“I have had a dream, past the wit of man to say what dream it
was. Man is but an ass, if he go about to expound this dream.”
MIDSUMMER NIGHT’S DREAM.
EV. Listen,—it is my turn to speak.
Like confirmed insanity, the essence of the dream is usually _a want of
balance between the representative faculty and the judgment_; being
produced, directly or indirectly, by the excitement of a chain of ideas,
rational or probable in parts, but rendered in different degrees
extravagant, or illusive, by imperfect association,—as in the dream of
the “Opium Eater:”—“The ladies of Charles I.’s age danced and looked as
lovely as the court of George IV.; yet I knew, even in my dream, that
they had been in the grave for nearly two centuries.”
The relative complexity of these combinations includes the two divisions
of dreams,—the _plain_, θεωρηματικοι; and the _allegorical_, or images
presented in their own form, or by similitude.
If we grant that certain faculties or functions of the mind are the
result of nervous influence, we can as readily allow that an
_imperfection_ of these manifestations shall be the result of
derangement of equilibrium in this influence, as the _material_ function
of muscle shall be disturbed by primary or secondary disease about the
brain; of which we have daily examples among the spasmodic and nervous
diseases of the body.
Referring to the calculation of Cabanis, on the falling to sleep of the
senses, I can readily carry on this analogy to the faculties of mind. We
may suppose that the faculty of judgment, as being the most important,
is the first to feel fatigue, and to be influenced in the mode which I
have alluded to by slumber. It is evident, then, that the other
faculties, which are still awake, will be uncontrolled, and an
_imperfect association_ will be the result.
Thus the ideas of a dream may be considered as a species of delirium;
for the figures and situations of both are often of the most
heterogeneous description, and both are ever illusive, being believed to
be realities, and not being subject to the control of our intellect.
Yet, if the most absurd dream be _analyzed_, its constituent parts may
consist either of ideas, in themselves not irrational, or of sensations
or incidents which have been individually felt or witnessed.
So the remembered faces and forms of our absent friends, faithful though
a part of the likeness may be, are associated with the grossest
absurdity.
“Velut ægri somnia, vanæ
Fingentur species, ut nec pes nec caput uni
Reddatur formæ.”