Pagina-afbeeldingen
PDF
ePub

Dover, on his Continental travels, he was unex pectedly detained for a night by the order of the governor. On the next day, news came that the packet in which Harvey was to have sailed was lost in a storm; and then it came out that his excellency had, on the night before his arrival, a phantom of the doctor passing before him, which besought him to detain his substance in Dover for a day.

Alderman Clay, of Newark, dreamed twice that his house was on fire. From the second dream, he was induced to quit with his family; and, soon afterward, it was burned by the engines of Cromwell, which were bombarding the town. For this providential salvation an annual sermon is preached, and bread given to the poor, in Newark.

The lady of Major Griffiths dreamed thrice of her nephew, Mr. D. The first vision imparted his intention of joining a party of his companions on a fishing excursion; the second, that his boat was sinking; the third, that it was actually sunk. At her entreaty, this gentleman was induced to remain on land; and in the evening it was learned that his ill-fated friends had been all drowned by the swamping of the boat.

CAST. I pr'ythee, Astrophel, draw not too largely on our faith; reserve yourself for a struggle, for I see in the glance of Evelyn's eye that he has taken up your glove.

MORAL CAUSES OF DREAMING.

"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, Dewpημatiko; and the allegorical, or images preθεωρηματικοι sented 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."

Or, as Dryden has written,

"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's 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 afterward 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 раpers in my desk, and burned 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 afterward, 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 burned, 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."

66

« VorigeDoorgaan »