“Dreams are but interludes which Fancy makes:
When monarch Reason sleeps, this mimic wakes;
Compounds a medley of disjointed things,
A mob of cobblers, and a court of kings.
Light fumes are merry, grosser fumes are sad,
Both are the reasonable soul run mad;
And many monstrous forms in sleep we see,
That neither were, nor are, nor e’er can be.”
The little variations in the tissue of a dream are not _rectified_ by
judgment. So the vision may have led us to the very consummation of the
highest hopes with love and beauty, and then, if an object even of
degradation or deformity shall cross the dream, an association shall be
formed imparting a feeling of loathing and horror.
You may take Hobbes’ illustration, Astrophel, which you will probably
prefer to mine. Hobbes says of the compositions of phantoms, “Water when
moved at once by divers movements, receiveth one motion compounded of
them all; so it is in the brain, or spirits stirred by divers objects;
there is composed an imagination of divers conceptions that appeared
single to the sense; as sense at one time showeth the figure of a
mountain, at another of gold, and the imagination afterwards composes
them into a golden mountain.”
I believe Parkhurst also will tell you, that the Hebrew word for dream,
refers to things _erroneously viewed_ by the senses; for each may
assume, individually, an intimate accordance with another, although the
first and last appear perfectly incongruous, as the Chinese puzzle will
be a chaos, if its pieces be wrongly placed; a _faulty rejoining_, in
fact, of scenes and objects reduced to their constituent elements.
“I dreamed once,” said Professor Maass, of Halle, “that the pope visited
me. He commanded me to open my desk, and he carefully examined all the
papers it contained. While he was thus employed, a very sparkling
diamond fell out of his triple crown into my desk, of which, however,
neither of us took any notice. As soon as the pope had withdrawn, I
retired to bed, but was soon obliged to rise on account of a thick
smoke, the cause of which I had yet to learn. Upon examination, I
discovered that the diamond had set fire to the papers in my desk, and
burnt them to ashes.”
This dream deserves a short analysis, on account of the peculiar
circumstances which occasioned it. “On the preceding evening,” continues
Professor Maass, “I was visited by a friend, with whom I had a lively
conversation upon Joseph II.’s suppression of monasteries and convents.
With this idea, though I did not become conscious of it in the dream,
was associated the visit which the pope publicly paid the emperor Joseph
at Vienna, in consequence of the measures taken against the clergy; and,
with this again was combined, however faintly, the representation of the
visit which had been paid me by my friend. These two events were by the
subreasoning faculty compounded into one, according to the established
rule—that things which agree in their parts, also correspond as to the
whole; hence the pope’s visit was changed into a visit paid to me. The
subreasoning faculty, then, in order to account for this extraordinary
visit, fixed upon that which was the most important object in my room,
namely, the desk, or rather the papers it contained. That a diamond fell
out of the triple crown, was a collateral association, which was owing
merely to the representation of the desk. Some days before, when opening
the desk, I had broken the glass of my watch, which I held in my hand,
and the fragments fell among the papers; hence no farther attention was
paid to the diamond, being a representation of a collateral series of
things. But afterwards, the representation of the sparkling stone was
again excited, and became the prevailing idea; hence it determined the
succeeding association. On account of its similarity, it excited the
representation of fire, with which it was confounded; hence arose fire
and smoke. But, in the event, the writings only were burnt, not the desk
itself, to which, being of comparatively less value, the attention was
not at all directed.”
Impressions of memory may not perhaps appear consistent with
imagination, but, on the principle I have advanced, it will be found
that, although the idea excited by memory be consistent, these ideas
may, by fanciful association, become imagination; appearing, on
superficial view, to illustrate the doctrine of innate idea. But is this
doctrine proved? We may seem to imagine that which we do not remember,
_as a whole_; but, as a curve is made up of right lines,—as a mass is
composed of an infinity of atoms,—so may it follow, that what is termed
“innate idea,” if minutely divided, may be _proved_ to arise from
memory; made up of things, however minute, which we have _seen or heard
of_. Analysis may thus unravel many a “strange mysterious dream.”
IDA. I have ever believed that there were incidents recorded, which left
no doubt of the truth of innate idealism. Dr. Beattie has observed: “Men
born blind, or who have lost all remembrance of light and colours, are
as capable of invention, and dream as frequently, as those who see.”
EV. These, fair lady, are surely very imperfect data. If a person loses
remembrance of _individual_ colour, he does not lose the power of
comparing or of judging _variety_ of colour. And, again, although he may
be congenitally blind, yet if there be any _other sense_ but sight,
through which the mind can perceive or receive external impression, the
objection must fail.
There are very strange communities of the senses, which you may smile
at, yet are they perfectly true.
Dr. Blacklock, (who was very early in life struck blind,) expressed his
ideas of colour, by referring to a peculiar sound, the two being as it
were _synonymous_ to him. And he fancied also, in his dreaming, that he
was connected to other bodies by myriads of threads or rays of feeling.
I may assure you, too, that on the loss of any one sense, the subsequent
dreams, after a lapse of time, will not be referred to _that_ sense.
Dr. Darwin will supply you with very illustrative instances of this;
from which you will learn, that after blindness had afflicted certain
persons, they never dreamed that they _saw_ objects in their sleep: and
a deaf gentleman, who had talked with his fingers for thirty years,
invariably dreamed also of _finger-speaking_, and never alluded to any
dreaming of friends having _orally_ conversed with him.
ASTR. I believe that a black colour was disagreeable to Cheselden’s
blind boy, _from the moment he saw it_.
EV. Because, from certain laws of refraction, the effect was instantly
_painful_ to his eye.
ASTR. I remember, Sir Walter Scott, in his “Letters on Demonology and
Witchcraft,” informs us that “those experienced in the education of the
deaf and dumb find that their pupils, even _cut off from all
instruction_ by ordinary means, have been able to form, out of their own
_unassisted_ conjectures, some ideas of the existence of a Deity, and of
the distinction between the soul and body.”
EV. And do you not see, dear Astrophel, the dilemma of this argument?
Before the deaf and dumb pupil can adopt a language, by which to make
his preceptor sensible of his thoughts or sentiments, he must have had
certain facts or knowledge imparted to _him_, by _signs_ or other modes
of instruction. The modes of mutual understanding must first emanate
from the tutor, and with these ideas may be excited, which, at first
sight, may seem to be innate or _unassisted_.
Believe not that I deny a moral consciousness of the existence of the
Deity and of our immortality; but how can we _prove_ it, in those who
have no sense to explain it?
If it were possible to find a creature so wretched as to be endued with
no external sense from his birth, such a being would neither dream nor
think; he would lead the life almost of a zoophyte, ceasing, of course,
to be a responsible agent!
Caspar Hauser never dreamed, till he slept at Professor Daunay’s, and
had been introduced to intellectual society, and been _taught_; and
then, even, he could not comprehend the _nature_ of his dreams.
The arguments in the “Phædo” of Plato point to this truth, that the
_germ_ of all ideas is _sown_ in the mind by the _senses_. So, also, the
metaphysics of Kant teach that the senses are feelers or conductors, by
which we obtain materials of our knowledge; and indeed that matter and
sensation are synonymous; that matter exists _à priori_ in the mind.
This was the belief of Coleridge, that there can be nothing fancied in
our dreams, without an _antecedent quasi cause_, a Roman having written,
before him, the same sentiment:—
“Nihil in _intellectu_, quod non prius in _sensu_.”
Remember still that this philosophy is apart from revelation.
I am aware that among the deaf and dumb high moral sentiments may exist.
But if they can read essays, these sentiments may be imbibed in their
reading. And yet a very learned lord has asserted, that a being, doomed
to absolute solitude and estrangement from his very birth, could
discover the principles of algebra! At this sophism, oh shade of
Epictetus! thou mightest rise, to vindicate the importance of our
beautiful senses; of the eye, beyond all, that achromatic globe of
brightest crystal, the contemplation of which first convinced thee of
_design_ in the Creator, and prompted thee to pen the first “Bridgewater
Treatise.”
On the opening, or even the restoration of a sense, in this forlorn
“plant animal,” all his associations would be erroneous. He would, at
first, _see double_; he would, like children, consider all bodies,
however distant, within his grasp; and, like the idiot, draw all his
figures _topsy-turvy_, as they are really painted on the retina, until
judgment and practice rectified his error.
I do not reason hypothetically, for these truths were illustrated in the
youth whose pupils were opened by the operation of Cheselden.
There are romantic stories, not foreign to this subject, in which the
creation of a Caliban is almost a truth; and which exemplify to us the
accordance of nature with habit and circumstance, and the dearth of mind
when deprived of the light of instruction.
I allude to those unhappy creatures who, with the form and organs of
man, have run wild in the woods, and fed on husks, and berries, and
herded with the brute. We have some very curious histories of these
beings, especially in the 17th and 18th centuries. Two were discovered
in the Forest of Lithuania; one in the Forest of Yuary, in the Pyrenees,
by M. Le Roy; two wild girls by a nobleman, near Chalons, in Champagne;
and Peter the wild boy, found by the escort of George I. in the woods of
Hertswold, in Hanover. In these cases disease _might have been_
discovered; yet the effect of partial civilization, even in minute
points, indicates some power of _acquiring_ ideas not congenital.
But as to these dreaming flights of the spirit of good Sir Thomas Brown,
I may confess, Astrophel, that you have some poets and metaphysicians,
and even a few philosophers, on your side. You may read in Plato’s
“Phædo,” that “the body is the prison of the soul; that the soul, when
it came from God, knew all; but, inclosed in the body, it forgets and
learns anew.” And in Seneca:
“Corpus hoc animi pondus est.”
And in Petronius:
“——Cum prostrata sopore,
Urget membra quies, et mens sine pondere ludit.”
This sentiment Addison has very readily adopted; prating about “the
amusements of the soul when she is disencumbered of her machine,” and so
forth. And yet Addison, I remember, thus qualifies his creed:—“I do not
suppose that the soul, in these instances, is entirely loose and
unfettered from the body; it is sufficient if she is not so far sunk and
immersed in matter, nor entangled and perplexed in her operations, with
such motions of blood and spirits, as when she actuates the machine in
its waking hours. The corporeal union is slackened enough to give the
mind more play,” &c.
In this conceit, deficient both in philosophy and psychology, you
perceive the speculator draws in his horns, and concludes with that
which _means nothing_. It is, indeed, a mere compromise; an endeavour to
extricate from their perilous dilemma the metaphysical pathologists who
talk so fluently of the _diseases_ of the immaterial mind, forgetful, it
would seem, of this truth—_that_ which is diseased may die; a
consummation which would undermine the Christian faith, and blight the
holiest hope of man—the prospect of immortality.
And yet my Astrophel will lean to the vagaries of our
pseudo-psychologists, who believed the dream to be the flight of the
soul on a visit to other regions; and its observation of their nature
and systems from _actual survey_. Of the fruits of this ethereal voyage
the dreamer, I presume, is made conscious when the soul returns to the
brain, its earthly pabulum or home. Were this so, it should enjoy
visions of unalloyed beatitude; and even were there a limit to its
excursions, a thing so pure and perfect would select angelic communion
only. I do not aver that such things _are not_, but that we _cannot_
_know it here_. We have no satisfactory remembrance of cities and
temples thus surveyed, more gorgeous than the waking conceptions of the
thousand and one nights; or the legends of the genii; no wonders or
eccentricities which eclipse the exploits of Gulliver, Peter Wilkins,
Friar Bacon, or Baron Munchausen.
Lavater carries out this caprice, by a very fine metaphysical thought,
to illustrate the night-apparition. That it is their “transportive or
imaginative faculty that causes others to appear to us in our dreams.”
And I myself was once gravely told by a visionary, that he dreamed, one
night, of a certain old woman; and _she_ afterwards told _him_, that she
dreamed she was, on that very night, _in his chamber_. So, you perceive,
her imago, or material thought, entered into his mind, and caused his
dream.
Is not this sublime?
Now it is clear that these illusions cannot tend to advance the dignity
of mind. Nothing can be more convincing to prove a suspension of
judgment. Remember that during this life,—the incorporation of the
soul,—we are conscious of it _only through the brain_. It is not yet
emancipated; and it is an error to think, because sometimes we have a
brilliant vision, that _therefore_, if the body were more inactive, the
soul would be more ethereal.
ASTR. And yet we are assured that Alexander, and Voltaire, and La
Fontaine, and Condillac, and Tartini, and Franklin, and Mackenzie, and
Coleridge, were wont to compose plans of battles, and problems, and
poems, in their _dreams_, with a degree of vigour and facility, far
exceeding their waking studies.
EV. This very facility proves that there was association from memory,
without volition or effort; the mind being in a state of _reverie_, and
the senses quiescent. In this consists the vivid and delightful visions
lighted up by our memory in slumber, especially when there is darkness
and silence, so that there is no perception; or when the mind is
concentrated, and has been reposing, so that its fancy is a novelty.
But this identifying, by Sir Thomas Brown, of reason and fancy, is
itself a proof of error. The energy of the first is exercised on _data_
or _facts_; that of the second, in mere _hypothetic_ amusement.
It were indeed much better that we established either the material
hypothesis of Priestley, or his antipodes, Berkeley,—that nature was
but a compound of spirits, ideas unfettered by matter; or the visionary
scheme of Hume (borrowed indeed from the Hindoo philosopher, Abul
Fazel), that there is nought but impression and idea in nature; or even
the absolute scepticism of Pyrrho;—than that we should favour the
rhapsody of Brown, that the consciousness of _waking_ moments should
thus deteriorate reason, and render the mind incompatible with sublunary
duties.
CAST. Coleridge, I believe, was so impressed with his own dreaming
compositions, that he said, “the dullest wight might be a Shakspere in
his dreams.” What may he deserve for such presumption?
EV. Coleridge was an opium-eater, and the whole intellectual life of
this mighty metaphysician was a dream. And you may forget that Coleridge
was _already_ a poet, and reasons thus from impressions in his _own_
visions, during the elysium of his anodyne. But the _contrasted_
feelings of Coleridge’s nights at once confirm the monomania of his
dreaming; and if you read his “Pains of Sleep,” Castaly, you will not
deem them a _slight_ penalty, even for his libel on your sweet
Shakspere.
But the conclusions of three sage grave men on this subject will impress
your belief more than mine. The mentor of Rasselas, Johnson himself,
speaks by the lips of Imlac.—
“All power of Fancy over Reason is a degree of insanity. By degrees, the
reign of Fancy is confirmed; she grows first imperious, and in time
despotic. Then fictions begin to operate as realities, false opinions
fasten upon the mind, and life passes in dreams of rapture, or of
anguish.”
And so convinced was the learned Boërhave of this, that he even held
imagination and judgment to have different localities, because _this_
influenced the mind _asleep_, and _that, awake_.
And _why_, Astrophel, dream we of strange things? Because we cannot
_compare_ illusion with reality. So we may reverse the doctrine of
Pyrrho (who doubted his own existence), and imagine ourselves possessed
of ubiquity. We may fancy we are both old and young at the same moment,
nay, that we _are_ and _are not_; possess the hundred eyes of Argus, or
the hundred arms of Briareus; that Zoroaster, and Virgil, and Shakspere,
and ourselves, are co-existent. Indeed, our thoughts and actions are all
modelled on a principle of paradox,—as wild even as the visions in the
“Confessions of an Opium-Eater.”
Then turn to the words of Marmontel, which identify the wanderings of a
dream with the flitting fancies of a mind prostrate from the effect of
disorder. These words were written under _extreme indisposition_:—
“I was reduced so low, that I could read nothing but the Arabian Nights’
Entertainments; and it is extraordinary that often, while every other
faculty, judgment, the will, association, perfection, even the memory
itself, is in a state of almost total re-action, this volatile thing,
imagination, should be the most robust and active; it seems to rejoice
at the release from companionship with its fellows, and darts off on
seraph-wings, rambles through all space, visits all places, turning, and
tossing, and jostling all things in its progress, or conjoining them in
the most grotesque shapes. The imagination in _madmen_ is often of this
description; and there may be
“A pleasure in madness, that none but madmen know.”
Then we may dream _ourselves_ to be _others_,—an ideal transmigration;
this is error. We wake to a sense of our own reality; this is truth.
CAST. Yet this truth may be often withheld by potent impression, as in
the illusion of Rip Van Winkle, and the trances of Nourjahad. I believe
the waking mind of Caspar Hauser knew not the difference between dream
and reality; he related his dream as _fact_.
EV. If there were ever such a being as Caspar Hauser, his _life_ was a
_dream_; for, without the culture of his mind, he would be reasonless.