DREAMS. 



DREAMS. 



670 



and believe that we have the sensation of tasting, but yet the hunger 

 or thirst is not allayed. Immediately some other viand or beverage 

 presents itself to us ; again are we debarred from the enjoyment, or 

 again do we tasto and profit not ; and thus does the dream proceed 

 until we awake. 



The incongruity of dreams, or (in other words) the grouping of 

 objects in our dreams which could not exist together in reality, results 

 immediately from this mistaking of ideas for sensations. There is no 

 more incongruity in the collocation of our ideas themselves during 

 sleep than in that of our ideas in the waking state. In both states 

 they follow one another according to the same law. But when we 

 have ideas of objects during sleep, we believe that the objects are 

 themselves present ; and though the collocation of the ideas is natural, 

 and such as would excite no surprise in the waking state, the colloca- 

 tion of the objects is strange, and would then also excite surprise. 

 Dreams, though only trains of ideas, are believed at the tune (as has 

 been explained) to be successions of objects, and when afterwards 

 remembered as such, they seem strange and incongruous. Dryden's 

 poetical description and instance may here relieve the weariness of our 

 own prose : 



" Dreams are the interludes which fancy makes : 

 AVhen monarch reason sleeps, this mimic wakes, 

 Compounds a medley of disjointed things, 

 A court of cobblers or a mob of kings." 



2. There being no sensations in sleep, as in the waking state, to 

 break off the trains of our ideas, the associations which have been at 

 any previous time or times formed between these ideas have more 

 uninterrupted play when we are asleep than when we are awake. 

 When we are awake, one idea calls up another, this perhaps a third, 

 and thus a train of ideas is commenced, when of a sudden we see some 

 object ; the sensation then takes possession of the mind, and (in the 

 common phrase) the attention is withdrawn from the train of ideas. 

 When we are asleep this cannot happen ; and an association between 

 any two ideas has to give way only to a stronger association between 

 one of them and a third. 



The greater coherency, than if they were made by us when awake, 

 of speeches or essays which we believe in our dreams that we speak or 

 write, has been already noticed. 



Thus it is that we often go through a repetition in our dreams with 

 considerably greater ease than we can do it when awake. For the 

 same reason, again, ideas occur to us in our dreams of which we have 

 nut for a very long time been conscious when awake, and which we 

 have been perhaps unable, when anxious to do so, to call tip ; and 

 trains of ideas are gone through, which we have, perhaps, wished to 

 complete when awake, but to no purpose, inasmuch as the associations 

 between the several pairs of ideas in the trams are too faint to bear 

 up against the continual interruptions of sensations. These ideas and 

 trains of ideas occurring in dreams, which we are unable to call up 

 when we are awake, are said to have been forgotten. 



We may observe, that the same revival of long-forgotten ideas and 

 trains of ideas takes place often during delirium, the similarity between 

 our trains in which state and our dreams we have already alluded to. 

 A very singular instance of such revival during delirium is related by 

 Mr. Coleridge, in his ' Biographia Literaria ' (vol. i. chap. vi). 



To this head i to be referred a remark generally made concerning 

 dreams, that the mind exercises no control over the ideas which com- 

 pose them, or (as it is otherwise expressed) that the mind does not 

 exert its will upon them, as it does upon ideas composing trams in the 

 waking state. The mind is not diverted from the trains of ideas which 

 pass before it by the occurrence of sensations ; thus it need not desire, 

 as it continually does in the waking state, to have the ideas composing 

 the trains rather than the sensations ; and thus the ideas are not pre- 

 sented to it, as they continually are in the waking state, in that par- 

 ticular combination which is called detire of the ideas, or willing of the 

 ideat. This, we believe, is the full extent to which the remark con- 

 cerning the absence of will (as it is called) over ideas in dreams is true ; 

 though, from the manner in which it is expressed, it seems, and indeed 

 it is generally intended, to imply much more. 



When we are awake, we are said to will bodily actions, and to will 

 mental actions or ideas. Now, when we are asleep, we will bodily 

 actions likewise ; but from the manner in which the body is affected 

 during sleep, the actions do not follow the state of mind called mil, as 

 they do when we are awake. We will to run from an enemy who, we 

 believe, is pursuing us, but we cannot run ; the muscles are so affected 

 in sleep that their action does not follow the state of mind called trill, 

 u it does when we are awake. Every one who has dreamed must have 

 experienced such a dream as this, and must remember the fear which 

 follows it. But the circumstance that the action does not follow by no 

 means affects the existence of the state of mind called mil during 

 dreams ; and in sleep therefore, as in the waking state, we will bodily 

 actions. Again, as regards mental actions or ideas, we exsrt our will 

 over these, in the waking state, either by attending to them, or by 

 endeavouring to recollect them, and in no other way ; and every one 

 who has dreamed must be conscious of attention to trains of ideas 

 during his dreams, and of endeavours" to recollect ideas. Thus neither 

 as regards mental actions is there any absence during dreams of the 

 state of mind called will 



The only difference in respect of this state of mind between dreams 

 and waking trains is, as we have said, that in the former there is not so 

 much need of attention to the ideas as in the latter ; inasmuch as 

 dreams are not interrupted by sensations, as are trains of ideas in the 

 waking state. 



3. Our measure of tune during dreams appears not to coincide with 

 that in the waking state. Having fallen asleep for a few moments we 

 believe that we go through, before we awake, a series of events which 

 would occupy, did they really happen, days or months, or even years 

 And the same takes place often, when a sensation occurs to awake us 

 in the brief interval between the having of the sensation and the 

 waking. Instances are not unfrequent of such dreams. 



This discrepancy between our notions of time when we are asleep 

 and when we are awake may be very easily explained. The idea of 

 time is only an idea of so many successions of events, or of ideas 

 whether called up by these events or otherwise. On lookin" back 

 through any period of our mental history, if we remember many 

 feelings that have succeeded the one to the other, we have the idea of 

 a long time ; if few, of a short one. Now ideas are remembered in 

 proportion as they are interesting or vivid. In the waking state and 

 in sleep the same ideas would pass before the mind during the same 

 time ; but in the waking state they would be viewed as ideas only 

 and the greater number would not be remembered. But in sleep they 

 are believed to be sensations, the events thought of are believed 

 actually to take place, and the ideas thus become interesting to 

 such a degree that they cannot be forgotten. Looking back through 

 these ideas, and remembering every one of them, we judge the time 

 during which they have passed before the mind to have been a long 

 time. 



4. It remains to speak of the absence of surprise in dreams. It is 

 not indeed true that the feeling of surprise is altogether absent from 

 dreams, as is generally asserted ; while in those eases in which it is 

 absent, and in which its absence is thought worthy of remark, the 

 explanation is simple. In our dreams we believe that we see persons 

 who are either dead or in a distant country, and we are not surprised 

 we believe that we witness events which happened a very long time 

 ago, and we are not surprised. Now we have the ideas of the persons 

 and events, and we have not at the same time the ideas of the death 

 or the distant country or the distant time at which the event took 

 place ; having the ideas of the persons and events, we believe these 

 ideas, as has been already explained, to be sensations ; and as we have 

 not, together with the apparent sensations, the ideas of the death, dis- 

 tant country, &c., we have no ideas with which the apparent sensations 

 are incongruous ; and there being no incongruity, there is nothing to 

 surprise us. We think of the persons or events, as we might think 

 of them when awake, without certain additional ideas ; and not 

 having these additional ideas, we are not surprised at seeing, or 

 believing that we see, the persons or events, any more than we should 

 be surprised at seeing (could we by possibility do so) the same 

 persons or events when we were awake, if we knew not that tho 

 person had died or was in another country, or that the event was one 

 of history. 



This explanation is confirmed by those instances in which we do 

 feel surprise. The idea of a person or event believed to be seen may 

 call up any of the additional ideas that have before been absent. We 

 believe that we see a person, and we then think of his death ; we are 

 immediately surprised ; and we dream that we are dreaming. Every 

 one who has dreamed must have experienced such a dream as this. 



II. This second part of the article was to contain so much of the 

 little that is known conceniing the state of the body in sleep as i 

 relevant to the subject of dreams. 



The organs of the five external senses are so affected by sleep, that 

 the sensations which respectively pertain to them are either not felt at 

 all, or are felt very much less often, and very much less, than when 

 we are awake, and even when they are felt they generally awake us. 

 But of this we have already spoken. 



We have also spoken of the effects of sensations of bodily pain and 

 of internal sensations on dreams. The manner in which sickness 

 through the medium of internal sensations, intensifies dreams, is 

 familiar to every one. 



It is a question whether sleep operates on the mind as well as on 

 the body ; whether, while it suspends the action of the body, it also 

 either through the body or otherwise, suspends the action of the mind! 

 This is a question on which we cannot speak positively, and on which 

 our opinion can be determined only by the greater probability of th 

 one side or of the other 



Some writers assert that we do not always dream when we are asleep. 

 They say that the proper effect of sleep is to suspend the action of the 

 mind as well as of the body, and that, to the extent to which we dream, 

 sleep is impaired. They speak of two kinds of sleep, the one in which 

 we do not dream, and which they call perfect sleep ; the other, in which 

 we dream, and which they call ii,i/,irji,'i. One of these writers is Mr. 

 Locke, who has expressed a^very decided opinion that during sleep we 

 do not always think ; his arguments in favour of the opimou being, 

 that all of us are conscious of having no dreams during a considerable 

 portion of the time that we sleep, that some persons even do not 

 dream at all, and that a supposition that the dreams are forgotten 

 almost the very moment after they have taken place is absurd. 



