CONCLUSIONS.
This view of the Physiology and Psychology of the very familiar but very
marvellous condition of Sleep and Dream seems to conduct the inquirer to
some conclusions, whose importance and interest it would be impossible
to exaggerate; for, if there be any truth in them, they point directly
to revelations of the hidden structure of the Mechanism of Man, which
have been taught as a dogma and accepted as a faith, but for the proof of
which by science as a fact in nature evidence has hitherto been wanting.
The condition of Sleep indicates a _dual_ structure—that mind and body
are not one, as the Materialists teach; for when the body sleeps the mind
is awake, and often the mind is more active and more able when it is thus
partially released from the burden of the body.
In sleep the phenomena of dream exhibit this independence of the body
yet more powerfully. The mind lives a life of its own, with its own
measurements of time and space, so different from those to which it is
limited by the material structure of the body.
Self-consciousness is preserved in dream while the mind is inventing
a whole drama of events and persons, so that we contemplate the work
of the mind as if it was something existing without. This proves that
the contemplating consciousness is something other than the thing
contemplated. The “I” that views and remembers the action of the brain
(which is the material organ of the mind) cannot be the brain itself, nor
the mind itself, but must be something distinct from either, although
intimately associated with both.
That conscious and contemplating something is the _thing_—the entity—the
“I”—the “You”—the being—the individual—which may be called “Soul” or
“Spirit,” or by any other name, but which we intend to designate when we
use those terms.
These phenomena go far to prove that Man is a “living Soul” clothed with
a material body—that this Soul is in fact the person—the individual—the
being—of whom the molecular body is but the incrustation, the atoms
agglomerated into molecules at the point of contact with the molecularly
constructed world in which the present stage of its existence is to be
passed.
True it is that the phenomena of dream, while throwing so much light
upon the structure of the mind and the manner of its action and going
far to prove the existence of Soul, does not impart to us any knowledge
of the structure of Soul. But we may learn this much, that although it
is imperceptible by any of our senses, which are constructed to perceive
only that form of matter we call molecular, it is not also and therefore
unknowable, as the materialists contend. The existence of Soul can be
proved in precisely the same manner as the existence of electricity
and magnetism and heat are proved, which also are imperceptible by our
senses, but not therefore unknowable. We learn the fact of their being by
their operations upon the molecular structure our senses are constructed
to perceive. In like manner we learn something of their qualities and
powers. The process of proof is identical. If it be admissible evidence
for the one, it is no less admissible for the other. To what extent it
goes in the way of proof of the existence of Soul is, of course, a fair
question for argument and investigation. My contention is only that the
inquiry “if Soul be” must not be permitted to be summarily disposed of by
any such dogmatic dictum of Physicists as that Soul not being perceptible
to our senses is incapable of proving its existence through the senses,
and therefore is, and must ever remain, unknowable and consequently a
vain pursuit and an impossible Science.
In the phenomena of dream we find abundant proof that there is something
other than the sleeping molecular structure that does not sleep—that the
individual “I” preserves its consciousness of identity, its sense of
oneness in dream. This something cannot well be the body contemplating
itself—at once the actor and the spectator. Reason concludes that it must
be one thing contemplating another thing and Psychology contends that
this contemplating thing that wakes and dreams when the body is asleep
is what has been called by many names, but which here is designated as
“Soul,” without affirming anything of its structure, its nature, its
qualities, or its destiny.