AVIATION IN DREAMS
Dreams of Flying and Falling--Their Peculiar Vividness--Dreams of
Flying an Alleged Survival of Primeval Experiences--Best explained
as based on Respiratory Sensations combined with Cutaneous
Anaesthesia--The Explanation of Dreams of Falling--The Sensation
of Levitation sometimes experienced by Ecstatic Saints--Also
experienced at the Moment of Death.
Dreams of flying, with the dreams of falling they are sometimes associated
with, may fairly be considered the best known and most frequent type of
dream. They were among the earliest dreams to attract attention. Ruths
argues that the Greek conception of the flying Hermes, the god who
possessed special authority over dreams, was based on such experiences.
Lucretius, in his interesting passage on the psychology of dreaming,
speaks of falling from heights in dreams;[100] Cicero appears to refer
to dreams of flying; St. Jerome mentions that he was subject to them;
Synesius remarked that in dreams we fly with wings and view the world
from afar; Cervantes accurately described the dream of falling.[101] From
the inventors of the legend of Icarus onwards, men have firmly cherished
the belief that under some circumstances they could fly, and we may well
suppose that that belief partly owes its conviction, and the resolve to
make it practical, to the experiences that have been gained in dreams.
No dreams, indeed, are so vivid and so convincing as dreams of flying;
none leave behind them so strong a sense of the reality of the experience.
Raffaelli, the eminent French painter, who is subject to the dreaming
experience of floating in the air, confesses that it is so convincing that
he has jumped out of bed on awaking and attempted to repeat it. 'I need
not tell you,' he adds, 'that I have never been able to succeed.'[102]
Herbert Spencer mentions that in a company of a dozen persons, three
testified that in early life they had had such vivid dreams of flying
downstairs, and were so strongly impressed by the reality of the
experience, that they actually made the attempt, one of them suffering in
consequence from an injured ankle.[103] The case is recorded of an old
French lady who always maintained that on one occasion she actually had
succeeded for a few instants in supporting herself on the air.[104] No
one who is familiar with these dreaming experiences will be inclined to
laugh at that old lady. It was during one of these dreams of levitation,
in which one finds oneself leaping into the air and able to stay there,
that it occurred to me that I would write a paper on the subject, for
I thought in my dream that this power I found myself possessed of was
probably much more widespread than was commonly supposed, and that in any
case it ought to be generally known.
People who dabble in the occult have been so impressed by such dreams
that they have sometimes believed that these flights represented a
real excursion of the 'astral body.' This is the belief of Colonel de
Rochas.[105] César de Vesme, the editor of the French edition of the
_Annals of Psychical Research_, has thought it worth while to investigate
the matter; and after summarising the results of a _questionnaire_
concerning dreams of flying, he comes to the conclusion that 'the
sensation of aerial flight in dreams is simply a hallucinatory phenomenon
of an exclusively physiological [he means 'psychological'] kind,' and
not evidence of the existence of the 'astral body.'[106] The fact,
nevertheless, that so many people are found who believe such dreams to
possess some kind of reality, clearly indicates the powerful impression
they make.
All my life, it seems to me, certainly from an early age, until recently,
I have at intervals had dreams in which I imagined myself rhythmically
bounding into the air, and supported on the air, remaining there for
a perceptible interval; at other times I have felt myself gliding
downstairs, but not supported by the stairs. In my case the experience
is nearly always agreeable, involving a certain sense of power, and it
usually evokes no marked surprise, occurring as a familiar and accustomed
pleasure. On awaking I do not usually remember these dreams immediately,
which seems to indicate that they are not due to causes specially
operative at the end of sleep, or liable to bring sleep to a conclusion.
But they leave behind them a vague yet profound sense of belief in their
reality and reasonableness.
Dream-flight, it is necessary to note, is not usually the sustained flight
of a bird or an insect, and the dreamer rarely or never imagines that he
is borne high into the air. Hutchinson states that of all those whom he
has asked about the matter 'hardly one has ever known himself to make any
high flights in his dreams. One almost always flies low, with a skimming
manner, slightly, but only slightly, above the heads of pedestrians.'[107]
Beaunis, from his own experience, describes what I should consider a
typical kind of dream-flight as a series of light bounds, at one or two
yards above the earth, each bound clearing from ten to twenty yards,
the dream being accompanied by a delicious sensation of easy movement,
as well as a lively satisfaction at being able to solve the problem of
aerial locomotion by virtue of superior organisation alone.[108] Lafcadio
Hearn, somewhat similarly, describes, in his _Shadowings_, a typical and
frequent dream of his own as a series of bounds in long parabolic curves,
rising to a height of some twenty-five feet, and always accompanied by the
sense that a new power had been revealed which for the future would be a
permanent possession.
The attempt to explain dreams of flying has led to some bold hypotheses.
Freud characteristically affirms that the dream of flying is the bridge to
a concealed wish.[109] I have already mentioned the notion that dreams of
flight are excursions of the 'astral body.' Professor Stanley Hall, who
has himself, from childhood, had dreams of flying, argues, with scarcely
less boldness, that we have here 'some faint reminiscent atavistic echo
from the primeval sea'; and that such dreams are really survivals--psychic
vestigial remains comparable to the rudimentary gill-slits not uncommonly
found in man and other mammals--taking us back to the far past when man's
ancestors needed no feet to swim or float.[110] Such a theory may accord
with the profound conviction of reality that accompanies these dreams,
though that may be more easily accounted for; but it has the very serious
weakness that it offers an explanation which will not fit the facts. Our
dreams are of flying, not of swimming; but the ancestors of the mammals
probably lived in the water, not in the air. In preference to so hazardous
a theory, it seems infinitely more reasonable to regard these dreams as an
interpretation--a misinterpretation from the standpoint of waking life--of
actual internal sensations. If we can find the adequate explanation of a
psychic state in conditions actually existing within the organism itself
at the time, it is needless to seek an explanation in conditions that
ceased to exist untold millenniums ago.
My own explanation was immediately suggested by the following dream. I
dreamed that I was watching a girl acrobat, in appropriate costume, who
was rhythmically rising to a great height in the air and then falling,
without touching the floor, though each time she approached quite close
to it. At last she ceased, exhausted and perspiring, and I had to lead
her away. Her movements were not controlled by mechanism, and apparently
I did not regard mechanism as necessary. It was a vivid dream, and I
awoke with a distinct sensation of oppression in the chest. In trying
to account for this dream, which was not founded on any memory, it
occurred to me that probably I had here the key to a great group of
dreams. The rhythmic rising and falling of the acrobat was simply the
objectivation of the rhythmic rising and falling of my own respiratory
muscles--in some dreams, perhaps, of the systole and diastole of the
heart's muscles--under the influence of some slight and unknown physical
oppression, and this oppression was further translated into a condition
of perspiring exhaustion in the girl, just as men with heart disease may
dream of sweating and panting horses climbing uphill, in accordance with
that tendency to magnification which marks dreams generally.[111] We may
recall also the curious sensation as of the body being transformed into
a vast bellows or steam engine, which is often the last sensation felt
before the unconsciousness produced by nitrous oxide gas.[112] When we
are lying down there is a real rhythmic rising and falling of the chest
and abdomen, centring in the diaphragm, a series of oscillations which at
both extremes are only limited by the air. Moreover, in this position we
have to recognise that the circulatory, nervous, and other systems of
the whole internal organism, are differently balanced from what they are
in the upright position, and that a disturbance of internal equilibrium
always accompanies falling.
It is also noteworthy (as, indeed, Wundt has briefly remarked) that the
modifications produced by sleep in the respiratory process itself tend
to facilitate its interpretation as a process of flying. Mosso showed
that respiration in sleep is more thoracic than when awake, that it is
lengthened, and that the respiratory pause is less marked.[113] That is to
say that both the aerial element and the actual rhythmic movement of the
ribs become accentuated during sleep.
That the respiratory element is the chief factor in dreams of flying is
clearly indicated by the fact that many persons subject to such dreams
are conscious on awaking from them of a sense of respiratory or cardiac
disturbance. I am acquainted with a psychologist who, though not a
frequent dreamer, is subject to dreams of flying, which do not affect
him disagreeably, but on awaking from them he always perceives a slight
flutter of the heart. Any such sensation is by no means constant with me,
but I have occasionally noted it down in exactly the same words after this
kind of dream.[114] It is worth while to observe, in this connection, how
large a number of people, and especially very young people, associate
their dreams of flying with staircases. The most frequent cause of cardiac
and respiratory stimulation, especially in children, who constantly run up
and down them, is furnished by staircases, and though in health this fact
may not be obvious, it is undoubtedly registered unconsciously, and may
thus be utilised by dreaming intelligence.
There is, however, another element entering into the problem of nocturnal
aviation: the state of the skin sensations. Respiratory activity alone
would scarcely suffice to produce the imagery of flight if sensations of
tactile pressure remained to suggest contact with the earth. In dreams,
however, the sense of movement suggested by respiratory activity is
unaccompanied by the tactile pressure produced by boots or the contact
of the ground with the soles of the feet. In addition, also, there is
probably, as Bergson also has suggested, a numbness due to pressure on
the parts supporting the weight of the body. Sleep is not a constant and
uniform state of consciousness; a heightened consciousness of respiration
may easily co-exist with a diminished consciousness of tactile pressure
due to anaesthesia of the skin.[115] In normal sleep it may, indeed, be
said that the conditions are probably often favourable to the production
of this combination, and any slight thoracic disturbance even in healthy
persons, arising from heart or stomach, and acting on the respiration,
serves to bring these conditions to sleeping consciousness and to
determine the dream of flying.
Dreams of flying are sometimes associated with dreams of falling, the
falling sensation occurring either at the beginning or at the end of
the dream; such a dream may be said to be of the Icarus type.[116]
Jewell considers that the two kinds of dream have the same causation,
the difference being merely a difference of apperception. The frequent
connection between the two dreams indicates that the causation is
allied, but it scarcely seems to be identical. If it were identical,
we should scarcely find that while the emotional tone of the dream of
flying is usually agreeable, that of the dream of falling is usually
disagreeable.[117]
I have no personal experience of the sensation of falling in normal
dreaming, although Jewell and Hutchinson have found that it is more
common than flying, the latter regarding it, indeed, as the most common
kind of dream, the dream of flying coming next in frequency. A friend
who has no dreams of flying, but has experienced dreams of falling
from his earliest years, tells me that they are always associated with
feelings of terror. This suggests an organic cause, and the fact that the
sensation of falling may occur in epileptic fits during sleep,[118] seems
further to suggest the presence of circulatory and nervous disturbance.
It would seem probable that while the same two factors--respiratory and
tactile--are operative in both types of dream, they are not of equal
force in each. In the dream of flying, respiratory activity is excited,
and in response to excitation it works at a high level adequate to the
needs of the organism. In the dream of falling it may be that respiratory
activity is depressed, while concomitantly, perhaps, the anaesthetic state
of the skin is increased. In the first state the abnormal activity of
respiration triumphs in consciousness over the accompanying dulness of
tactile sensation; in the second state the respiratory breathlessness is
less influential than a numbness of the skin unconscious of any external
pressure. This difference is rendered possible by the fact that in dreams
of flying we are not usually far from the earth, and seem able to touch
it lightly at intervals; that is to say that tactile sensitiveness is
impaired, but is not entirely absent as it is in a dream of falling.[119]
In my own experience the sensation of falling only occurs in illness or
under the influence of drugs, sometimes when sleep seems incomplete, and
it is an unpleasant, though not terrifying, sensation. I once experienced
it in the most marked and persistent manner after taking a large dose
of chlorodyne to subdue pain. Under such circumstances the sensation is
probably due to the fact that the morphia in chlorodyne both weakens
respiratory action and produces anaesthesia of the peripheral nerves, so
that the skin becomes abnormally insensitive to the contact and pressure
of the bed, and the sensation of descent is necessarily aroused.[120] It
is possible that persons liable to the dream of falling are predisposed
to a stage of sleep unconsciousness, in which cutaneous insensibility is
marked. It is also possible that there is a contributory element of slight
cardiac or respiratory disturbance.[121]
In a dream belonging to this group, I imagined I was being rhythmically
swung up and down in the air by a young woman, my feet never touching
the ground; and then that I was swinging her similarly. At one time
she seemed to be swinging me in too jerky and hurried a manner, and
I explained to her that it must be done in a slower and more regular
manner, though I was not conscious of the precise words I used. There had
been some dyspepsia on the previous day, and on awaking I felt slight
discomfort in the region of the heart. The symbolism into which slightly
disturbed respiratory or cardiac action is here transformed seems very
clear in this dream, because it shows the actual transition from the
subjective sensation to the objective imagery of flying. By means of this
symbolic imagery we find sleeping consciousness commanding the hurried
heart to beat in a more healthy manner.
Although, in youth, my dreams of flying were of what may be considered
normal type, after the age of about thirty-five they tended, as
illustrated by the example I have given, to take on a somewhat objective
form. A further stage in this direction, the swinging movement being
transformed to an inanimate object, is illustrated by a dream of
comparatively recent date, in which I seemed to see an athlete of the
music-hall, a graceful and muscular man, who was manipulating a large
elastic ball, making it bound up from the floor. On awaking there was a
distinct sensation of cardaic tremor and nervousness.[122]
It may seem strange that dreams of flying, if so often due to organic
disturbances, should usually be agreeable in character. It is not,
however, necessary to assume that they are caused by serious interference
with physiological functions; often, indeed, they may simply be due to
the presence of a stage of consciousness in which respiration has become
unduly prominent, as it is apt to be in the early stage of nitrous oxide
anaesthesia, that is to say, to a relative wakefulness of the respiratory
centres. It would seem that the disturbance is frequently almost, or
quite, imperceptible on waking, and by no means to be compared with the
more acute organic disturbances which result in dreams of murder, although
it may be of nervous origin.[123] In some cases, however, it appears
that dreams of flying are accompanied by circumstances of terror. Thus a
medical correspondent, who describes his health as fairly good, writes
in regard to dreams of flying: 'I have often had such dreams, and have
wondered if others have them. Mine, however, are not so much dreams of
flying, as dreams of being entirely devoid of weight, and of rising and
falling at will. A singular feature of these levitation dreams is that
they are always accompanied by an intense and agonising fear of an evil
presence, a presence that I do not see but seem to feel, and my greatest
terror is that I _shall_ see it. The presence is ill-defined, but very
real, and it seems to suggest the potentiality of all possible moral,
mental, and physical evil. In these dreams it always occurs to me that
if this evil presence shall ever become embodied into a something that I
could _see_, the sight of it would be so ineffably horrible as to drive me
mad. So vivid has this fear been that on several occasions I have awakened
in a cold sweat or a nameless fear that would persist for some minutes
after I realised that I had only been dreaming.' This seems to be an
abnormal type of the dream of flight.
It is somewhat surprising that while dreams of floating in the air are so
common and clearly indicate the respiratory source of the dream, dreams
of floating on water seem to be rare, for as the actual experience of
floating on water is fairly familiar, we might have expected that sleeping
consciousness would have found here rather than in the never experienced
idea of floating in air the explanation of its sensations. The dream of
floating on water is, however, by no means unknown; thus Rachilde (Mme.
Vallette), the French novelist and critic, whose dream life is vivid and
remarkable, states that her most agreeable dream is that of floating on
the surface of warm and transparent lakes or rivers.[124] One of the
correspondents of _L'intermédiaire des Chercheurs et des Curieux_[125]
also states that he has often dreamed of walking on the water.
It is not only in sleep that the sensation of flying is experienced. In
hysteria a sense of peculiar lightness of the body, and the idea of the
soul's power to fly, may occur incidentally,[126] and may certainly be
connected both with the vigilambulism, as Sollier terms the sleep-like
tendencies of such cases, and the anaesthetic conditions found in the
hysterical. It is noteworthy that Janet found that in an ecstatic person
who experienced the sensation of rising in the air there was anaesthesia
of the soles of the feet. In such hysterical ecstasy, which has always
played so large a part in religious manifestations, it is well known
that the sense of rising and floating in the air has often prominently
appeared. St. Theresa occasionally felt herself lifted above the ground,
and was fearful that this sign of divine favour would attract attention
(though we are not told that that was the case), while St. Joseph of
Cupertino, Christina the Wonderful, St. Ida of Louvain, with many another
saint enshrined in the _Acta Sanctorum_, were permitted to experience this
sensation; and since its reality is as convincing in the ecstatic state as
it is in dreams, the saints have often been able to declare, in perfect
good faith, that their levitation was real.[127] In all great religious
movements among primitive peoples, similar phenomena occur, together
with other nervous and hallucinatory manifestations. They occurred, for
instance, in the great Russian religious movement which took place among
the peasants in the province of Kief during the winter of 1891-2. The
leader of the movement, a devout member of the Stundist sect, a man with
alcoholic heredity, who had received the revelation that he was saviour
of the world, used not only to perceive perfumes so exquisite that they
could only, as he was convinced, emanate from the Holy Ghost, but during
prayer, together with a feeling of joy, he also had a sensation of bodily
lightness and of floating in the air. His followers in many cases had
the same experiences, and they delighted in jumping up into the air and
shouting. In these cases the reality of the sensory obtuseness of the skin
as an element in the manifestations was demonstrated, for Ssikorski, who
had an opportunity of investigating these people, found that many of them,
when in the ecstatic condition, were completely insensible to pain.
The sensation of flying is one of the earliest to appear in the dreams
of childhood.[128] It is sometimes the last sensation at the moment of
death. To rise, to fall, to glide away, has often been the last conscious
sensation recalled by those who seemed to be dying, but have afterwards
been brought back to life. Those rescued from drowning, for instance, have
sometimes found that the last conscious sensation was a beatific feeling
of being borne upwards. Piéron has also noted this sensation at the moment
of death from disease in a number of cases, usually accompanied by a sense
of well-being.[129] The cases he describes were mostly tuberculous, and
included individuals of both sexes, and of atheistic as well as religious
belief. In all, the last sensation to which expression was given was
one of flying, of moving upwards. In some death was peaceful, in others
painful. In one case a girl died clasping the iron bars of the bed, in
horror of being borne upwards. Piéron, no doubt rightly, associates this
sensation with the similar sensation of rising and floating common in
dreams, and with the feeling of moving upwards and resting on the air
experienced by persons in the ecstatic state. In all these cases alike
life is being concentrated in the brain and central organs, while the
outlying districts of the body are becoming numb and dead.
In this way it comes about that out of dreams and of dream-like waking
states, one of the most permanent of human spiritual conceptions has been
evolved. To float, to rise into the air, to fly up to heaven, has always
seemed to man to be the final climax of spiritual activity. The angel is
the most ethereal creature the human imagination can conceive. Browning's
cry to his 'lyric love, half angel and half bird,' pathetically crude as
poetry, is sound as psychology. The prophets and divine heroes of the race
have constantly seemed to their devout followers to disappear at last by
floating up into the sky, like Elijah, who went up 'by a whirlwind into
heaven.' St. Peter once thought he saw his Master walking on the waves,
and the last vision of Jesus in the Gospels reveals him rising into
the air. For it is in the world of dreams that the human soul has its
indestructible home, and in the attempt to realise these dreams lies a
large part of our business in life.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 100: Bk. IV. 1014-15:
'de montibus altis
Se quasi præcipitent ad terram corpore toto.'
]
[Footnote 101: 'It has many times happened to me,' says the innkeeper's
daughter in _Don Quixote_ (Part I. ch. xvi.), 'to dream that I was falling
down from a tower and never coming to the ground, and when I awoke from
the dream to find myself as weak and shaken as if I had really fallen.']
[Footnote 102: Chabaneix, _Le Subconscient_, p. 43.]
[Footnote 103: Herbert Spencer, _Principles of Sociology_, 3rd ed., vol.
i. p. 773.]
[Footnote 104: _L'Intermédiaire des Chercheurs et des Curieux_, May 31,
1906.]
[Footnote 105: De Rochas describes the phenomenon as 'a property of the
human organism, more or less developed in different individuals, when the
soul, disengaging itself from the bonds of the body, enters the domain,
still so mysterious, of dreams' (_L'Intermédiaire des Chercheurs et des
Curieux_, May 10, 1906). In subsequent numbers of the _Intermédiaire_
various correspondents describe their own experiences of such dreams. In
_Luce e Ombra_ for June 1906, and in the _Echo du Merveilleux_ for the
same date, neither of which I have seen, are given other experiences.]
[Footnote 106: _Annals of Psychical Research_, November 1896.]
[Footnote 107: Horace Hutchinson, _Dreams and their Meanings_, p. 76.]
[Footnote 108: _American Journal of Psychology_, July-October 1903, p. 14.]
[Footnote 109: 'The wish to be able to fly,' he declares (_Eine
Kindheitserinnerung des Leonardo da Vinci_, p. 59), 'signifies in dreaming
nothing else but the desire to be capable of sexual activities. It is a
wish of early childhood.']
[Footnote 110: Stanley Hall, _American Journal of Psychology_, January
1879, p. 158; also F. E. Bolton, 'Hydro-Psychoses,' _ib._, January 1899,
p. 183; as regards rudimentary gill-slits, Bland Sutton, _Evolution and
Disease_, pp. 48 _et seq._ Lafcadio Hearn travels still further along
this road in search for an explanation of dreams of flight, and evokes a
'memory of vanished planets with fainter powers of gravitation,' but he
fails to state when the ancestors of man inhabited these problematical
planets.]
[Footnote 111: I retain this statement of my explanation in almost the
same words as first written down in 1895. I was not then aware that
several psychologists had offered very similar explanations. Scherner
(_Das Leben des Traumes_, 1861) seems to have been the first to connect
the lungs with dreams of flying, though he put forward the explanation
in too fanciful a form and failed to realise that other factors, notably
a change in skin pressure, are also involved. Strümpell at a later date
recognised this explanation, as well as Wundt.]
[Footnote 112: It is the same with chloroform. 'There are marked
sensations in the vicinity of the heart,' says Elmer Jones ('The Waning
of Consciousness under Chloroform,' _Psychological Review_, January
1909). 'The musculature of that organ seems thoroughly stimulated, and
the contractions become violent and accelerated. The palpitations are
as strong as would be experienced at the close of some violent bodily
exertion.' It is significant, also, as bearing on the interpretation of
the dream of flying, that under chloroform 'all movements made appeared to
be much longer than they actually were. A slight movement of the tongue
appeared to be magnified at least ten times. Clinching the fingers and
opening them again produced the feeling of their moving through a space of
several feet.']
[Footnote 113: See _e.g._ Marie de Manacéïne, _Sleep_, p. 7.]
[Footnote 114: Horace Hutchinson, who in his _Dreams and their Meanings_
(1901), has independently suggested that 'this flying dream is caused by
some action of the breathing organs,' mentions the significant fact (p.
128) that the idea of filling the lungs as a help in levitation occurs in
the flying dreams of many persons.]
[Footnote 115: We have an analogous state of tactile anaesthesia in the
early stages of chloroform intoxication. Thus Elmer Jones found that this
sense is, after hearing, the first to disappear. 'With the disappearance
of the tactile sense and hearing,' he remarks, 'the body has completely
lost its orientation. It appears to be nowhere, simply floating in space.
It is a most ecstatic feeling.']
[Footnote 116: Lafcadio Hearn describes the fall as coming at the
beginning of the dream. Dr. Guthrie (_Clinical Journal_, June 7, 1899),
in his own case, describes the flying sensations as coming first and the
falling as coming afterwards, and apparently due to sudden failure of the
power of flight; the first part of the dream is agreeable but after the
fall the dreamer awakes shaken, shocked, and breathless.]
[Footnote 117: The disagreeable nature of falling in dreams may probably
be connected with the absence of rhythm usually present in dreams of
flying. Most of the psychologists who have occupied themselves with rhythm
have insisted on its pleasurable emotional tone, as leading to a state
bordering on ecstasy (see _e.g._ J. B. Miner, 'Motor, Visual, and Applied
Rhythms,' Monograph Supplement to _Psychological Review_, June 1903). The
pleasure is especially marked, as MacDougall remarks, when there is 'a
coincidence of subjective and objective change.' In dreams of flying we
have this coincidence, the real subjective rhythm being transformed in
consciousness to an objective rhythm.]
[Footnote 118: Féré, 'Note sur les Rêves Epileptiques,' _Revue de
Médecine_, September 10, 1905.]
[Footnote 119: Sir W. R. Gowers has on several occasions (_e.g._ 'The
Borderland of Epilepsy,' _British Medical Journal_, July 21, 1906) argued
that dreams of falling have an aural origin, and are caused by contraction
of the stapedius muscle, leading to a change in the ampullae which might
suggest descent; he has himself suddenly awakened from such a dream and
caught the sound of the muscular contraction. The opinion of so acute an
investigator deserves consideration.]
[Footnote 120: Such sensations are, indeed, a recognised result of
morphia. Morphinomaniacs, Goron remarks (_Les Parias de l'Amour_, p. 125),
are apt to feel that they are flying or floating over the world.]
[Footnote 121: Jewell states that 'certain observers, peculiarly liable
to dreams of falling or flying, ascribe these distinctly to faulty
circulation, and say their physicians, to regulate the heart's action,
have given them medicines which always relieve them and prevent such
dreams' (_American Journal of Psychology_, January 1905, p. 8).]
[Footnote 122: Interesting evidence in favour of the respiratory origin
of such visions is furnished by Silberer's observations on his own
symbolic hypnagogic visions which are certainly allied to dream visions.
He found (_Jahrbuch für Psychoanalytische Forschungen_, Bd. 1., 1909, p.
523) that on drawing a deep breath, and so raising the chest wall, the
representation came to him of attempting with another person to raise a
table in the air.]
[Footnote 123: J. de Goncourt (_Journal des Goncourt_, vol. iii. p. 3)
mentions that after drinking port wine, to which he was unaccustomed, he
had a dream in which he observed on his counterpane grotesque images in
relief which rose and fell.]
[Footnote 124: Chabaneix, _Le Subconscient_, p. 43.]
[Footnote 125: May 30, 1906.]
[Footnote 126: L. Binswanger, 'Versuch einer Hysterieanalyse,' _Jahrbuch
für Psychoanalytische Forschungen_, Bd. 1. 1909.]
[Footnote 127: Their word has often been accepted. Levitation as
experienced by the saints has been studied by Colonel A. de Rochas,
_Les Frontières de la Science_, 1904; also in _Annales des Sciences
Psychiques_, January-February 1901. 'Levitation is a perfectly real
phenomena,' he concludes, 'and much more common than we might at first be
tempted to believe.']
[Footnote 128: It seems to become less frequent after middle age. Beaunis
states that in his case it ceased at the age of fifty. I found it
disappear, or become rare, at a somewhat earlier age.]
[Footnote 129: H. Piéron, 'Contribution à la Psychologie des Mourants,'
_Revue Philosophique_, December 1902.]