106 Rev. J. Wills on Mr.. Stewart's Explanation of 



ideas in sleep. Think of a person, and he stands before you, and with him all 

 the most prominent associations connected with him ; these, too, appear as objects 

 of sense, being realized to the imagination. This fact is, indeed, well worthy of 

 attention from those ingenious writers who have investigated the subject of 

 dreams ; and if I do not greatly err, it will be found to offer the specific principle 

 from which all its peculiar phenomena arise. The effects of imagination cease to 

 be distinguished from the effects of sensation. The conception, or intellectual 

 sign, is in the dark isolation of sleep confounded with that thing, the presence of 

 which it liabitiially signifies ; for though the intellect is obscured, and its action 

 partial, yet so far as it does act, it follows the same laws of action as when awake ; 

 but the direct and manifest result is an illusion easily understood. The shadows 

 of things being thus invested with the conditions of seeming reality, and exempted 

 from the interference both of sensation and will, lead to a natural illusion. The 

 mind, deceived by the whole combination, judges as we judge in looking at a 

 perspective deception ; the whole of the accessory ideas becoming similarly rea- 

 lized, modify the process. It is not the person only who appears, but the person 

 doing some characteristic act ; which act carries with it the supposition of other 

 accessories, in which may be involved the ideas oi distance and succession. Thus 

 a few characteristic facts may compose the illusory perception of a story, just as a 

 few characteristic touches convey the illusion of a picture to the eye. The sole 

 difficulty, indeed, which may seem to affect the entire process, is the apparent suc- 

 cession and duration ; the duration we know to be an illusion, and the succession 

 (without duration) is resolved precisely into the common analogy of all the other 

 examples 1 have noticed. There is, indeed, no reason why the idea of duration 

 should not follow the common law of all our ideas. When awake, there is a 

 real perception which is contradictory to the illusory perception. Asleep, the 

 idea is subject to the general effect already stated as a common condition of the 

 mental operations in dreaming ; with the conception in which it happens to be 

 involved, it becomes seemingly realized, and consequently becomes a distinct fea- 

 ture of the illusion ; the moment has expanded into an age, because it seemed to 

 embrace the occurrences of an age. If the thought of eternity should present 

 itself, or of infinity, the imagination becomes oppressed with some vast field of 

 darkness, or the burthen of some endless endurance. The idea of duration is sub- 

 ject to the same conditions by which all other ideas are affected. There is, per- 



