OF DREAM.
As already stated, at the first approach of sleep we are conscious of
inability so to control our thoughts as to keep them in the orderly train
they had been pursuing previously. Ideas come uncalled for. Pictures
rise before the mental eye and vanish instantly. Other pictures intrude,
having no apparent association with their predecessors. They enter
and pass before us unbidden. The mind falls into confusion. There is
entanglement of the threads of thought. Even while the eye is yet open,
the objects on which it gazes fade and vanish. Sounds fall faintly upon
the ear and die away. The vision of the mind grows dim or is eclipsed
by other unsummoned pictures, often altogether incongruous, which blend
with the picture present, then melt into it, then usurp its place, and
then are in their turn displaced. We are conscious that we can no longer
control the movements of the mind. Momentary resistance to the influence
but provokes its more vigorous return. For an instant we wake with a
start to consciousness of the external world. If we desire to resist
the coming on of sleep, we exert the Will fitfully, start into waking
life for a few moments, contract the relaxed muscles, open the drooped
eyelids, stare with a peculiar expression of imbecile amazement, strive
to look as if we had _not_ been surprised by sleep, and for a while
the mind resumes its normal action. But soon again the thoughts are
dislocated and replaced by a swarm of yet more dissevered ideas. We feel
again the dropping lid, the relaxing muscle, the nodding head. Strive as
we may, we are unable to note the moment when unconsciousness begins. We
remember _falling asleep_, but we do not remember, and no human being has
ever yet remembered, the very act of _going to sleep_.
The mental condition of _falling asleep_ resembles very closely the
dissolving views at exhibitions. So do the pictures of the mind steal
into the field of view and mingle and melt away; nor can we discover
where one ceases and the other begins, so imperceptibly do they glide in
and blend.
We sleep.
What is then our _mental_ condition?
It is a condition of _partial unconsciousness_. In this respect it
differs from the condition of coma and of trance, in which there
is _entire_ unconsciousness. In the most profound sleep perfect
unconsciousness never prevails. Impressions may be made upon the senses
of the soundest sleeper that will waken him. The degree of oblivion
caused by sleep varies immensely with various persons and with all
persons at various times. Some are “light” and others “heavy” sleepers.
Some are wakened by the slightest noise or the gentlest touch. Others
will slumber, though rudely shaken, or while cannon are roaring. It
is a remarkable fact, not yet sufficiently explained, that a whisper
will often waken a sleeper by whose side a gun might be fired without
disturbing him. Others will answer aloud to questions whispered to them
when sleeping, and there are recorded cases of conversations being thus
sustained and inconvenient revelations made by the sleeper which have
astonished him on their subsequent repetition—there being in such case no
after memory of the dialogue so strangely conducted.
The _senses_, therefore, are but partially sealed in sleep. They are
dulled, not paralysed. They convey imperfect sensations—or the sensations
conveyed are imperfectly perceived—we know not which. As will be shown
presently, they more or less influence mental action. They suggest
dreams. But their reflex action has ceased. The nerves that convey the
messages to the brain are sluggish. The nerves that convey the consequent
message from the brain to the body are for the most part inactive.
The aspect of the sleeper to the observer is that of unconsciousness.
There are occasional motions of the limbs, but these are involuntary. He
seems dead to the external world and to have ceased from active life.
Nevertheless, while that form is so still and seemingly so
senseless—while consciousness of a world without is suspended—in this
sleep that has been called the twin brother of death—the senseless
sleeper is making a world and living a life of his own within himself.
That brain is not sleeping with that body. It is awake and busy—often
more busy than when the body is awake. It is enacting whole dramas—living
new lives—wandering away among worlds of its own creation—crowding into
an hour the events of years—doing, saying, seeing, hearing, feeling, even
while we gaze, a hundredfold more than the waking senses could possibly
convey or the waking frame perform.
Is it not marvellous when we thus think of it? Would it not be pronounced
incredible—impossible—the narrator a “rogue and vagabond”—the believer a
credulous fool—were it not that it is _a fact_ familiar to all of us? Is
it not in itself as marvellous as any of the phenomena of other abnormal
mental conditions, which are received with such incredulity and ridicule
only because they are of less frequent occurrence and less familiar?
But before we pursue the inquiry into the phenomena of Dream, it will
be necessary to describe the material mechanism by the operations of
which those phenomena are produced. This will be properly the theme of a
distinct chapter.