1892.] on the Physiology of Dreams. 585 



believing and knowinGj were one and the same thing, which practically 

 they are in an immense number of matters, even in a modern com- 

 munity that boasts the possession of the Royal Institution itself ! 



Great men, as well as little, have put their interpretations on 

 dreams according to their cherished beliefs. Hannibal the mighty, 

 with his one eye, wished to steal — I am bound in honesty to use the 

 unvarnished term " wished to steal " — from one of the temples of Juno 

 a pillar of gold which he had drilled into and found to be the metal 

 unalloyed. Thereupon Juno appeared to Hannibal in a dream, and 

 like a virago — she had the credit of being of that stamp even to Jupiter 

 — threatened Hannibal that if he dared to take away the pillar of gold 

 from her temple she would have her reprisal ; she would take good 

 care to have his remaining eye removed from the temple of his brain. 

 Juno had the further credit, founded on belief, of always keeping her 

 promises ; so Hannibal, a wise and discreet man, did the correct act 

 when he woke out of his dream. He was a great general, a brave 

 general, and a filching general, loving sj)oil ; but his belief in Juno 

 was equal to knowledge, and he was afraid of her, notwithstanding the 

 weakness of her sex. Instead therefore of bearing away the pillar of 

 gold, he had the dust he had drilled out of it made into an ornament 

 — some say a ring, but I should rather say a c:ilf (buculam) — and 

 left it on the top of the pillar, where it will no doubt still be found 

 should the pillar be turned up by some enthusiastic antiquarian. 



I have, I confess, a strong dislike to say a word that shall break 

 through any divine enchantment. It seems such a letting down of 

 man from heaven to earth, such a transformation of him from the 

 spiritual to the mechanical, to teach that dreams after all may be 

 nothing more than the common vibrations of terrestrial media acting 

 upon a corporeal vibratorium. Yet so, it is to be feared, the fact 

 stands. There is a string or a wire in tension on some instrument of 

 music. If we were to strike that wire, it would give us a sound which 

 could be determined by our will into a living or rational sound, an 

 extension of ourselves, consciously extended. We might, if we had 

 the skill of a man like Paganini, make that string discourse in 

 beautiful language. We cease to strike it and cease to hear a sound. 

 But the vibration has not ceased. We bring our friend Professor 

 Hughes's microphone into use, and hear still, for a time, the lost 

 sound ; a dream on the part of the instrument. All musical instru- 

 ments dream after we cease to play on them. 



We may do something more with the tense string : we may pass 

 over it a current or breath of air. If the breath be sufiicient, the 

 instrument will speak out like a thing of life ; if it be not sufficient, the 

 instrument dreams ; and if we bring the microphone into use, we hear 

 the dream so long as the gentlest vibration is sustained. 



If in some part of this room we should make a string emit a sound 

 in harmony with the sound which another string near that could be 

 made to give out, we should set the second into sympathetic vibration, 

 and after we had ceased to hear the sympathetic note by our ordinary 



Vol. XIII. (No. 86.) 2 r 



