276 A Chapter on Dreams. [MARCH, 



to the antlerstanding are closed ; and, consequently, cen convey to the 

 mind no information from without. I touch him rather roughly ; but he 

 is insensible of the contact. I whisper I speak loudly : he hears me not. 

 The light of my candle flares on his eye-ball, through the half-opened lid ; 

 but his powers of vision are not roused into exertion. His powers of smell 

 are not excited on exposure to fragrant, or even stimulating odours ; and 

 though, of course, the experiment would be rather difficult I may 

 fairly infor, that his organs of taste for a while forego their operation. I 

 gaze on this strange figure a man cut off, pro tempore, from all inter- 

 course with the external world a substantial abstraction ; and may I not 

 well be amazed, when, on suddenly awakening the subject of myspecula- 

 lations, he peevishly exclaims, " Why did you disturb me? I have been 

 dreaming gloriously! You have plucked me from a paradisiacal scene of 

 fruits, and flowers, and golden sun-light fragrant odours, bewildering 

 melody from throngs of playful sylphs and houris; why did you awake 

 me?" I do insist upon it, that this circumstance dreaming affords a 

 very powerful evidence of the soul's immortality, and capacity for a sepa- 

 rate existence. 



We have thus seen, that the mind is deprived of the assistance of the 

 senses, and, as it were, locked up in a dark dungeon. Yet, is it in this 

 state inert? Far from it. Although excluded from the perception of 

 external objects, the imagination roves amidst scenes of incessantly -varying 

 splendour. Next to imagination if it be not before the most powerful 

 faculty called into exertion is memory. It flares its torch amidst ali its 

 avenues , of secret and long-cherished images and associations ; whilst 

 imagination moulds them into innumerable gorgeous and grotesque com- 

 binations. The researches of memory are very deep; it often elicits a 

 series of impressions, which, like figures on the sea-shore, one fancied the 

 tide of active mental exertion had long since obliterated. I have often 

 been startled, when, on waking, I have found that a train of thoughts 

 which I afterwards recollected to have flitted through my mind many, 

 many years ago has started into sudden and vivid reminiscence in my 

 last night's dream. 



WOLFIUS supposes that dreams originate in a preternatural irritation of 

 the organs of sensation; that those of smell, touch, or taste of sight or 

 hearing communicate information in some secret and inexplicable manner, 

 and thus superficially arouse the lethargic faculties, and call them into 

 confused and irregular exertion. This hypothesis is explaining ignotum, 

 per ignotius, and goes but a very little way towards elucidating the phe- 

 nomena of dreaming. The very first aspect is misty and indistinct, and so 

 far partakes of the character of dreams. Other physiologists would per- 

 suade us, that, in dreaming, the mind is to be considered as in a state of 

 delirium. Sleep, say they, is attended by a collapse of the brain, during 

 which its nerves are unable to carry on the communication between the 

 mind and the organs of sensation ; and, when only half the brain is thus 

 collapsed, we are neither asleep nor awake, but in a sort of delirium 

 between the two : and this (say they) is dreaming. This theory supposes 

 the mind to be incapable of action without the aid of sensation, and would 

 represent dreams to be merely a confused chaos of images disjecta membra 

 of real and artificial objects which is at variance with the known fact. 

 But it would be endless and supererogatory to discuss the thousand-and- 

 one philosophisms to which dreams have given birth. 



In dreaming, the mind is passive : uncateriated by the will, ideas glide 

 on before the fancy, like leaves and straws on the surface of a rapid river. 



