246 



ON SLEEP, DREAMING, 



supposes occasionally- to take place in the act of dreaming-, and to distinguish 

 the supernatural from the natural vision, Mr. Andrew Baxter,* and, since his 

 time. Bishop Newton, conceive to take place in every instance of dreaming-; 

 and hence, that dreaming is at all times, and on all occasions, a supernatural 

 operation. These excellent men divide dreams into two kinds, good and 

 evil ; and conceive two kinds of agents, good and evil spirits, employed in 

 their production ; and, consequently, account for the one or the other sort of 

 dreams, in proportion as the one or other kind of agents obtains a predo- 

 minancy. 



Now it must be obvious that this conjecture is just as destitute of all tangible 

 basis as either of the preceding; that it can make no appeal to facts sub- 

 mitted to the senses. But, beyond this, its very foundation-stone consists of 

 a principle that no man can readily grant who maturely weighs its full import ; 

 namely, that dreaming is altogether an unnatural operation ; that nearly one- 

 half of our lives is spent in a direct intercourse with invisible beings ; and 

 that during this moiety of his existence man is no longer a free agent ; his 

 whole train of thoughts and ideas being not loose and dismantled, but run 

 away with by foreign compulsion, and the work of a demoniacal possession. 



The difficulties into which such an explanation throws its adherents are 

 incalculable. Let us confine ourselves to one more example. There can be 

 no doubt that other animals have their dreams as well as man, and that they 

 have them as vigorous and as lively. Every one has beheld his favourite 

 dog, while asleep by the fireside in the winter season, violently stretching 

 out his limbs, howling aloud, and at times starting abruptly, beneath the train 

 of images of which his dream is composed. In what manner will such phi- 

 losophers account for these various phenomena"? Is dreaming a natural 

 operation 1 or are good and evil spirits the natural attendants upon dogs and 

 cats, as well as upon m-ankind] The one or the other of these conclusions 

 must follow ; and there can be no difficulty in determining which of them will 

 possess the general suffrage. 



That dreams, like every other occurrence in nature, may occasionally 

 become the medium of some providential suggestion, or supernatural 

 communication, I am by no means disposed to deny. That they have 

 been so employed in former times is unquestionable ; and that they have 

 been so employed occasionally among all nations in former times is highly 

 probable ; and the peculiar liveliness with which the trains of our dreaming 

 ideas are usually excited, and from a cause which I shall presently endeavour 

 to explain, seems to point out such a mode of communication as peculiarly 

 eligible. But I am at present attending to the natural phenomena alone, and 

 can by no means enter into a consideration of such foreign interference, 

 which, as it certainly has been, may still therefore be, for all we can prove to 

 the contrary, occasionally introduced into them. 



In what may be called our own times, there are many valuable writers 

 who have turned their attention to this curious subject, and who concur in 

 the two following important positions : first, that the faculty, or at least the 

 action, of the will is suspended during the influence of sleep ; and, secondly, 

 that in consequence of this suspension or discontinuance, the trains of ideas 

 which persevere in rushing over the mind, are produced and catenated by that 

 general habit of association which catenates them while we are awake. The 

 power of the will, it is contended, is not necessary to the existence of 

 ideas, which, therefore, may continue while such power is in a state of abey- 

 ance ; but which, if they continue at all, must take the general order and suc- 

 cession imprinted upon them by the law of association, excepting in cases in 

 which such law is broken in upon a variety of incidental circumstances, as 

 uneasiness arising from a surcharged stomach, or other bodily sensations. 



Such are the two fundamental principles upon which the theories of Hart- 

 hy, Darwin, and Dugald Stewart, are respectively built ; and which, in 

 various ways, and with almost equal ingenuity, they seem very satisfactorily to 



*An Inquiry into the Nature of the Human Soul, wherein the Immortality of the Soul is evinced from 

 ihs Principles of Reason and Philosophy, 4to, J730, 



