AND BODILY STATES UPON THE IMAGINATION. 49 



medium of the sense of vision. Fancy is engendered in the eye ; 

 " by gazing fed." So sings the poet — so reasons the psycologist. 

 The three great powers of mind are, the Memory, the Imagination, 

 and the Judgment. They exist in nature ; no reasoning is neces- 

 sary to prove their existence or their phenomena. We remember 

 what we have seen — we judge of its beauty or deformity — or we 

 invest the fading recollection with attributes which it did not origi- 

 nally or naturally possess. In the waking state, these three facul- 

 ties are all active, and the rational man is the result of the just ba- 

 lance of power which is exercised by each. A man would be mise- 

 rable were he all Memory, mad were he all Imagination, and a bore 

 were he all Judgment. 



" In proportion as these several faculties sleep, or are kept 

 awake, during the continuance of a dream, in that proportion will 

 the dream be reasonable or frantic, remembered or forgotten. 



" If there is any faculty in mental man that never sleeps, it is 

 that volatile thing the Imagination. The sedate and sober consti- 

 tution of the Judgment, easily disposes it to rest ; and as to the 

 Memory, it records in silence, and is active only when it is called 

 upon."* If in dreaming, the mental faculties are all awake, and the 

 mind, as a whole, in action, the dream is so probable, so like art 

 event of the waking state, that it excites no wonder, calls for no 

 comment, and is soon forgotten ; but if either the Memory or the 

 Imauination be at work, the dream is sure to make a powerful im- 

 pression, since the vividness with which the mental faculties sepa- 

 rately act is so much stronger during sleep than when awake. 



Numerous theories have been devised to account for the pheno- 

 mena of dreams. Democritus supposed that the body threw oiF 

 from its surface an impalpable and invisible resemblance of itself, 

 and that these shadows assaulted, or intruded themselves upon, the 

 mind during sleep, thus producing dreams. This species of exhala- 

 tion was supposed not to be confined to man, but to be extended to 

 the whole animal and vegetable kingdoms, and the whole realm of 

 nature. Lucretius, and the philosophers of his time, likewise sup- 

 ported this theory, which was the prevailing dogma of the schools, 

 with reference to the causes af dreams. This opinion must have 

 been very ancient, since we find it the prevailing one in the time of 

 Homer. When this poet, in the second book of the Iliad> describes 

 Jupiter as infl^uencing the mind of Agamemnon, to induce him to 



* Clio Hickman, Essay on Dreams, London, Universal Magazine^ May, 

 1810. A paper thoroughly original, and of great merit* 



VOL. IV. NO. XV. D 



