ANACHRONISM AND COINCIDENCE OF DREAMS.

“Velut ægri somnia, vanæFingentur species, ut nec pes nec caput uniReddatur formæ.”

“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.”

“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 notrectifiedby 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’ 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 afterwards composes them into a golden mountain.”

I believe Parkhurst also will tell you, that the Hebrew word for dream, refers to thingserroneously viewedby 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; afaulty 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 papers in my desk, and burnt 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 afterwards, 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 burnt, 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 beprovedto arise from memory; made up of things, however minute, which we haveseen or heard of. Analysis may thus unravel many a “strange mysterious dream.”

Ida.I have ever believed that there were incidents recorded, which left no doubt of the truth of innate idealism. Dr. Beattie has observed: “Men born blind, or who have lost all remembrance of light and colours, are as capable of invention, and dream as frequently, as those who see.”

Ev.These, fair lady, are surely very imperfect data. If a person loses remembrance ofindividualcolour, he does not lose the power of comparing or of judgingvarietyof colour. And, again, although he may be congenitally blind, yet if there be anyother sensebut sight, through which the mind can perceive or receive external impression, the objection must fail.

There are very strange communities of the senses, which you may smile at, yet are they perfectly true.

Dr. Blacklock, (who was very early in life struck blind,) expressed his ideas of colour, by referring to a peculiar sound, the two being as it weresynonymousto him. And he fancied also, in his dreaming, that he was connected to other bodies by myriads of threads or rays of feeling.

I may assure you, too, that on the loss of any one sense, the subsequent dreams, after a lapse of time, will not be referred tothatsense.

Dr. Darwin will supply you with very illustrative instances of this; from which you will learn, that after blindness had afflicted certain persons, they never dreamed that theysawobjects in their sleep: and a deaf gentleman, who had talked with his fingers for thirty years, invariably dreamed also offinger-speaking, and never alluded to any dreaming of friends havingorallyconversed with him.

Astr.I believe that a black colour was disagreeable to Cheselden’s blind boy,from the moment he saw it.

Ev.Because, from certain laws of refraction, the effect was instantlypainfulto his eye.

Astr. I remember, Sir Walter Scott, in his “Letters on Demonology and Witchcraft,” informs us that “those experienced in the education of the deaf and dumb find that their pupils, evencut off from all instructionby ordinary means, have been able to form, out of their ownunassistedconjectures, some ideas of the existence of a Deity, and of the distinction between the soul and body.”

Ev.And do you not see, dear Astrophel, the dilemma of this argument? Before the deaf and dumb pupil can adopt a language, by which to make his preceptor sensible of his thoughts or sentiments, he must have had certain facts or knowledge imparted tohim, bysignsor other modes of instruction. The modes of mutual understanding must first emanate from the tutor, and with these ideas may be excited, which, at first sight, may seem to be innate orunassisted.

Believe not that I deny a moral consciousness of the existence of the Deity and of our immortality; but how can weproveit, in those who have no sense to explain it?

If it were possible to find a creature so wretched as to be endued with no external sense from his birth, such a being would neither dream nor think; he would lead the life almost of a zoophyte, ceasing, of course, to be a responsible agent!

Caspar Hauser never dreamed, till he slept at Professor Daunay’s, and had been introduced to intellectual society, and beentaught; and then, even, he could not comprehend thenatureof his dreams.

The arguments in the “Phædo” of Plato point to this truth, that thegermof all ideas issownin the mind by thesenses. So, also, the metaphysics of Kant teach that the senses are feelers or conductors, by which we obtain materials of our knowledge; and indeed that matter and sensation are synonymous; that matter existsà prioriin the mind. This was the belief of Coleridge, that there can be nothing fancied in our dreams, without anantecedent quasi cause, a Roman having written, before him, the same sentiment: —

“Nihil inintellectu, quod non prius insensu.”

Remember still that this philosophy is apart from revelation.

I am aware that among the deaf and dumb high moral sentiments may exist. But if they can read essays, these sentiments may be imbibed in their reading. And yet a very learned lord has asserted, that a being, doomed to absolute solitude and estrangement from his very birth, could discover the principles of algebra! At this sophism, oh shade of Epictetus! thou mightest rise, to vindicate the importance of our beautiful senses; of the eye, beyond all, that achromatic globe of brightest crystal, the contemplation of which first convinced thee ofdesignin the Creator, and prompted thee to pen the first “Bridgewater Treatise.”

On the opening, or even the restoration of a sense, in this forlorn “plant animal,” all his associations would be erroneous. He would, at first,see double; he would, like children, consider all bodies, however distant, within his grasp; and, like the idiot, draw all his figurestopsy-turvy, as they are really painted on the retina, until judgment and practice rectified his error.

I do not reason hypothetically, for these truths were illustrated in the youth whose pupils were opened by the operation of Cheselden.

There are romantic stories, not foreign to this subject, in which the creation of a Caliban is almost a truth; and which exemplify to us the accordance of nature with habit and circumstance, and the dearth of mind when deprived of the light of instruction.

I allude to those unhappy creatures who, with the form and organs of man, have run wild in the woods, and fed on husks, and berries, and herded with the brute. We have some very curious histories of these beings, especially in the 17th and 18th centuries. Two were discovered in the Forest of Lithuania; one in the Forest of Yuary, in the Pyrenees, by M. Le Roy; two wild girls by a nobleman, near Chalons, in Champagne; and Peter the wild boy, found by the escort of George I. in the woods of Hertswold, in Hanover. In these cases diseasemight have beendiscovered; yet the effect of partial civilization, even in minute points, indicates some power ofacquiringideas not congenital.

But as to these dreaming flights of the spirit of good Sir Thomas Brown, I may confess, Astrophel, that you have some poets and metaphysicians, and even a few philosophers, on your side. You may read in Plato’s “Phædo,” that “the body is the prison of the soul; that the soul, when it came from God, knew all; but, inclosed in the body, it forgets and learns anew.” And in Seneca:

“Corpus hoc animi pondus est.”

And in Petronius:

“——Cum prostrata sopore,Urget membra quies, et mens sine pondere ludit.”

“——Cum prostrata sopore,

Urget membra quies, et mens sine pondere ludit.”

This sentiment Addison has very readily adopted; prating about “the amusements of the soul when she is disencumbered of her machine,” and so forth. And yet Addison, I remember, thus qualifies his creed:—“I do not suppose that the soul, in these instances, is entirely loose and unfettered from the body; it is sufficient if she is not so far sunk and immersed in matter, nor entangled and perplexed in her operations, with such motions of blood and spirits, as when she actuates the machine in its waking hours. The corporeal union is slackened enough to give the mind more play,” &c.

In this conceit, deficient both in philosophy and psychology, you perceive the speculator draws in his horns, and concludes with that whichmeans nothing. It is, indeed, a mere compromise; an endeavour to extricate from their perilous dilemma the metaphysical pathologists who talk so fluently of thediseasesof the immaterial mind, forgetful, it would seem, of this truth—thatwhich is diseased may die; a consummation which would undermine the Christian faith, and blight the holiest hope of man—the prospect of immortality.

And yet my Astrophel will lean to the vagaries of our pseudo-psychologists, who believed the dream to be the flight of the soul on a visit to other regions; and its observation of their nature and systems fromactual survey. Of the fruits of this ethereal voyage the dreamer, I presume, is made conscious when the soul returns to the brain, its earthly pabulum or home. Were this so, it should enjoy visions of unalloyed beatitude; and even were there a limit to its excursions, a thing so pure and perfect would select angelic communion only. I do not aver that such thingsare not, but that wecannotknow it here. We have no satisfactory remembrance of cities and temples thus surveyed, more gorgeous than the waking conceptions of the thousand and one nights; or the legends of the genii; no wonders or eccentricities which eclipse the exploits of Gulliver, Peter Wilkins, Friar Bacon, or Baron Munchausen.

Lavater carries out this caprice, by a very fine metaphysical thought, to illustrate the night-apparition. That it is their “transportive or imaginative faculty that causes others to appear to us in our dreams.” And I myself was once gravely told by a visionary, that he dreamed, one night, of a certain old woman; andsheafterwards toldhim, that she dreamed she was, on that very night,in his chamber. So, you perceive, her imago, or material thought, entered into his mind, and caused his dream.

Is not this sublime?

Now it is clear that these illusions cannot tend to advance the dignity of mind. Nothing can be more convincing to prove a suspension of judgment. Remember that during this life,—the incorporation of the soul,—we are conscious of itonly through the brain. It is not yet emancipated; and it is an error to think, because sometimes we have a brilliant vision, thattherefore, if the body were more inactive, the soul would be more ethereal.

Astr.And yet we are assured that Alexander, and Voltaire, and La Fontaine, and Condillac, and Tartini, and Franklin, and Mackenzie, and Coleridge, were wont to compose plans of battles, and problems, and poems, in theirdreams, with a degree of vigour and facility, far exceeding their waking studies.

Ev.This very facility proves that there was association from memory, without volition or effort; the mind being in a state ofreverie, and the senses quiescent. In this consists the vivid and delightful visions lighted up by our memory in slumber, especially when there is darkness and silence, so that there is no perception; or when the mind is concentrated, and has been reposing, so that its fancy is a novelty.

But this identifying, by Sir Thomas Brown, of reason and fancy, is itself a proof of error. The energy of the first is exercised ondataorfacts; that of the second, in merehypotheticamusement.

It were indeed much better that we established either the material hypothesis of Priestley, or his antipodes, Berkeley,—that nature was but a compound of spirits, ideas unfettered by matter; or the visionary scheme of Hume (borrowed indeed from the Hindoo philosopher, Abul Fazel), that there is nought but impression and idea in nature; or even the absolute scepticism of Pyrrho;—than that we should favour the rhapsody of Brown, that the consciousness ofwakingmoments should thus deteriorate reason, and render the mind incompatible with sublunary duties.

Cast.Coleridge, I believe, was so impressed with his own dreaming compositions, that he said, “the dullest wight might be a Shakspere in his dreams.” What may he deserve for such presumption?

Ev.Coleridge was an opium-eater, and the whole intellectual life of this mighty metaphysician was a dream. And you may forget that Coleridge wasalreadya poet, and reasons thus from impressions in hisownvisions, during the elysium of his anodyne. But thecontrastedfeelings of Coleridge’s nights at once confirm the monomania of his dreaming; and if you read his “Pains of Sleep,” Castaly, you will not deem them aslightpenalty, even for his libel on your sweet Shakspere.

But the conclusions of three sage grave men on this subject will impress your belief more than mine. The mentor of Rasselas, Johnson himself, speaks by the lips of Imlac. —

“All power of Fancy over Reason is a degree of insanity. By degrees, the reign of Fancy is confirmed; she grows first imperious, and in time despotic. Then fictions begin to operate as realities, false opinions fasten upon the mind, and life passes in dreams of rapture, or of anguish.”

And so convinced was the learned Boërhave of this, that he even held imagination and judgment to have different localities, becausethisinfluenced the mindasleep, andthat, awake.

Andwhy, Astrophel, dream we of strange things? Because we cannotcompareillusion with reality. So we may reverse the doctrine of Pyrrho (who doubted his own existence), and imagine ourselves possessed of ubiquity. We may fancy we are both old and young at the same moment, nay, that weareandare not; possess the hundred eyes of Argus, or the hundred arms of Briareus; that Zoroaster, and Virgil, and Shakspere, and ourselves, are co-existent. Indeed, our thoughts and actions are all modelled on a principle of paradox,—as wild even as the visions in the “Confessions of an Opium-Eater.”

Then turn to the words of Marmontel, which identify the wanderings of a dream with the flitting fancies of a mind prostrate from the effect of disorder. These words were written underextreme indisposition: —

“I was reduced so low, that I could read nothing but the Arabian Nights’ Entertainments; and it is extraordinary that often, while every other faculty, judgment, the will, association, perfection, even the memory itself, is in a state of almost total re-action, this volatile thing, imagination, should be the most robust and active; it seems to rejoice at the release from companionship with its fellows, and darts off on seraph-wings, rambles through all space, visits all places, turning, and tossing, and jostling all things in its progress, or conjoining them in the most grotesque shapes. The imagination inmadmenis often of this description; and there may be

“A pleasure in madness, that none but madmen know.”

Then we may dreamourselvesto beothers,—an ideal transmigration; this is error. We wake to a sense of our own reality; this is truth.

Cast.Yet this truth may be often withheld by potent impression, as in the illusion of Rip Van Winkle, and the trances of Nourjahad. I believe the waking mind of Caspar Hauser knew not the difference between dream and reality; he related his dream asfact.

Ev.If there were ever such a being as Caspar Hauser, hislifewas adream; for, without the culture of his mind, he would be reasonless.

ANACHRONISM AND COINCIDENCE OF DREAMS.

“Rom.I dreamt a dream to night.Merc.And so did I.Rom.Well, what was yours?Merc.That dreamers often lie.”Romeo and Juliet.

“Rom.I dreamt a dream to night.

Merc.And so did I.

Rom.Well, what was yours?

Merc.That dreamers often lie.”

Romeo and Juliet.

Astr.Then we are to learn that the mind is everimperfectin a dream. But, Evelyn, is not that rather perfection, which magnifies space and time a million-fold, completing the labours of years in a second? The time occupied with the dream must be limited, often far short of the seeming duration of a scene. Like the wonderful velocity of atoms of light, the crude and heterogeneous ideas succeed each other with incalculable rapidity. We appear to have travelled over a series of miles, or to have existed for a series of years, during a very minute portion of the night,—how minute it is perhaps impossible to determine. I believe it is the Opium-Eater, still, who thus confesses:—“I sometimes seemed to have lived for seventy or a hundred years, in one night; nay, sometimes, had feelings representative of a millennium passed in that time, or however of a duration far beyond the limits of any human experience.”

This may be, as your smile implies, the dream of opium madness; but let this dream of Lavalette, also, prove some truth in my illustration.

The count, during his confinement, had a frightful dream, which he thus relates: “One night, while I was asleep, the clock of the Palais de Justice struck twelve, and awoke me. I heard the gate open to relieve the sentry, but I fell asleep again immediately. In this sleep I dreamed that I was standing in the Rue St. Honoré, at the corner of the Rue de l’Echelle. A melancholy darkness spread around me; all was still. Nevertheless a low and uncertain sound soon arose. All of a sudden I perceived, at the bottom of the street, and advancing towards me, a troop of cavalry; the men and horses, however, all flayed. The men held torches in their hands, the flames of which illumined faces without skin, and with bloody muscles. Their hollow eyes rolled fearfully in their large sockets; their mouths opened from ear to ear, and helmets of hanging flesh covered their hideous heads. The horses dragged along their own skins in the kennels, which overflowed with blood on both sides. Pale and dishevelled women appeared and disappeared alternately at the windows in dismal silence; low inarticulate groans filled the air, and I remained in the street alone, petrified with horror and deprived of strength sufficient to seek my safety by flight. This horrible troop continued passing in rapid gallop, and casting frightful looks on me. Their march, I thought, continued for five hours, and they were followed by an immense number of artillery waggons, full of bleeding corpses, whose limbs still quivered. A disgusting smell of blood and bitumen almost choked me. At length the iron gate of the prison, shutting with great force, awoke me again. I made my repeater strike,—it was no more than midnight, so that the horrible phantasmagoria had lasted no more thanten minutes; that is to say, the time necessary for relieving the sentry and shutting the gate. The cold was severe and the watchword short. The next day the turnkey confirmed my calculations. I nevertheless do not remember one single event in my life, the duration of which I have been able more exactly to calculate.”

Cast.You are modest, Astrophel. Think of the wonders of fairyland. Our dainty Ariel will “place a girdle round the world in forty minutes.” And, even more wonderful still, I have read, in the “Arabian Tales,” of a monarch who immersed his head in a water bucket, and imagined he had in one minute traversed a space of infinite extent; and (though perchance I should crave pardon for any thing Evelyn may term an imputed miracle, or imposture, yet) for a moment listen to that exquisite passage in the “Spectator,” which Addison pretends to have gathered from the Koran, although I believe there is in that book no such story. “The angel Gabriel took Mahomet out of his bed one morning to give him a sight of all things in the seven heavens, in paradise, and in hell, which the prophet took a distinct view of, and after having held ninety thousand conferences with God, was brought back again to his bed. All this was transacted in so small a space of time that Mahomet, at his return, found his bed still warm, and took up an earthen pitcher, which was thrown down at the very instant that the angel Gabriel carried him away,before the water was all spilt.”

Ev.If all the circumstances of these dreams were rational, I might agree with you, Astrophel; but the ideas are irrational whichso faroutstrip the facts of our experience; except intheirestimation who, like the Hibernian, would value their watch because it wentfaster than the sun. Now the extent of velocity in the ideas ofinsaneminds is equally extreme; and, when these anachronisms occur in dreams, the ideas are, I believe, ever false. Deeply interesting, however, are tales of such curiosities of dreaming, as those which the two Scottish physicians, Abercrombie and Gregory, have recorded.

“A gentleman dreamed that he had enlisted as a soldier; that he had joined his regiment; that he had deserted; was apprehended and carried back to his regiment: that he was tried by the court-martial, condemned to be shot, and was led out for execution. At the moment of the completion of these ceremonies, the guns of the platoon were fired, and at the report he awoke. It was clear that a loud noise, in the adjoining room, had both produced the dream and, almost at the moment, awoke the dreamer.”

There was another gentleman who for some time, after sleeping in the damp, suffered a sense of suffocation when slumbering in a recumbent position; and a dream would then come over him, as of a skeleton which grasped him firmly by the throat. This dream became at length so distressing, that sleep was to him no blessing, but a state of torture; and he had a centinel posted by his couch, with orders to awake his master when slumber seemed to be stealing o’er him. One night, ere he was awakened, he was attacked by the skeleton, and a long and severe conflict ensued. When fully awake, he remonstrated with the watcher for allowing him to remainso longin his dream, and, to his astonishment, learned that his dream had beenmomentary, and that he was awokeon the instantthat he had begun to slumber.

But granting your notions of dreaming perfections, Astrophel, there are, to a certain extent, even here,analogies. You forget that in our waking moments our ideas are often so fleet as to be profitless to our judgment; and why not in a dream? In the estimation of distance, with what velocity the train of reasoning passes through the mind! Ere we have formed our notions of an object, how instantaneous our reflections on all its qualities—its brilliancy of colour, its apparent magnitude, its form, &c., and the angle of inclination in regard to the axis of the eye; and our conclusions (for judgment is awake) are echoes of the truth. Butin the dreamis it so? No. We get the idea (as Mr. Locke has written) of time or duration by reflecting on that train of ideas which succeed each other in the mind. In waking hours the judgment clearly regulates this; but in dreams this course of reflection isimpeded, and the measurement of time is imperfect and erroneous, so that it is the common characteristic of a dream, that there isno idea of time; the past and the future are equally present.

Start not, if to strengthen this my illustration, I lead you again into the mad-house; again unconsciously combine a dream with insanity, in quoting these expressions of the Rev. Robert Hall (from “Green’s Reminiscences”), in allusion to his first attack of mania. “All my imagination has been overstretched. You, with the rest of my friends, tell me that I was only sevenweeksin confinement, and the date of the year corresponds, so that I am bound to believe you, but they have appeared to me like sevenyears. My mind was so excited, and my imagination so lively and active, that more ideas passed through my mind during those seven weeks than in any seven years of my life. Whatever I had obtained from reading or reflection waspresent to me.”

Ida.The apparent anachronism of such dreams, Evelyn, refers toimperfectfunction. Yet he will remember we are reasoning asfinite beings. True, Malebranche has asserted, that “it is possible some creatures may think half an hour as long as we do a thousand years, or look upon that space of duration which we call a minute, as an hour, a week, a month, or a whole age. But in regard to the prospect of futurity, of a more perfect state, who of us can decide that this seeming illusion is not one evidence of the divine nature of mind; a remote resemblance, if I may presume so to say, of one attribute of the Creator, to whom a thousand years are as one day?”

I have learned from your own theory, Evelyn, that mind is either imperfect or passive in the dream. Does not this passive condition itself imply inspiration? For is not that, in which are producedresults, while itself isinactive, under the special influence of some high power, as were the visions of the holy records?

Although I may not yield my entire belief in the fallacy of modern inspiration because it is notproved, yet I have not listened to your learning, Evelyn, without some leaning to the apparent truth of your dissertations. I might hesitate to confess myself your pupil; still, the incidents you have adduced will make me pause, ere I again blend profane arguments with the truths of holy writ. Yet I cannot yield the feeling, that the dream is anemblem, at least, of immortality.

As a beautiful illustration of such philosophy, I remember (in Fulgosius) a legend told by Saint Austin to Enodius: —

There was a physician of Carthage, who was a sceptic regarding immortality and the soul’s separate existence. It chanced one night that Genadius dreamt of a beautiful city. On the second night, the youth who had been his guide reappeared, and asked if Genadius remembered him; he answered, yes, and also his dream. ‘And where,’ said the apparition, ‘were you then lying?’ ‘In my bed, sleeping.’ ‘And if your mind’s eye, Genadius, surveyed a city, even while your body slept, may not this pure and active spirit still live, and observe, and remember, even though the body may be shapeless or decayed within its sepulchre?’

The dreams of Scripture, those “thoughts from the visions of night, when deep sleep came upon men,” were associated with the mission of an angel, or immediate communion with the Deity. For He has said, in the twelfth of Numbers, that he would “speak to his prophets in a dream:” from the first and self-interpreting dream of Abimelech, the visions interpreted by the inspired propounder Joseph, the first dream of the New Testament, the fulfilment of the Annunciation, the impressive trance of Peter, in coincidence with the visions of the centurion, even to the holy visions of the Apocalypse.

Indeed, the surpassing evidence and truth in all, but especially in the inspired interpretation of Joseph of the dream of Pharaoh, and those of the stillmoreinspired oneirocritic, Daniel, cannot be compared with aught profane.

The prophet not onlyexpounded, butremindedNebuchadnezzar of his dream, when he himself had forgotten it. This was the result of special prayer to the Deity; and, remember, without this, the Chaldeans failed in their efforts. Even Josephus informs us, that Daniel “foretold good things and pleased, so that he was deemed divine.” And you have read, that Saul also prayed for a dream, butHEdreamt not, because he was not holy. And there are holy precepts regarding dreams, which are recorded to curb our superstitious reliance onall. We have assurances of true dreamers in the first chapter of Matthew, the second of the Acts, in Deuteronomy, and the thirty-fourth of Ecclesiasticus; the language of the son of Sirach was, that “commondreams only serve to lift up fools.” With these reservations, I do believe that the real inspiration of a spirit is the gift only of the holy and the good; so that the presumption of divination and prophecy byprofanedreamers is an illusion; yet, I acknowledge with John Wesley, that many have been converted by a dreaming conscience; as we read of impressive dreams, which have effected the conversion of others by the mere recital. Wilmot, Earl of Rochester, was a sceptic; but, as we are informed by Burnet in his “Life and Death,” his mind was first led to the conviction of an immaterial spirit, by the prophetic dream of his mother, the Lady de la Warre, foreboding truly his own death.

And I must ever admire the moral wisdom of Zeno, which (according to Plutarch) induced him to regard a dream as the test of virtue; for, if in his dream his heart did notrecoilfrom vicious suggestions, there was an immediate necessity of self-examination and repentance. I cannot forbear adding, that there is much wisdom in the estimation of his vision, by one of the shepherd kings of Egypt, Sabaco. He dreamed that the tutelary deity of Thebes enjoined him to kill the priests of Egypt, and, for this unmerciful injunction from the gods, thatthey deemed him unfit for the throne, he went into self-exile, to Æthiopia.

Ev.The conclusions of these moralists from dreaming impressions were somewhat straightlaced: yetyourreflections, Ida, point to the safest mode by which we may reconcile the conflict of the divine and the physiologist, and, above all, evince our devotion to the Creator; namely, to argue on creation as wesee it, and on revelation as wesee it recorded.

Yet, with a mock solemnity, dreams and apparitions have been first adduced as proofs of the soul’s immortality; and then, in the same argument, are themselves provedbythis immortality; the points of the syllogism are reversed, and we havepetitio principii, a begging of the question.

This hypothesis of dreaming has formed the basis of certain religious impostures. Among others, of Dubricius and Comedius; and, above all, the fanatical visions of Emanuel Swedenborg, who founded his especial sect, by the declaration of having visited Paradise.

In our analysis of revelation, the conflict of two powerful minds might, on doctrinal points, attack, and in the end annihilate, the faith of each, in their struggle for the victory; which may remind you of the murders both of Protestants and Papists, especially in Ireland, resulting from the wild excitement of fanaticism and bigotry; and the persecutions which have, as history records, sprung from debates on holy subjects. Remember the martyrdom of the amiable and beautiful Anne Ascue, who was burnt at the stake for dissenting from the theological tenets of Henry VIII., regarding the real presence. On the rack, her silence was a model of heroism, for she might have impeached the queen and her ladies; and Wriothesly, the chancellor, it is said, in his rage to extort the secret,himselfstretched the wheel, so as almost to tear her body asunder.

And then the blasphemy of that convocation, summoned in the reign of Mary Tudor, to renew the discussion on that sacred point of transubstantiation, between the Protestants and the Romanists;—but I leave this topic to the mild theologian, who will confess it would have withheld a stain from the page of history, had these mock religionists acknowledged, with the pious Pascal, that “the sublime truths of our religion and the essence of the immortal spirit are inexplicable by the deepest research of wisdom, and are unfolded only by the inspired light of revelation.”

Now it was clear that the dreams of the classic poets were notalltruly prophetic; and in accordance with this are their delineations of the house of sleep. Indeed we may almost fancy, for a moment, that there might be some reality in these poetical surveyors, until we reflect that the Roman notions were plagiaries from the Greeks.

It is true, the locality of this Palace of Somnus, like the site of Troy, is not a little diversified by Homer and the rest; but, whether it be Lemnos, or Æthiopia, or Cimmeria, these are its descriptions:

First, of Homer,—

“Immur’d within the silent bower of sleep,Two portals firm the various phantoms keep:Of iv’ry one, whence flit, to mock the brain,Of winged lies a light fantastic train.The gate oppos’d, pellucid valves adorn,And columns fair incased with polish’d horn;Where images of truth for passage wait,With visions manifest of future fate.”

“Immur’d within the silent bower of sleep,

Two portals firm the various phantoms keep:

Of iv’ry one, whence flit, to mock the brain,

Of winged lies a light fantastic train.

The gate oppos’d, pellucid valves adorn,

And columns fair incased with polish’d horn;

Where images of truth for passage wait,

With visions manifest of future fate.”

And Virgil’s is a close copy.

In the “City of Dreams,” of Lucian, the blasphemer (whose beauties are stained by their impieties), these eternal gates are again alluded to. But the dreams in this city are all deceivers; for when a mortal enters the gates, a circle of domestic dreams in a moment unfold to him a budget of intelligence, which proves to be a tissue of lies.

Tertullian, and many others, have argued the notion of aspecial purposeof the Deity inevery dream. And the “New Moral World” of the visionary Owen, asserts, that “one chief source of our knowledge is dreams and omens.”

In the eras of inspiration, few will be sceptical enough to doubt the occurrence of divine mediations; or not to believe, with Socrates, and other sages, in the divine origin of dreams and omens.

The evidence of Holy Scripture again proves theoccasion, indeed thenecessity, for such communication; but, in our own time, I deem it little less than profaneness, to imagine that the Deity should indicate the future occurrence of common-place and trivial incidents through the medium of an organ, confessedly in a state ofimperfection, at the moment when the faculties of mind are returning from a state of temporary suspension,—a death-like sleep.

Even John Wesley believed dreams to be “doubtfulanddisputable;” and adds, with a half-profanation,—“theymightbe from God, or might not.”

The Emperor Constantine, you know, denounced death to all who dared to look seriously into the secrets of futurity.

When we reflect that the proportion of events, seemingly the fulfilment of a dream, is to the myriads of forebodings which never come to pass (as the dreams recorded with some solemnity by Herodotus, of Alcibiades; of Crœsus, regarding his son Atys; of Astyages and the vine; of Cambyses, respecting Smerdis; and of Hamilcar, at the siege of Syracusa;) as a drop in the ocean, the fallacy of the doctrine must be evident. I marvel much that credulity, in this reflecting age, can gain a single proselyte.

The magi of Persia and the soothsayers of Greece and Rome wereconstantly in error; and Artemidorus Miraldus, who in the reign of Antoninus wrote his voluminous book “Oneirocriticus,” has given us the most ridiculous interpretations.

When the pagan priesthood of old lay down on the reeking skins of their victims to rouse the inspiration of their dreams, it was to cheat their proselytes. Such were the mummeries in the Temple of Æsculapius. The devotees were first purified by the “lustral water;” and then divine visions came over them, and priestesses in snowy robes, and a venerable priest in the habit of Æsculapius, paraded round the altar, and the charm was complete.

You may learn from Martin something about the modern influence of such a charm.

“Mr. Alexander Cooper, present minister of North-uist, told me that one John Erach, in the Isle of Lewis, assured him that it was his fate to have been led by his curiosity to some who consulted this oracle, and that he was a night within the hide as above mentioned, during which time he felt and heard such terrible things that he could not express them; the impression it made on him was such as could never go off, and he said for a thousand worlds he would never again be concerned in the like performance, for this had disordered him to a high degree. He confessed it ingenuously and with an air of great remorse, and seemed to be very penitent under a just sense of so great a crime: he declared this about five years since, and is still living in the Lewis for any thing I know.”

In imitation of this spell for the divine inspiration of a dream, the modern Franciscans, after the ceremony of mass, throw themselves on mats already consecrated by the slumber of some holy visionary, and with all this foolery, they vaunt the divine inspiration oftheirdream.

Cicero, and Theophrastus, and many other sages, were sceptical of these special visitations, and explainedrationallydreams and divinations, as Cicero his dream at Ætina, on his flight from Rome.

Then there is this anathema of Ennius: —

“Augurs, and soothsayers, astrologers, diviners, and interpreters of dreams I never consult, and despise their vain pretence to more than human skill.” And also this caution bequeathed to you by Epictetus: “Never tell thy dream; for though thou thyself mayest take a pleasure in telling thy dream, another will take no pleasure in hearing it.”

Astr.Epictetus was himself a dreamer in this; for the story of a dream is ever listened to with interest. And what would Epictetus think, were I to tell him that broad lands and mitres have been gained before now by the shrewdputting of a dream?

Ev.I confess, as in the illusion of phantoms, there are records of very strange coincidences in dreaming, which may be startling to many superficial minds.

Pereskius, the friend of Gassiendi, after a severe fever, in 1609, was engaged in the study of ancient coins, weights, and measures. One night, he dreamed he met a goldsmith at Nismes, who offered him a coin of Julius Cæsar for fourcardecues. The next day this incident was repeated to himin reality. Buthewas a philosopher, and deemed it, as it was, but a rare coincidence.

There were two sisters, who (as a learned physician has recorded) were sleeping together during the illness of their brother. One of these ladies dreamed that her watch, an old family relic, had stopped, and, on waking her sister to tell of this, she was answered by her thus: “Alas! I have worse to tell you:our brother’s breath is also stopped.” On the following night, the same dream was repeated to the young lady. On the morning after this second dream, the lady, on taking out the watch, which had been perfect in its movement, observed that it had indeed stopped, and at the same moment she heard her sister screaming; the brother, who had been till then apparently recovering, had justbreathed his last.

These are sequences, and notconsequences: and I might adduce a mass of these mere coincidences, which have been stretched and warped, to make up a prophecy. Such as the following legend of Sergius Galba, told by Fulgosius: “Galba had coquetted with two marble ladies,—the Fortune, at Tusculum, and the Capitoline Venus; and, to adorn the neck of the first, he had purchased a brilliant diamond necklace. But the charms of the Venus of the Capitol prevailed over her rival, and the necklace was at length presented to the goddess of beauty. At night, the form of Fortune appeared to him in his sleep, upbraiding him with his falsehood, and telling him that he should be deprived of all the gifts she had lavished on him, and Galba, as the story goes, soon after died.”

But, if dreams are essentially prophetic, why are they notallfulfilled? and ifoneis not fulfilled, how know we ifallwill not be equally fallacious? The argument for the prophetic nature is merelyà posteriori, the shallow “posthoc,ergopropterhoc,” of the sophist. On the occurrence of any important event, all the auguries and dreams which bear the slightest semblance to a prophecy are immediately adduced, and stretched and warpedto suitthe superstition; as the whimsical mother will account for the marks on her child by frights and longings. When we know that myriads of enthusiasts and hypochondriacs have, by the failure of their predictions, deserved the stigma of false prophets, we may surely class these phantasies among the popularerrorsof the time.

Yet the fulfilment of a prophecymay beconsequence; and that without the imputation of falsehood or imposition, or of any special interference. (I am not recanting my opinions, Astrophel.)

1st. Through the effect of animparted impetus.

2nd.Foresight, from the study of events and character.

3rd. Constantthinkingon one subject.

4th.Impressionsof terror or alarm, from spectres, sybils, &c.

As there are dreams from impressions on the body during sleep, so are there diseased tissues in the brain, which light up phantoms of terror and death perfectly prophetic. But wherefore so? Merely because they areinducedby that disease which usually terminatesindeath. Such were the dreams during the nightmare which preceded, and, I believe, still precede, the epidemic fevers in Rome, and in those of Leyden, in 1669, when the patient fell asleep, and was attacked byincubusbefore each exacerbation. Theimpersonation of deathwas the prevailing phantom of their dream, and in reality death soon followed.

Among those heathen tribes, where superstition and ignorance form part of a national creed, there is a degree of blindness and inconsistency that may truly be termedmania. It is the doctrine, not of prophecy, but of debased and absolute fatalism. The North American Indians not only regard the dream as prophetic, but often receive it as a solemn injunction, and are themselves the active agents in its fulfilment. “In whatever manner,” says Charlevoix, “the dream is conceived, it is always looked upon as a thing sacred, and as the most ordinary way in which the gods make known their will to men. Filled with this idea, they cannot conceive how we should pay no regard to them. For the most part they look upon them either as a desire of the soul, inspired by some genius, or an order from him, and, in consequence of this principle, they hold it a religious duty to obey them. An Indian, having dreamt of the amputation of his finger, had it really cut off as soon as he awoke, first preparing himself for this important action by a feast!”

Among more enlightened people there may be an inducement to action from the impression of a dream; here, also, the consequence is the fulfilment of the prophecy. Such, Astrophel, were the dreams of Arlotte and Cadiga; of Judas Maccabæus; of Sylla; of Germanicus; and of Masulenius; and the dream of the priestess of Proserpine, on the eve of Timoleon’s expedition from Corinth to Syracuse, that Ceres volunteered to be his travelling companion into Sicily. The dream of Olympia, that she was with child of a dragon, might both have suggested the mode of education, and incited the warlike spirit of Alexander.

We know that the city of Carthage was rebuilt by Augustus Cæsar, in consequence of the dream of his uncle Julius.

And we read in the travels of Herbert, that Cangius, the blacksmith of Mount Taurus, aspired to, and gained dominion over the Tartars from a similar influence, and from his name has the title of “Chan” been since conferred on some of the most warlike monarchs of the East.

There was a dream of Ertercules that was warped, by Edebales, into the interpretation, that Oman should be born to him, and become a great conqueror.

I have known the dreams of young ladies often prove the inducement to their marriage.

I may remind you, too, that even a simple waking incident will impart this power of action. It is a record of history, that Robert Bruce slept, during his wandering, in the barn of a cottage. As he was lying, he saw a spider attempt to climb to the roof; twelve times the insect failed ere it gained its point. This potent lesson of perseverance instantly flashed across his mind, and in a few days was won the field of Bannockburn. Be sure theseerstermed this anomen.

The seduction of Helen was the result of a dream of high promise, made to Paris by the phantom of Venus.

Scott (who was executed at Jedburgh, in 1823, for murder) confessed that he had dreamed of such a crime for many years ere its committal.

Of the result ofconstant dwelling on an interesting subject, I may add these illustrations.

Antigonusa, King of Macedonia, anticipated (according to Plutarch) the flight of his prisoner Mithridates to the Euxine.

Of such a nature were the dreams of the Emperor Julian and of Calphurnia, if indeed these were more than fable; and such was the dream of Cromwell,—that he should be the greatest man in England. In all these, and a thousand more, the mere constant thinking excited the dream. The ambitious thought of Cromwell was constantly haunting his waking moments, pointing to personal aggrandisement, and, of consequence, imparted a like character to the dream of his slumbers. Could we have penetrated the privacy of Ireton, and Lambert, and other Presbyterian leaders, we should discover that such ambitious prepossessions were not confined to the bosom of the Protector.

The grandfather of the poet Goëthe, on the death of an old counsellor at Frankfort, assured his wife of his confident belief, that the golden ball, which elected the vacant counsellor, would bedrawn for him. And this belief arose from a dream; in which he went in full costume to court, when the deceased counsellor rose from his seat and begged him to occupy the chair, and then went out of the door. Goëthewaselected.

And yet divines especially are determined to look beyond nature for causes, and refer all this todivine foreknowledge, imparted to the mind of man. There is a solemn letter, written in 1512, by Cardinal Bembo, to one of the Medici, recounting how he was opposed in a suit against one Simon Goro, by Giusto, and how his mother dreamed that Giusto wounded him in the right hand, and besought him not to have altercation with him. It chanced that Giusto, who, it seems, was somewhat deranged, snatched Bembo’s papers from his hand, and afterwards, by the Rialto, wounded him in the second finger of the right hand. Now is not this a very shallow incident? and yet the sapient cardinal deems it essential toconfirm his taleby a solemn attestation, thus: “The dream of my mother I look upon as a revelation; and I declare to you, magnificent lord, by that veneration which we owe to God himself, that this recital is the pure and single truth.”

The proofs of an apparent prophecy from foresight may be seen in those, who by reflection have attained either a worldly or aweatherwisdom. The sea captain, who has looked out upon the sky at night, and has learned the foreboding signs of a storm, will often dream of shipwreck; and the politician will dream of events, as well as predicate consequences, from anenlightened reflectionon the motives of the human mind, and the general laws which indeed influence its actions. So that, with a little latitude, it were easy enough for us all to construct an almanac column, especially if there be granted to us a liberal allowance of “more or less about this time.”

Above all, it is our duty toavert the impressions of evilfrom the superstitious mind. Theapprehensionof a misfortune or fatality may prove itscause. Ay, and if the intellect were really gifted with prescience, how oft would the happiness of life be blighted?

The allegory of the tree of knowledge is a practic precept for our lives.

Astr.And yet Virgil has thus alluded to the delight of peeping into futurity:

Back to Index Next