very old man; without saying

anything of the vision, he inquired whether he remembered having conducted

such a matter for his deceased father. The old gentleman could not at

first bring the circumstance to his recollection, but, on mention of the

Portugal piece of gold, the whole returned upon his memory; he made an

immediate search for the papers and recovered them, so that Mr. R. carried

to Edinburgh the documents necessary to gain the cause which he was on the

verge of losing.”

Here it would be a valuable addition to knowledge if the parties in the

history just related could be subjected to intelligent interrogation.

Enough, however, may be discovered in the narrative to render it certain

that the dream was merely a revival in consciousness of knowledge that had

been long previously forgotten. There was a vague recollection of some

such information evidently struggling for recognition; otherwise Mr. R.

could not have held the belief in spite of the lack of evidence, that his

father had paid the tithes in dispute. He had probably heard from his

father some account of a transaction which had taken place so long before

that the only surviving actor, the aged lawyer, had forgotten everything

about it, and could only recall the event through the associations

connected with the Portugal piece of gold. In the lawyer’s case the

cerebral register only needed the stimulus afforded by the association of

ideas, in order to make it again place before the mind impressions which

had long subsided below the level of consciousness. For Mr. R., sleep

afforded the limitation of cerebral function needful for a concentration

of attention sufficient to penetrate to the level of the residual

vibrations which persisted as the sole representatives of the original

impressions through which his knowledge of the event had been primitively

obtained. Parallel examples are furnished by the cases of individuals who,

upon their death-beds, during the dissolution of the brain, have resumed a

long disused vocabulary, speaking the language and thinking the thoughts

of their childhood. “He ‘babbled of green fields,’” said Mistress Quickly,

narrating the closing scenes in the life of the famous Sir John Falstaff.

Dr. Rush[72] relates the case of a learned Italian gentleman who, “in the

beginning of the yellow fever which terminated his life, ... spoke English

only; in the middle of the disease, he spoke French only; but on the day

of his death, he spoke only in the language of his native country.” In

like manner the old Swedish settlers in Philadelphia who had forgotten

their native language, or, at least, had not spoken it for half a century,

would pray in Swedish on their death-beds.[73] Sleep and dissolution

operate alike to release the lower levels of the mnemonic apparatus from

the overshadowing influence of later impressions, so that, like an ancient

palimpsest, it presents once more its long-forgotten characters for

inspection by the mind.