ueveRy, and trance. 



brain, and afterwards continued in a more or less perfect series, accordihg-. 

 to the power of the imagination itself. The only difference I am able to 

 trace between this theory, as started by Aristotle, and as restarted by 

 Wolff, is in the greater regularity that the latter assigns to the phaenomeha 

 of dreaming, than the former does : M. Wolff believing them to be, in their 

 commencement, excited, by a sensation, and in their successions and series 

 of representations to be as much controlled by a peculiar System of laws, 

 as the motions of the heavenly bodies. Formey appears to carry this 

 point a little farther : his language is, if the dream be natural, it must ne- 

 ciessarily originate agreeably to the law of sensation, -and be cohtihued by 

 the law of imagination ; and hence he concludes those dreams to be super- 

 natural, which either do not begin by sensation or are not continued by 

 the law of imagination. 



It may be sufficient to remark upon tliis theory, first, that the phantasms 

 of Aristotle have as little claim to entity as the species of Epicurus ; next, 

 that the assumption of a code of laws, or rather of two distinct codes of 

 laws to reg'ulate the fleeting train of our ideas in dreaming, is in itself alto- 

 gether visionary and gratuitous ; and that if the term chance or fortuitous- 

 ness^ a very useful term and full of meaning in all languages, can with pro- 

 priety be applied to any thing, there is no subject to which it can be better 

 applied than to that of dreaming ; in which the will, the only legislator and 

 controller 6f our ideas, has withdrawn its authority, and left the brain to a 

 temporary lawlessness and misrule. And lastly, that the distinction which 

 is thus attempted to be drawn between natural and supernatural dreams, 

 is hot only altogether fanciful, but could never be of any possible avail, 

 even if well founded ; for, in ordfer to distinguish between the two, it would 

 be tlftcessary to be intimately acquainted with those laws of sensation and 

 imagination which are here stated to regulate our natural dreams, and the 

 suspension of which produce dreams of a superior character. 



We are touching upon a delicate, and perhaps a dangerous inquiry ; but 

 as it has been boldly handled in modern times, and made the foundation of 

 a more daring speculation upon the subject, it must not be flinched from in 

 our present discussion. That total absence of all natural law, which M. 

 Fbrmey 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, conceivie to take place in every in- 

 stance, 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 kind of agents, good and 

 evil spirits, employed in their production ; and consequently account for 

 the one or the other sort of dreams, ia proportion as the one or other kind 

 of agents obtains a predominancy. 



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

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

 submitted to the senses. But, beyond this, its very foundation-stone Con- 

 sists 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 its existence, man is no longer a 

 free agent ; his whole train of thoughts and ideas being not loose and dis- 



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

 eyittcedi from the Princijales of Reason and Philosophy, 4to. 17S0. 



