14 The Eev. James Wills on Dreams. 



perceptibly on the delicate and subtle machinery subject to, and immediately 

 acting on, the transcendental and mysterious element of man's immortal part. 

 To exclude the possible agency of undiscovered causes in this wholly inscru- 

 table essence would be to carry theorizing to a rash extent. In such an inquiry 

 we must be content to steer with caution round the shores of impenetrable 

 regions, and to obtain partial gUmpses of heights little distinguishable from the 

 clouds and thick darkness which surrotmd them. 



I cannot leave this part of the subject without observing the fact, that many, 

 perhaps most persons, are occasionally liable to sudden, and apparently sponta- 

 neous, impulses and impressions, not to be traced to their origin. A sentiment 

 may cast its light or shade, without any recollected antecedent. A slight de- 

 rangement of some corporeal function will react on the mind, and awaken some 

 morbid mood, of which the cause is too feebly operative to be felt. A particular 

 idea, or phrase, or tune, unlocked for, unsuggested by any known process, will 

 start from the mind's vacuity, and be for a day reiterated, and then wholly for- 

 gotten as any dream. 



All such incidental intrusions are, without metaphor, actual dreams, modi- 

 fied by the accidents of the waking state of the dreamer. The actual occupation 

 of the external sense, and the control of external disturbances, prevent the fur- 

 ther development of the tiny ideal ripple, and it is lost in the swell and current 

 of waking thought and action. Upon the whole, the reasonable inference 

 appears to be, that tlae fine intermediate material organism, through the agency 

 of which mind and body must reciprocally affect each other, must be suscep- 

 tible of indefinitely small degrees of whatever may be its appropriate action. 

 And as, in many more strongly marked cases, no doubt exists as to the nature 

 and existence of such agencies, so we can have little that they must be indicated 

 by those here described.* 



The mechanism of the intellect must be capable of such excitement as may 

 be transmitted by any of the senses. And the next consideration is in what 



* I am the more particular in urging the above considerations, because Mr. Stewart, and 

 inquirers of his school, who are to be regarded as adversaries, have assumed the necessity of some 

 traceable antecedent in all cases. Such is, indeed, the foundation of Mr. Stewart's theory of Mind, 

 a? the conclusion directly opposed to it, is the foundation of that comprised in this and the pre- 

 ceding essays, and, I trust, conclusively argued in the first 



