CHAPTER X.FALLACIES OF DREAM.
Always and everywhere Superstition has dallied with Dream. The notion that dreams are sometimes prophetic is still so widely diffused and so often made the theme for gossip and material for fiction that there are few, even among the educated, who can wholly divest themselves of the influence of a startling dream.
Neither evidence nor argument has been adduced to support this claim of the sleeping mind to prophetic power. There are no natural means by whichnewimpressions can be conveyed to the mind in sleep, and we have already seen that in this condition the mind is less, not more, capable of reasoning out the probabilities of the future.
It will be said, perhaps, that prophecy is not an act of reason but a gift of inspiration; that the prophet only speaks—his are not the thoughts uttered. But in what manner is this gift made more easy by sleep? Itshouldbe more active in the waking state. The prophetic dream is either a creation ofthe sleeping mind or it is brought into the sleeping mind by a miracle. It is highly improbable that the mind should have superior wisdom when in its most imperfect condition. It is still more improbable that a miracle should be wrought for such a purpose. Moreover, the information alleged to be imparted thus is always of somethingto come, while there is no instance of a revelation of things that have been done in the past and therefore capable of being tested. A gift to tell whathas beenwould surely be more easy than a gift to tell what isto be. It is strange and suspicious that none are seers ofthe past.
The widespread notion of prophetic dream is probably based upon a belief, almost as widely diffused, that in sleep the Soul can and does sometimes pass out of the body and obtain information by direct impressions received through its own vastly extended power of perception. It is not uncommon to hear an assertion, when a place is seen for the first time, that there is a memory of the same place having been seen before, and there are some curious reports of cases of this kind that deserve to be investigated. But many of these apparent marvels may be accounted for by coincidence or by memories of which the link has been lost. When the multiplicity of dreams that occur in a lifetime are taken into account, occasional resemblances of external objects or events to some portions of former dreams areby no means improbable. The same explanation applies to many dreams that are supposed to have been prophetic because something afterwards occurs having some resemblance to the dream. Memory also has a large share in these recognitions. Memory may exist without recollection. Thousands of things are stored away in the memory which we cannot recal even if we try to do so, but which come back to us suddenly, at unexpected times, for no cause that we can trace although certainly suggested by something associated with the revived idea. Thus the eye may well recognise a strange place as having been seen when, in fact, the memory has unconsciously received some picture of it or of some place very like it, the existence of which had been forgotten, but which is now revived by the suggestion of the place itself.
Somnambulism, although commonly supposed to be a phase of sleep, has really no relationship to it. Its physiological and psychical conditions are entirely different. There is the aspect of sleep, but nothing more. The somnambule is not sleeping, for he performs often the work of his waking life although with certainly closed eyes and probably sealed up senses. The somnambule has no memory of the doings of either mind or body during his trance existence. The sleeper is conscious at the time of dreaming and remembers his dream. As there is Somnambulism without sleep, so there maybe Somnambulism in sleep, and indeed, with a constitutional tendency to it, the state of sleep is so favourable to the inducement of the condition of Somnambulism that the one may well lapse into the other.
Nor is “sleep walking” the only exhibition of Somnambulism; it is but one stage of it. Somnambulism often occurs without action of any limb, for it is a mental and not a muscular condition. But, inasmuch as the uninformed spectator notes only the instances of “sleep walking,” the much more numerous cases of somnambulism occurring with the patient at rest are unnoticed.
To this cause, then, may many of the reported phenomena of dream be assigned. It would be beyond the scope of this monograph to treat at any length of the manifold phenomena of Somnambulism, but some of them will certainly explain cases of dream apparently not to be accounted for, as all facts and phenomena may be, if rightly investigated, by reference to natural causes, without invoking the assistance of the supernatural. Somnambulism proves the presence of two abnormal mental conditions, namely, supersensuous perception and mental sympathy. The former is the name given to a faculty the mind has, under certain conditions, of perception beyond the range of the senses (whatever themodus operandimay be). The other refers to a special form of sympathy of thoughts and emotions of one sensitive mindwith other minds having a certain relationship with it.
Many of the authentic cases of cognizance of the distant in dream may be thus accounted for. The sleeper has lapsed into somnambulism, is then, in fact, a somnambulist and not a dreamer. Possessing the abnormal development of the perceptive sense which is so familiar a fact in natural somnambulism, the mind has perceptions beyond the range of the senses and is susceptible of sympathies with other minds which the bodily senses cannot convey.
That such mental conditions exist is proved conclusively by the numberless cases of natural somnambulism recorded in the medical journals of all countries and which are indeed familiar to every reader because of their frequent occurrence in common life.
Dream is not merely a reproduction in new combinations of impressions made upon the mind unconsciously as well as consciously, forgotten as well as remembered. The fact must also be taken into account that in dream mental action is vastly increased and the flow of ideas so accelerated that if life be measured, as it should be, by the number of ideas that are presented by the mind, the life of dream is vastly longer than waking life. If the ideas that would occupy many waking hours are compressed into a sleep of one hour, the whole dream-life must have presented to the mind infinitelymore ideas than the whole waking life. The wonder would be if, of this vast multitude, many were not found to be coincident with events of actual occurrence afterwards. A further explanation of dreams that appear to convey information from some external intelligence, or to be prophetic, will be found in this—that many things impress themselves upon the mind when we are not giving attention to them and, therefore, unconsciously to ourselves. We thus lose some of the links of association which, if they had been perceived, would have shown us the connection between the dream and the incidents to which the dream related and which, if we had known, would have stripped the coincidence of its marvellousness. Yet a further explanation will be found in the exaltation of the mental faculties in dream, which enables us often to perceive, more clearly than in our waking state, ideas and chains of ideas and to think about them more correctly than is practicable in waking life, when the influx of external impressions represses to some extent the independent action of the mental faculties.
There is a popular belief that in sleep the Soul sometimes quits the body and personally visits the scenes and persons of the dream which, in truth, is not all a dream. This is nothing more than a poetical fancy. There is no evidence of such journeying. The proof of it would be if the dreamer could tell us of actual occurrences passing elsewhereat the moment of his dream. There is, indeed, abundant evidence of mental communion in sleep, suggesting a dream that has relation to that distant person; but there is no satisfactory evidence of a positive perception of an event then passing far off. It is remarkable, indeed, that dreams to which this solution has been applied usually refer to something that isto be, or thathas been, and not to events actually happening at the moment and which alone could be positively conclusively proved by reference to the persons whose sayings and doings are seen, heard and reported. The same remark applies to this as to prophecies generally. Why do they not tell us of something thatis doingfar away, or something thathas been donein the distant past and therefore capable of verification? Surely the power that could prophesy the future, the dreaming that foreshadows whatis to be, could, with vastly more ease, tell us what has been done or what is being done elsewhere at the moment of its exercise! Why is so simple a test invariably avoided?
Sympatheticdreams admit of another explanation. Two persons dream the same dream at the same time. They may be in the same room, in the same house, or far apart. The two dreams are not always identical in their details, but the main incident is substantially the same in both. The instances of this are too many to be accidental coincidences. The explanation is to be foundin thatmental sympathythe existence of which cannot be doubted by any person who investigates psychological phenomena. The limit to which that sympathy extends is not yet measured. We know only that it is not bounded by the narrow range of the senses. Perhaps it is a purelypsychicfaculty. If it be, we know as yet so little of the nature and powers of the Soul that it would be vain to speculate in what manner the operation is performed. But of this we may be assured, that, whatever the capacity of the Soul when we are waking and the external world is, as it were, pressing in upon us at all sides and occupying the whole mind, those powers are vastly extended when the material mechanism is at rest and the sleepless Soul alone is busy. If there be, under any conditions, communication between minds without the intervention of the senses, we may reasonably conclude that these would be greatly facilitated in the time of sleep, when the Soul is less subjected to the restraints of that mechanism by means of which it communicates with thematerial—that is to say, themolecular—world in which the present stage of its evolution is to be passed.
The proofs are many that dreams may be suggested by the influence of other minds in unconscious communication with the sleeper. If the finger be placed upon the head where, according to the phrenologists, is the seat of the mentalfaculty of mirth, a smile will be seen soon to steal upon the sleeping face. Touch in like manner the asserted seats of combativeness or destructiveness, the features assume an aspect of excitement which will be removed by touching the asserted seat of benevolence. The explanation of this phenomenon is that the brain thus excited to action suggests or moulds a dream in accordance with the emotion thus denoted. This fact has been advanced by the phrenologists as proof that they have rightly mapped out the brain. But such is not the necessary conclusion from the fact. It may well be that it is themind, and not the finger, of the waking operator that directs the mental action of the unconscious sleeper. The wakingWillpossibly controls the sleeping Will. We know that it does so in Somnambulism and it is probable that it does the like in ordinary sleep.
But, explain it as we may, the fact remains.
Direct suggestion of dream by external causes is less disputable. So sensitive is the mind in sleep, when relieved from the thronging impressions of the senses, that impressions so slight as to be wholly unnoticed in our waking state are doubtless perceptible and operate as suggestions when we are asleep. A slight touch or sound often serves to change the entire character and direction of a dream, the mere sound giving rise to the train of new ideas thus suggested, because it is uncontrolled by the Will. The surest method of banishing anunpleasant dream is to turn in the bed. Continuance in the same posture and with the same pressure of blood within and of the pillow without upon the same part of the brain seems to preserve the action of the dream, which is disturbed at once by directing the flow of blood and the pressure to another part of the brain. If a sleeper is seen to be agitated in his sleep by painful dream, exhibited in moaning, restlessness and expression of distress upon the countenance, remedy may be found in gently moving the head into another position, if the body cannot be moved and it is not desired to waken.
It is said that musicians are very prone to the composition of music in dream. It was thus that Tartini wrote the Devil’s Sonata. The most unmusical are often haunted by scraps of tune that no effort will banish. Airs are composed in dream which are remembered upon waking. Perhaps it is not that music is more the subject of dream than other mental creations, but it is the most capable of being retained by the mind and expressed after the dream has vanished. My own experience of this capacity of the dreaming mind has been to myself very surprising; but perhaps the like may have occurred to others, although not recorded. Some time ago I dreamed that I was present and heard as well as witnessed the performance of an entire opera of my own composing. The strange part of it was that I amnot a musician and never composed a bar of music in my life. I have a bad musical ear and no musical memory. Yet did my utterly unmusical mind in the dream compose the whole of an opera in two acts, overture and all, with a full band and half a dozen characters, each acting his own part, and the stage, the scenery, machinery and decorations, as perfect as any I have ever beheld and enjoyed at Covent Garden. Certainly it was not a mere dream of a dream. What other solution is there than this—and it is sufficiently marvellous—that my mind, free to act without the incumbering trammels of the sleeping body and exercising its unfettered faculties far beyond their capacity in waking life, had made me a musician, a dramatist, an actor, a painter—for all these that mind was in the invention and performance of that dream? If that mind or Soul be nothing more than the material form, or a function of that form, how comes it that it is more active and that its faculties are more exalted when the body, of which it is said to be a part, is asleep? If the mind or soul be a part of the body, or, as the Materialists contend, a mere function of the body, it ought, according to all known laws of science, to be sleeping with the body, or at least its activity and capacity ought not to increase in proportion as the activity and capacity of the body decrease.
I have here used the term “Mind,” because it is familiar to the reader, and any other name wouldmislead by the prejudices that attach to it. But I must be understood as intending by that term the thing, whatever it be, which, in the Mechanism of Man, directs and controls it intelligently, whether it be called Soul or Mind, and if it be a distinct entity, as Psychology contends, or only the product of the material structure, as the Materialists assert. This, indeed, is the great problem of this age, to be solved, not by dogmatic assertions, but by scientific proof.
There are many other Phenomena of Dream of less interest or importance, the description of which would occupy many pages; but those above will suffice for the purposes of this monograph.