CHAPTER XI.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 adualstructure—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 fromthose 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 thething—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 usany 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 consciousnessof 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.