Thaumaturgia Part 9

CHAPTER X.

ONEIROCRITICAL PRESENTIMENT, ILl.u.s.tRATING THE CAUSE, EFFECTS, PRINc.i.p.aL PHENOMENA, AND DEFINITION OF DREAMS, ETC.

As we shall have to speak of the art practised through the medium, termed incubation, of curing diseases, it may be proper to say something previously on the interpretation of dreams through whose agency these events were said to be realized.

Oneirocritics, or interpreters of dreams, were called conjecturers, a very fit and proper name for these worldly wise men, according to the following lines, translated from Euripides--

He that conjectures least amiss Of all, the best of prophets is.

To the delusion of dreams not a few of the ancient philosophers lent themselves. Among these were Democritus, Aristotle, and his follower Themistius, Siresius the Platonic; who so far relied on dreams which some accident or other brought about, that they thence endeavoured to persuade men there are no dreams but what are founded on realities. For, say they, as the celestial influences produce various forms and changes in corporeal matter, so out of certain influences, predominating over the power of the fancy, the impression of visions is made, being consentaneous, through the disposition of the heavens, to the effect produced; more especially in dreams, because the mind, being then at liberty from all corporeal cares and exercises, more freely receives the divine influences: it happens, therefore that many things are revealed to them that are asleep, which are concealed from them that are awake.

With these and such reasons it is pretended that much is communicated through the medium of dreams:

When soft sleep the body lays at ease, And from the heavy ma.s.s the fancy frees, Whate'er it is in which we take delight, And think of most by day we dream at night.

The transition from sleep is very natural to that of dreams, the wonderful and mysterious phenomena of that state, the ideal transactions and vain illusions of the mind. According to Wolfius, an eminent philosopher of Silesia, every dream originates in some sensation, and is continued by the succession of phantoms; but no phantasm can arise in the mind without some previous sensation. And yet it is not easy to confirm this by experience, it being often difficult to distinguish those slight sensations, which give rise to dreams, from phantasms, or objects of imagination.[81] The series of phantasms which thus const.i.tute a dream, seems to be accounted for by the law of the imagination, or a.s.sociation of ideas; though it may be very difficult to a.s.sign the cause of every minute difference, not only in different subjects, but in the same, at different times, and in different circ.u.mstances. And hence M. Formey, who adopts the opinion of Wolfius, concludes, that those dreams are supernatural, which either do not begin by sensation, or are not continued by the law of imagination.[82]

The opinion is as old as Aristotle, who a.s.serted, that a dream is only the [Greek: Phantasma] or _appearance_ of things, excited in the mind, and remaining after the objects are removed.[83] The opinion of Lucretius, translated in our motto, was likewise that of Tully.[84] Locke also traces the origin of dreams to previous sensations. "The dreams of sleeping men," says this profound philosopher, "are all made up of the waking man's ideas, though for the most part oddly put together."[85] And Dr. Hartley, who explains all the phenomena of the imagination by his theory of vibrations and a.s.sociations, says, that dreams are nothing but the imaginations or reveries of sleeping men, and that they are deducible from three causes--viz, the impressions and ideas lately received, and particularly those of the preceding day, the state of the body, more especially of the stomach and brain, and a.s.sociation.[86]

Macrobius mentions five sorts of dreams. 1st. vision--2nd. a discovery of something between sleeping and waking--3rd. a suggestion cast into our fancy, called by Cicero, _visum_,--4th. an ordinary dream--and fifth, a divine apparition or revelation in our sleep; such as were the dreams of the prophets, and of Joseph, as also of the Eastern Magi.

CAUSE OF DREAMS.

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, an Arabian physician, 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 of the soul; Albertus to the superior influences, which continually flow from the sky, through many specific channels.

Some physicians attribute the cause of dreams 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 a.s.sert, 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; and which are often remarked in dogs, and other animals, which bark and make a noise in their sleep. Dreams, they observe, proceed from the humours and temperature of the body; we see the choleric dreams of fire, combats, yellow colours, etc. the phlegmatic of water baths, of sailing on the sea; the melancholies of thick fumes, deserts, fantasies, hideous faces, etc. they that have the hinder part of their brain clogged, with viscous humours, called by physicians Ephialtes incubus, dream 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.

POETICAL ILl.u.s.tRATIONS OF THE EFFECTS OF THE IMAGINATION IN DREAMS.

Were we to enter more profoundly into the mysterious phenomena of dreams, our present lucubrations might become too abstruse; and, after all, no philosophical nor satisfactory account can be given of them.

Such of our readers therefore, as may wish for a more minute inquiry into the opinions above stated, we beg leave to refer to the respective authors whom we have already quoted. The reader, who is fond to find amus.e.m.e.nt even in a serious subject, from the scenes of nocturnal imagination, will be glad, perhaps for a moment, to be transported into the regions of poetic fancy. And here we find that the fancy is not more sportive in dreams, than are the poets in their descriptions of her nocturnal vagaries. On the effects of the imagination in dreams, the following effusion, put into the mouth of the volatile Mercurio, is an admirable ill.u.s.tration:--

O, then I see, Queen Mab has been with you.

She is the fancy's midwife, and she comes In shape no bigger than an agate stone On the fore-finger of an Alderman, Drawn with a team of little atomies, Athwart men's noses as they lie asleep: Her waggon spokes made of long spinners' legs; The cover of the wings of gra.s.shoppers; The traces of the smallest spider's web; The collars of the moons.h.i.+ne's watery beams; Her whip of cricket's bone; the lash of film; Her waggoner, a small grey coated gnat, Not half so big as a round little worm, p.r.i.c.kt from the lazy finger of a maid.

Her chariot is an empty hazel nut, Made by the joiner squirril, old grub, Time out of mind the fairies' coachmakers: And in this state she gallops night by night, Thro' lovers' brains, and then they dream of love; On courtiers' knees, that dream on curtsies strait; O'er lawyers' fingers, who strait dream on fees; O'er ladies lips, who strait on kisses dream, Which oft the angry Mab with blisters plague, Because their breath with sweetmeats tainted are.

Sometimes she gallops o'er a lawyer's nose, And then dreams he of smelling out a suit, And sometimes comes she with a t.i.the-pig tail, Tickling the parson as he lies asleep; Then dreams he of another benefice; Sometimes she driveth o'er a soldier's neck And then he dreams of cutting foreign throats, Of breaches, ambuscades, Spanish blades, Of healths fire fathom deep; and then anon Drums in his ears, at which he starts and wakes, And being thus frighted, swears a pray'r or two, And sleeps again.

Lucretius, and Petronius in his poem on the vanity of dreams, had preceded our immortal bard in a description of the effects of dreams on different kinds of persons. Both the pa.s.sages here alluded to, only serve to shew the vast superiority of Shakspeare's boundless genius: their sense is thus admirably expressed by Stepney:

At dead of night imperial reason sleeps, And fancy with her train, her revels keeps; Then airy phantoms a mix'd scene display, Of what we heard, or saw, or wish'd by day; For memory those images retains Which pa.s.sion form'd, and still the strongest reigns.

Huntsmen renew the chase they lately run, And generals fight again their battles won.

Spectres and fairies haunt the murderer's dreams; Grants and disgraces are the courtier's themes.

The miser spies a thief, or a new h.o.a.rd; The cit's a knight; the sycophant a lord, Thus fancy's in the wild distraction lost, With what we most abhor, or covet most.

Honours and state before this phantom fall; For sleep, like death, its image, equals all.

Chaucer in his tale of the c.o.c.k and Fox, has a fine description, thus versified by Dryden:--

Dreams are but interludes which fancy makes: When monarch reason sleeps, this mimic wakes; Compounds a medley of disjointed things, A court of coblers and a mob 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, or are, or e'er can be.

Sometimes forgotten things, long cast behind, Rush forward in the brain, and come to mind.

The nurse's legends are for truth received, And the man dreams but what the boy believed, Sometimes we but rehea.r.s.e a former play, The night restores our actions done by day; As hounds in sleep will open for their prey.

In short, the farce of dreams is of a piece In chimeras all; and more absurd or less.

Shakspeare again:--

I talk of dreams, Which are the children of an idle brain, Begot of nothing but vain phantasy, Which is as thin of substance as the air, And more inconsistant than the wind.

Nor must Milton be omitted--

In the soul Are many lesser faculties, that serve Reason as chief; among these Fancy next Her office holds; of all external things, Which the five watchful senses represent, She forms imaginations, airy shapes, Which reason joining, or disjoining, frames, And all that we affirm, or what deny, or call Our knowledge or opinion; then retires Into her private cell, when nature rests.

Oft in her absence mimic fancy wakes, To imitate her; but misjoining shapes, Wild works produces oft, but most in dreams Ill matching words or deeds, long past or tale.

PRINc.i.p.aL PHENOMENA IN DREAMING.

From these practical descriptions let us proceed to take a view of the princ.i.p.al phenomena in dreaming. And first, Mr. Locke's beautiful _modes of_ which will greatly ill.u.s.trate the preceding observations.

"When the mind," says Locke, "turns its view inward upon itself, and contemplates its own actions, _thinking_ is the first that occurs. In it the mind observes a great variety of modifications, and from thence receives distinct _ideas_. Thus the perception, which actually accompanies, and is annexed to any impression on the body, made by an external object, being distinct from all other modifications of thinking, furnishes the mind with a distinct idea which we call _sensation_; which is, as it were, the actual entrance of an idea into the understanding by the senses.

"The same idea, when it occurs again without the operation of the like object on the external sensory, is _remembrance_: if it be sought after by the mind, and with pain and endeavour found, and brought again in view, it is _recollection_: if it be held there long under consideration, it is _contemplation_; when ideas float in our mind without any reflexion or regard of the understanding, it is that which the French call _reverie_;[87] our language has scarce a name for it.

When the ideas that offer themselves (for as I have observed in another place, while we are awake, there will always be a train of ideas succeeding one another in our minds) are taken notice of, and, as it were, registered in the memory, it is _attention_; when the mind, with great earnestness, and of choice, fixes its view on any idea, considers it on all sides, and will not be called off by the ordinary solicitations of other ideas, it is what we call _intention_ or _study_.

Sleep without dreaming is rest from all these: and _dreaming_ itself, is the having of ideas (while the outward senses are stopped, so that they receive not outward objects with their usual quickness) in the mind, not suggested by any external objects, or known occasion, nor under any choice or conduct of the understanding at all, and whether that which we call _ecstasy_, be not dreaming with the eyes open, I leave to be examined."

Dr. Beattie, in his "Dissertations moral and critical," has an ingenious essay on this subject, in which he attempts to ascertain, not so much the _efficient_ as the _final_ causes of the phenomenon, and to obviate those superst.i.tions in regard to it, which have sometimes troubled weak minds. He labours, with great earnestness, to shew, that dreams may be of use in the way of physical admonition: that persons, who attend to them with this view, may make important discoveries with regard to their health; that they may be serviceable as the means of moral improvement; that, by attending to them, we may discern our predominant pa.s.sions, and receive good hints for the regulation of them; that they may have been intended by Providence to serve as an amus.e.m.e.nt to the mental powers; and that dreaming is not universal, because, probably, all const.i.tutions do not require such intellectual amus.e.m.e.nt.

In observations of this kind, we may discover the ingenuity of fancy and the sagacity of conjecture. We may find amus.e.m.e.nt in the arguments, but we look in vain for satisfaction. Nature, certainly, does nothing in vain, yet we are far from thinking, that man is able, in every case, to discover her intentions. Final causes, perhaps, ought never to be the subject of human speculation, but when they are plain and obvious. To subst.i.tute vain conjectures, instead of the designs of Providence, on subjects where those designs are beyond our reach, serves only to furnish matter for the cavils of the sceptical, and the sneers of the licentious.

Among the many striking phenomena in our dreams, it may be observed, that, while they last, the memory seems to lie wholly torpid, and the understanding to be employed only about such objects as are then presented, without comparing the present with the past. When we sleep, we often converse with a friend who is either absent or dead, without remembering that the grave or the ocean is between us. We float, like a feather, upon the wind; for we find ourselves this moment in England, and the next in India, without reflecting that the laws of nature are suspended, or inquiring how the scene could have been so suddenly s.h.i.+fted before us. We are familiar with prodigies; we accommodate ourselves to every event, however romantic; and we not only reason, but act upon principles, which are in the highest degree absurd and extravagant. Our dreams, moreover, are so far from being the effect of a voluntary effort, that we neither know of what we shall dream, or whether we shall dream at all.

But sleep is not the only time in which strange and unconnected objects involve our ideas in confusion. Besides the _reveries_ of the day, already spoken of, we have, in a moral view, our _waking-dreams_, which are not less chimerical, and impossible to be realized, than the imaginations of the night.

Night visions may befriend---- Our waking dreams are fatal. How I dreamt Of things impossible (could sleep do more?) Of joys perpetual in perpetual change!

Of stable pleasures on the tossing wave!

Eternal suns.h.i.+ne in the storms of life!

How richly were my noon-tide trances hung, With gorgeous tapestries of pictur'd joys!

Till at deaths' toll,---- Starting I woke, and found myself undone.

Many of the fabulous stories of ghosts or apparitions have originated unquestionably in dreams. There are times of slumber when we are sensible of being asleep. "When the thoughts are much troubled," says Hobbes, "and when a person sleeps without the circ.u.mstance of going to bed, or pulling off his clothes, as when he nods in his chair, it is very difficult to distinguish a dream from a reality. On the contrary, he that composes himself to sleep, in case of any uncouth or absurd fancy, easily suspects it to have been a dream."[88] On this principle, Hobbes has ingeniously accounted for the spectre which is said to have appeared to Brutus; and the well-known story told by Clarendon, of the apparition of the duke of Buckingham's father will admit of a similar solution. There was no man at that time in the kingdom so much the topic of conversation as the duke; and, from the corruptness of his character, he was very likely to fall a sacrifice to the corruptness of the times.

Sir George Villiers is said to have appeared to the man at midnight--there is therefore the greatest probability that the man was asleep; and the dream affrighting him, made a strong impression, and was likely to be repeated.

History furnishes us with numerous instances of a forecast having been communicated through the medium of dreams, some of which are so extraordinary as almost to shake our belief that the hand of Providence is not sometimes evident through their instrumentality. Cicero, in his first book on Divination, tells us, that Heraclides, a clever man, and who had been a disciple of Plato, writes that the mother of Phalaris saw in a dream the statues of the G.o.ds which she had consecrated in the house of her son; and among other things, it appeared to her, that from a cup which Mercury held in his hand, he had spilled some blood from it, and that the blood had scarcely touched the ground, than rising up in large bubbles it filled the whole house. This dream of the mother was afterwards but too truly verified in the cruelty of the son. Cyrus dreamt that seeing the sun at his feet, he made three different unsuccessful attempts to lay his hand upon it, at each of which it evaded him. The Persian Magi who interpreted this dream told him that these three attempts to seize the sun signified that he would reign thirty years. This prediction was verified: he died at the age of seventy, having begun to reign when he was forty years old.

"There is doubtless," says Cicero, "something even among barbarians which marks that they possess the gift of presentiment and divination."

The Indian Cala.n.u.s mounting the flaming f.a.ggot on which he was about to be burnt, exclaimed "O what a fine exit from life, when my body, like that of Hercules, shall be consumed by the fire, my spirit will freely enjoy the light." And Alexander having asked if he had anything to say, he replied, "Yes, I shall soon see you," which happened as he foretold, Alexander having died a few days afterwards at Babylon. Xenophon, an ardent disciple of Socrates, relates that in the war which he made in favour of young Cyrus, he had some dreams which were followed by the most miraculous events. Shall we say that Xenophon does not speak truth, or is too extravagant? What! so great a personage, and so divine a spirit as Aristotle, can he be deceived? Or does he wish to deceive others, when he tells us of Eudemus of Cyprus, one of his friends, wis.h.i.+ng to go into Macedonia, pa.s.sed by Pheres, a celebrated town in Thessaly, which at that time was under the dominion of the tyrant Alexander; and that having fallen very sick, he saw in a dream a very handsome young man, who told him that he would cure him, and that the tyrant Alexander would shortly die, but as to himself, he would return home at the end of five years. Aristotle remarks that the two first predictions were, indeed, soon accomplished; that Eudemus recovered, and that the tyrant was killed by his wife's brothers; but that at the expiration of five years, the time at which it was hoped Eudemus, according to the dream, was to return to Sicily, his native country, news were received that he had been killed in a combat near Syracuse; which gave rise to another interpretation of the dream, namely, that, when the spirit or soul of Eudemus left his body, it went thence straight to his own house.--A cup of ma.s.sy gold having been stolen from the temple of Hercules, this G.o.d appeared in a dream to Sophocles three consecutive times, and pointed out the thief to him; who was put to the torture, confessed the delinquency, and gave up the cup. The temple afterwards received the name of Hercules Indicator.

An endless variety of similar instances, both from ancient and modern history, might be adduced of the singularity of dreams, as well as their instrumentality in revealing secrets which, without such agency, had lain for ever in oblivion; these, however, are sufficient for our purpose here; and the occurrence of one of a very recent date, connected with the discovery of the body of the murdered Maria Martin, in the red barn, is still fresh in the recollection of our readers. That there is a ridiculous infatuation attached by some people to dreams, which have no meaning, and which are the offsprings of the day's thoughts, even among persons whose education should inform them better, particularly among the fair s.e.x, cannot be denied; indeed, a conversation seldom pa.s.ses among them, but some inconsistent dream or other, form a leading feature of their gossip; and doubtless is with them an hysterical symptom.