46 



ON THE EFFECTS OP CERTAIN MENTAL AND 

 BODILY STATES UPON THE IMAGINATION.* 



BY LANGSTON PARKER, ESQ. 



XL— THE IMAGINATION OF DREAMERS. 



In my first lecture, I considered the Imagination in the general 

 phenomena of its actions in the waking state, and its modification, 

 in that state, by certain agents, of which we found the most power- 

 ful to be solitude, study, wine, and opium. The Imagination is, 

 likewise, most powerfully modified in the condition in which 

 I then considered it, by disease : but this was too exclusively 

 a medical subject to merit much attention in this series of dis- 

 courses, and, in addition to this, it will demand some portion of my 

 attention when speaking of the Imagination of the insane. This 

 lecture leads me to the history of the Imagination during sleep, as 

 it is displayed to us in the phenomena of dreaming, and the modifi- 

 cations of this faculty, in that state, by certain agents — such as dis- 

 ease, diet, moral causes, the passions, wine, and opium. There are 

 visions that arise without sleep; but, generally speaking, dream- 

 ing is confined to this state. " Waking dreams are merely the ef- 

 fects of unbridled Imagination, from which none of us are alto- 

 gether exempt ."t This faculty, when exercised under common cir- 

 cumstances, is kept in strict subordination to the judgment, which 

 guides and restrains us in its flights, and never, for a moment, per- 

 mits us to suppose that the fictions it calls forth are realities. But 

 when this sway of the reasoning power is shaken off^ — when the 

 spirit mounts upwards, unfettered and alone, and we forget that 

 the sights revealed to us are merely illusive visions — then, and then 

 only, are we assailed by waking dreams. 



" The train of ideas which fill the mind at this time, depend 

 much upon the age, situation, and character, of the individual. If 

 he pine ardently after wealth, his mind is, probably, filled with 

 visions of grandeur and opulence ; and the hallucination is so great, 

 that he supposes these things to be in his actual possession.";]: If he 

 be young, and burn with the fire of genius, all obstacles give way 

 before him ; he creates new systems, remodels old ones, gives fresh 

 colouring to truth : whilst Fame, with her olive crown, is seen, in 



• The following is the second of a series of Lectures delivered at the Bir- 

 mingham Philosophical Institution, by the author. 

 + Macnish, The Philosophy of Sleep, Glasgow, 1830. 

 X Macnish, op. eiU 



