DREAMS, &c.
The art of foretelling future events by dreams, is called
Macrobius mentions five sorts of dreams, viz. 1st, vision; 2d, a discovery of something between sleep and waking; 3d, a suggestion cast into our fancy, called by Cicero,Vesum; 4th, an ordinary dream; and 5th, a divine apparition or revelation in our sleep; such as were the dreams of the prophets, and of Joseph, as also of the magi of the East.
The fictitious art of interpreting dreams, hadits origin among the Egyptians and Chaldeans; countries fertile in superstitions of all kinds. It was propagated from them to the Romans, who judging some dreams worthy of observation, appointed persons on purpose to interpret them.
The believers in dreams as prognostics of future events, bring forward in confirmation of this opinion, a great variety of dreams, which have been the forerunners of very singular events:—among these are that of Calphurnia, the wife of Julius Cæsar, dreaming the night before his death, that she saw him stabbed in the capitol: that of Artorius, Augustus’s physician, dreaming before the battle of Philippi, that his master’s camp was pillaged; that of the Emperor Vespasian dreaming an old woman told him, that his good fortune would begin when Nero should have a tooth drawn, which happened accordingly.
Cæsar dreaming that he was committing incest with his mother, was crowned Emperor of Rome; and Hippias the Athenian Tyrant, dreaming the same, died shortly after, and was interred in his mother earth. Mauritius the Emperor, who was slain by Phocas, dreamed a short time previous to this event, that an image of Christ that was fixed over the brazen gate of his palace, called him and reproached him with his sins, and at length demanded of him whether he would receive the punishment due to them in this world or the next; and Mauritius answering in this, the image commanded that he should be given, with his wife and children, into the hands of Phocas. Whereupon Mauritius, awakening in great fear, asked Phillipus,his son-in-law, whether he knew any soldier in the army called Phocas, he answered that there was a commissary so called; and Phocas became his successor, having killed his wife and five children. Arlet, during her pregnancy by William the Conqueror, dreamed that a light shone from her womb, that illumined all England. Maca, Virgil’s mother, dreamed that she was delivered of a laurel branch.
The ridiculous infatuation of dreams is still so prominent, even among persons whose education should inform them better, and particularly among the fair sex, that a conversation seldom passes among them, that the subject of some foolish inconsistent dream or other, does not form a leading feature of their gossip. “I dreamed last night,” says one, “that one of my teeth dropped out.”—“That’s a sign,” replies another, “that you will lose a friend or some of your relations.”—“I’m afraid I shall,” returns the dreamer, “for my cousin (brother, or some other person connected with the family or its interests,) is very ill,” &c.
Avicen makes the cause of dreams to be an ultimate intelligence moving the moon in the midst of that light with which the fancies of men are illuminated while they sleep. Aristotle refers the cause of them to common sense, but placed in the fancy. Averroes places it in the imagination. Democritus ascribes it to little images, or representations, separated from the things themselves. Plato, among the specific and concrete notions ofthe soul. Albertus to the superior influences which continually flow from the sky, through many specific mediums. And some physicians attribute the cause of them to vapours and humours, and the affections and cares of persons predominant when awake; for, say they, by reason of the abundance of vapours, which are exhaled in consequence of immoderate feeding, the brain is so stuffed by it, that monsters and strange chimera are formed, of which the most inordinate eaters and drinkers furnish us with sufficient instances. Some dreams, they assert, are governed partly by the temperature of the body, and partly by the humour which mostly abounds in it; to which may be added, the apprehensions which have preceded the day before; which are often remarked in dogs, and other animals, which bark and make a noise in their sleep. Dreams, they observe, proceeding from the humours and temperature of the body, we see the choleric dreams of fire, combats, yellow colours, &c.; the phlegmatic, of water, baths, of sailing on the sea, &c.; the melancholics, of thick fumes, deserts, fantasies, hideous faces, &c.; the sanguines, of merry feasts, dances, &c. They that have the hinder part of their brain clogged with viscous humours, called by physicians ephialtes incubus, or, as it is termed, night-mare, imagine, in dreaming, that they are suffocated. And those who have the orifice of their stomach loaded with malignant humours, are affrighted with strange visions, by reason of those venemous vapours that mount to the brain and distemper it.
Cicero tells a story of two Arcadians, who, travellingtogether, came to Megara, a city of Greece, between Athens and Corinth, where one of them lodged in a friend’s house, and the other at an inn. After supper the person who lodged at the private house went to bed, and falling asleep, dreamed that his friend at the inn appeared to him, and begged his assistance, because the innkeeper was going to kill him. The man immediately got out of bed much frightened at the dream but recovering himself and falling asleep again, his friend appeared to him a second time, and desired, that as he would not assist him in time, he would take care at least not to let his death go unpunished; that the innkeeper having murdered him, had thrown his body into a cart and covered it with dung; he therefore begged that he would be at the city gate in the morning, before the cart was out. Struck with this new dream, he went early to the gate, saw the cart, and asked the driver what was in it; the driver immediately fled, the dead body was taken out of the cart, and the innkeeper apprehended and executed.