288 STUDIES IN LIFE AND SENSE. 



function can be attached ? And if of certain trivial events we are 

 forewarned, what is the explanation of the striking anomaly, that of 

 the grave disasters of life we usually receive no warning at all ? 



Dr. Maudsley says, " It has been justly remarked that if we were 

 actually to do in sleep all the strange things which we dream we do, 

 it would be necessary to put every man in restraint before he went to 

 bed ; for, as Cicero said, dreamers would do more strange things than 

 madmen. A dream put into action must indeed look very much like 

 insanity (e.g. the ordinary sleep-vigil), as insanity has at times the 

 look of a waking dream." 



Poets without number have invariably treated dreams as the best 

 type of the unrealities and idealities of life and nature. The physio- 

 logist, on the contrary, sees in the visions of the night no trifling 

 objects unworthy of serious study and reflection, but indications and 

 clues to the better understanding of the mysteries which beset our 

 waking lives. " The grave portents " of the night, in this view, cast 

 no 'shadow over the future, and exercise no sway over the destinies 

 of the modern mind. They serve, however, a nobler purpose, as aids, 

 through their revelations of the leisure-fancies of the brain, towards a 

 knowledge of the boundaries which separate the realm of body from 

 that of mind boundaries which, in truth, " divide our being." 



