AND BODILY STATES UPON THE IMAGINATION. 53 



Where eyes did once inhabit, there were crept, 

 As 't were in scorn of eves, reHectinjr gems, 

 That woo'd the slimy bottom of the deep, 

 And mock'd the dead bones that lay scattered by.''* 



Although the Imagination, in dreams, is perfectly free and un- 

 fettered, yet it is easily directed into certain channels by circum- 

 stances over which it has no controul. Bodily sensations, or pains, 

 and our peryailing habits, tastes and pursuits, influence, in a mark- 

 ed degree, the character of the imagination of our dreams. *^ A 

 gentleman having occasion, in consequence of indisposition, to apply 

 a bottle of hot water to his feet, dreamed that he was climbing the 

 sides of Mount Etna during an eruption, and that the volcanic fire 

 had rendered the heat of the ground almost insupportable. The 

 Imagination of another, to whose head a blister was applied, trans- 

 ported him to the woods of Canada, and placed him under the 

 scalping knife of the Indians. If the bed-clothes happen to slip up 

 and we get chilled, we are, in imagination, wandering illimitable 

 steeps, destitute, homeless, and naked : if the feet slip over the edge 

 of the bed, we are falling from some dreadful precipice into the un- 

 fathomable gulph below."t 



What Dugald Stewart J has called our previous habits of associa- 

 tion, direct the Imagination into a sort of beaten path, which has 

 been travelled by our waking thoughts, and which is, consequently, 

 not altogether new to our dreams. This previous habit of associa- 

 tion is nothing more than the customary train of thought into 

 which the mind most generally falls, and to which it is led by our 

 prevailing inclination, study, or business. Thus — 



^' The stag-hounds, weary with the chace, 



L.ay stretched upon the rushy floor, 

 And urge, in dreams, the forest chace. 



From Teviot-stone to Eskdale Moor."§ 



•^^ From this cause the miser dreams of wealth, the lover of his 

 mistress, the musician of melody, the philosopher of science, the 

 merchant of trade, and the debtor of duns and bailiffs. In like 

 manner, a choleric man is often passionate in his sleep ; a vicious 



• Richard III. 

 + Macnish, Chap. 6. 



X See his Elements of the Philosophy of the Hitman Mind, Chap. 5, Part 1, 

 Sec. 5. 



§ Sir W. Scott, Lay of the Last Minstrel 



