“PERCHANCE TO DREAM”
“We are such stuff as dreams are made on,” as Shakespeare says,
and yet no one even to this day knows what that “stuff” may be.
We separate man’s life into intellect, feeling, will; or, like the
Hindoos, into seven phases; we subdivide these, recognizing special
powers and functions belonging to each; we dissect man’s frame; we
dissolve his body into its component parts, and yet, when all is done,
we know as little about _life_, the essence of man, as our father Adam
knew. As Omar says, we hear “much talk about it and about” and yet we
get nowhere. It is much the same with dreams. We need, therefore, only
summarize and review the talk.
Dreams occupied their most important place in the thought of man at its
beginning. His action has frequently been directed by a dream and the
fate of nations has hinged upon its interpretation. Even in the present
day of matter-of-fact science, at some time in his life following the
racial bent, almost every human being has paid some attention to his
dreams. The superstitious—which includes the most of us—still put
faith in their dreams, though they know not whence they come, nor their
relation to the most mutable of physical conditions. And this though
ages ago Sirach uttered this warning, “Dreams deceive many and fail
those who build upon them.” Scientific investigation has made known
many of the causes of dreams and shown us what slight incidents may
determine their direction. For instance, dreams involving hearing often
take their rise in noises made by the processes going on in the body.
What we eat and the state of our digestion greatly affect the character
of our dreams.
This has long been recognized by those who try to decipher special
significance in dreams. Twenty-five centuries ago Pythagoras believed
that the gas-generating beans destroyed the chance of having
enlightening or important dreams, and so forbade their use. In similar
fashion interpreters of dreams were warned by Artemidorus to inquire
first whether the dreamer had eaten heartily or lightly before falling
asleep; while Philostratus maintained that skillful interpreters always
refused to expound dreams following the use of wine.
Thus we see that even in ancient times the relation between eating and
sleeping was recognized. In more modern days it is recorded that poets
and writers had visions from eating raw flesh, while Mrs. Radcliffe,
author of “The Mysteries of Udolpho,” is said to have deliberately
induced horrid dream phantoms by supping late on indigestible food as
a means of getting “printer’s copy.” De Quincey’s “Confessions” is a
monument to the beauty and the horror of the dreams from drugs. There
is also reason to think that the terrors of delirium tremens are true
dreams. John B. Gough described from fearful experience the agony of
seeing and feeling that which is dreadful, mainly because the sufferer
knows that it, nevertheless, does not exist and could not exist. This
can be explained, in our present state of knowledge, only by the
supposition that the subconscious mind, uncorrected and unrestrained by
the senses, alone is awake. Boris Sidis shows that we have no waking
remembrance of many of our dreams, even of most harassing ones.
It is probable that perfect sleep is undisturbed by dreams, pleasant
or otherwise. Dreams are an evidence of the semi-conscious condition
of some of the senses; the objective mind is no longer in control, but
is passive, and the subjective mind is active. Yet while dreaming, the
objective mind is not so completely unconscious (as it would be if
wrapped in profound slumber) but that it gets glimpses of the workings
of the subjective mind, often very distorted glimpses. This frequently
leads to horrible or impossible situations in dreams.
It is an interesting question how far we are responsible for our
dreams. It is true in dreams, as in waking, that from the same
sensations individuals will evolve different results, just as
nasturtiums, drawing nourishment from the same soil, will put forth
blossoms of different color and odor. The factor that changes these
same elements into different results is something inherent in the
individual person or plant.
So that we are not entirely responsible for what we dream, yet the
mental habits, the real tone of mind maintained during waking hours,
has its effect upon dreams. They constitute an index of the mind. So
far as sleep is concerned, of course, “subjective” mind is simply our
remembered experiences, our mental capital, and can be used in waking
hours and is constantly so used: we get traces of these in our dreams.
Age, sex, and temperament also affect the nature of dreams.
If then our sleep is disturbed by unpleasant dreams, it becomes
necessary to investigate the causes. Have we eaten too much or too
hurriedly? Are our innermost thoughts clean and wholesome, fit for the
light of day? Roman philosophers held that he who wished to obtain
knowledge of the will of any of the gods, must fast and lie down to
sleep beside the shrine of the god, his thoughts filled with longing
and desire for such knowledge. There is more than mere superstition
in that. If we abstain from all excesses and are filled with desire
to know the will of the gods, dreams, when they come to us, will not
disturb or distress us.
Dreams are admittedly sometimes prophetic, or have at least an indirect
significance touching events not yet come to pass. Galen tells of
a man who dreamed that his leg had turned to stone, and a few days
later found his leg paralyzed, perhaps an instance of auto-suggestion.
Gessner died from a malignant growth which developed in his breast in
the exact spot where, a few nights previously, he had dreamed that a
serpent bit him; while Aristides, dreaming that he was wounded in the
knee by a bull, awoke to find a tumor there.
These and many better authenticated cases of dream warnings are not so
strange as they seem at first hearing. They may be explained largely
by the fact that remote and vague sensations of suffering and disease
are able to make deeper impression upon the mind when the interests and
activities of the waking life are submerged in sleep.
The duration of dreams is another matter of great interest. Most
persons feel and say that they “dreamed all night long,” and will
proceed to support their statement by relating various incidents
of their dreams; their prolonged sensations of pleasure or horror;
the events that perhaps covered years. Yet, in reality, the dream
may have occupied less than a minute. The dreamer cannot measure
the time spent in dreaming, for the unconscious condition of the
objective mind obliterates the sense of time, space or material
limitations. This accounts for the prodigious feats, the marvels and
impossible achievements of dreams that seem to the dreamer in no way
disproportionate.
What we do know is that some of the most wonderful dreams have occupied
but a few moments, and so far scientific research seems to limit them
to an hour or two at most. Mohammed’s dream was completed within the
time occupied by a falling vase; and it is on record that a man fell
asleep just as the clock struck the first stroke of twelve and awoke
in a cold sweat on the last stroke, having dreamed that he had spent
thirty years in prison, suffering tortures of mind and body.
All this makes it easy to understand how, to an infinite mind, a
thousand years may be as one day and one day as a thousand years, and
how, in our degree, the quiet, self-controlled mind may be unmoved by
time.
It is the vivid impression made by such dreams that makes us feel that
they must have lasted a long time. Then, as George Trumbull Ladd says,
the recital of our dreams is often colored, unconsciously, “by our
self-conscious and rational waking life when we bring the scene before
the awakened mind.” In other words, many sensations that we think we
experienced are heightened by the idea in the objective mind of what
such sensations ought to be.
It may be that when the time comes that
“No one shall work for money
And no one shall work for fame,”
we shall find light and help in our dreams that is undreamed of now.