618 DREAMING. 



dreams, though not remembered by usd, is a mere assumption 

 and indeed very improbable ; and it is the offspring of another 

 assumption, that we have souls, it being settled that souls are 

 sleepless things. e Perfect sleep must be free from them ; 

 though slight dreaming stands on the same footing with cough- 

 ing, and cannot be considered sufficient to constitute disease. 

 Some always dream; some never. 



In Locke we find the following passage: -" I once knew a 

 man that was bred a scholar, and had no bad memory, who told me, 

 he had never dreamed in his life till he had that fever he was 

 then newly recovered of, which was about the five or six and 

 twentieth year of his age. I suppose the world affords more 

 such instances." f " For many years before his death, Dr. Reid 

 had no consciousness of ever having dreamed." s The rev. Mr. 

 Jesse, of Margaretta, in Essex, informs me that he knew a car- 

 penter who never dreamt till after a fever in his fortieth year ; 

 and, as he before never could be made to understand what 

 dreaming meant, so when he first dreamt he was as much sur- 

 prised as perhaps Adam was when he first felt himself going to 

 sleep. He was a man of a remarkably good, quiet, and plod- 

 ding disposition. 



We occasionally know a dream to be a dream and even act 

 against it: as when Dr. Reid, finding himself subject to frightful 

 dreams, determined to acquire the habit of remembering their 



d " Consult Kant, Critik der Urtheilskrqft, p. 298.; and Anthropolog., p. 80." 

 e Locke reasons powerfully on this point : " ' The soul, during sound sleep, 

 thinks,' say these men." " Methinks, every drowsy nod shakes this doctrine." 

 " Nature never makes excellent things for mean or no uses j and it is hardly 

 to be conceived that our infinitely wise Creator should make so admirable a 

 faculty as the power of thinking, that faculty which comes nearest the excel- 

 lency of his own incomprehensible being, to be so idle and uselessly employed, 

 at least a fourth part of its time here, as to think constantly, without remembering 

 any of those thoughts, without doing any good to itself or others, or being any 

 way useful to any other part of the creation. If we well examine it, we shall 

 not find, I suppose, the motion of dull and senseless matter, any where in the 

 universe, made so little use of, and so wholly thrown away." " They, who 

 make the soul a thinking being, at this rate, will not make it a much more noble 

 being, than those do, whom they condemn, for allowing it to be nothing but the 

 subtilest parts of matter*" Essay concerning Human Understanding, b. ii. 

 ch. 1. ss. 12, 13. 15. 



' 1. c. b. ii. ch. 1. s. 14. B Dr. Macnish, 1. c. p. 45. 



