Chapter V: Dreams (1)

Behold, this dreamer cometh!
GENESIS, XXXVII, 19.

The harmonious activity of all parts of the nervous system is indispensable to the highest exercise of the conscious mind. Healthy intellectual life is the perfectly balanced outcome of the complex polygon of forces which has its seat within the brain. In the waking condition this “moving equilibrium,” as it has been happily termed,[57] is sustained by the convergent impulses which are continually entering the brain through the pathways afforded by the several senses. Our waking hours are occupied with the ideas and with the associated trains of thought which are thus projected upon the field of consciousness. As a consequence of the harmonious function of the organs of sense, each one supplementing and correcting the information furnished by the others, a continuous process of perception and logical thought is maintained. But, along with the procession of ideas which are clearly conceived by the mind, the field of consciousness is also invaded by a cloud of half formed perceptions, which are too imperfect and fleeting to occupy the attention. As in the act of vision, though the periphery of the visual field is crowded with a whole world of objects dimly perceived without challenging particular attention, only the center of that field furnishing clear images to the brain, so the eye of the mind comprehends only a few of the impressions which enter the sphere of consciousness. The swarm of unnoticed perceptions, however, is none the less the result of abiding sensory impressions graven in the substance of the brain, from which, through the action of memory, they may at any favorable moment reënter consciousness. Sleep does not wholly arrest this process. A certain amount of projection into the field of consciousness continues, even during profound repose; and the ideas thus aroused form the material of our dreams.

It has already been remarked that the invasion of sleep is not an instantaneous process. One by one the senses fall asleep, and long before the final cessation of their activity, sleepiness hinders their function. Hence a progressive narrowing of the range of external perception; hence a reduction of the vividness of impressions derived from the outside world; hence, also, a simplification of the actions and reactions which constitute the “polygon of forces” active within the brain. But the suppression of certain lines in this polygon does not suppress life, nor does it necessarily destroy consciousness. It only occasions a redistribution of force, and a proportionate narrowing of the stream of related ideas. Since this process of suppression, just mentioned, is not an absolute quantity, but a variable factor, the polygon of physical forces within the brain and the corresponding succession of ideas in consciousness must necessarily be in a state of continual change. Consequently, our dreams must be as variable as the clouds that drift upon the currents of the air. As, on a hot day in summer, when the equatorial draught has ceased to guide the wind, we may observe all manner of local tides among the masses of vapor which arise from the earth, so, in sleep, when the guiding influence of the senses is withdrawn, the ideas that still arise are chiefly dependent for their origin and association upon the automatic and endogenous activities of the brain. Undisturbed by impulses from the external world, the brain seems then to become more sensitive to impressions that have their origin within the body. An overloaded stomach, an enfeebled heart, a turgid sexual apparatus, or an irritable nervous ganglion, may become the source of irregular and uncompensated impulses which, without disturbing the organs of special sense, may invade the cerebral cortex, and may there set in motion a whole battery of mechanisms whose influence upon consciousness would remain quite unnoticed were the external senses in full operation.

Still another cause for the production of dreams is to be found in the more or less complete suspension of the power of volition which accompanies sleep. Every act of attention is the result of exercise of the will. But the perfect exercise of the will is dependent upon the perfect development and wakefulness of the brain. So soon as sleep begins to invade the brain, the will begins to lose its normal incitement to action, and finally it becomes almost wholly disconnected from the muscular organs. In this state the sleeper may desire to perform some act--he may wish to move his limbs or to cry out aloud, but he can move neither hand nor foot, he cannot utter a sound. In other instances a partial connection between the will and the locomotive organs persists, and various orderly movements can still be produced. In like manner the control of the will over the succession and association of ideas may be either wholly, or only partially, lost in sleep. The deeper the sleep the more complete the loss of such control; hence the greater incoherence as well as feebleness of impression which is characteristic of dreams when sleep is profound. The vivid and panoramic succession of visual conceptions which constitutes a “vision,” occurs during light and partial sleep, when the will is still capable of in some measure guiding the procession of ideas.

For a similar reason the higher faculty of judgment, and especially the power of arriving at moral conclusions, is in great measure suspended during sleep. Like the power of volition, the activity of the moral sense is dependent upon a certain functional perfection in the brain. When the capacity of the brain is depressed by drugs or by disease, or by sleep, the moral sensibilities are the first to disappear. Hence the non-moral character of the impressions usually experienced during the act of dreaming. We feel neither surprise nor regret at the incidents of ordinary dreams. It is only when the border line of wakefulness is reached that the dreamer feels ashamed of walking naked in his dream, or feels compunction for an act of crime, or experiences emotions of joy or sorrow in connection with the incidents of his vision.

A dream may, therefore, be defined as the occupation of the field of consciousness during sleep by a succession of ideas more or less completely withdrawn from the guidance of the senses and from the control of the will. A great variety of dreams may thus be admitted, ranging all the way from those products of mere absence of mind which constitute _revery_, down to the faintest and feeblest stirrings of consciousness which have been always observed during the act of waking from the profoundest sleep.

Considerable light may be thrown upon the production of dreams if we consider attentively the manner in which illusions and hallucinations are excited by the use of drugs or by disease during the waking state. When engaged in experimenting upon myself with different medicines, I once took a dose of hasheesh sufficient to produce the peculiar effects of the drug. Sitting quietly in my chair, the first unusual sensation was an agreeable feeling of coolness diffusing itself over the surface of the body, as if some one were gently fanning me on a hot day. A feeling of causeless amusement began to occupy my mind. I seemed to be smiling all over without any apparent reason for hilarity. Then the walls of the room in which I sat seemed to recede to a vast distance. My attention became riveted upon a little picture which hung against the wall before me. It was a sunset scene, painted upon a canvas scarcely larger than my hand. As the wall upon which it was placed seemed to recede, the canvas expanded until I beheld a glorious landscape bounded by a range of snow-capped mountains flushed with purple light from the setting sun. As I sat, admiring this splendid scene, the gilded frame of the painting became alive with winged fairies and cherubs, peeping out from behind the moulding, and bending over its margin to look into the picture. Then the ceiling of the room and the sky of the picture seemed to blend in one common expanse of ethereal blue; the sunlight faded from the mountain peaks; stars began to appear in the firmament; the little imps and fairies disappeared; and, presently, everything resumed its natural appearance.

In this experience the departure from healthy cerebral function consisted in an exaltation of certain forms of sensibility while others were depressed. The succession of visual images was initiated by the visible objects around me, but it was enriched by the association of ideas furnished through the stimulation of memory. The sunset glow, the snow-capped mountains, the starry sky, were familiar objects, suggested from memory by the items grouped in the picture. In like manner, the cherubs who climbed upon its gilded frame were merely the glorified products of memory, probably suggested by the fact that it was a _picture_ upon which my attention was fixed--one picture reminding me of others which I had seen. The loss of proportion in the view--the exaggeration and distortion of all the relations of time and space, which made the unreal seem real, and conferred grandeur upon commonplace objects, was undoubtedly occasioned by a modification in the molecular structure of the organs of special sense and of perception under the influence of hasheesh. The change thus effected was of a character to diminish the force of sensory impressions derived through the aid of the muscles and nerves of the eye and the ear and the skin, while at the same time exaggerating the processes of memory and association in connection with impressions originating within the brain. In this way was produced a sort of confusion between the external world and the ideal world within, rendering it difficult to distinguish the one from the other. Hence the impossibility of estimating aright the relation of time and space to the visual impressions upon which attention was fixed. The result was a waking dream which differed from ordinary revery chiefly in the intensity of the impressions that occupied the mind.

A somewhat similar process is sometimes experienced as a consequence of cerebral disorder unconnected with the effects of drugs. During the invasion of measles, having taken no medicine but sage tea, I remember, as night approached, a strange succession of illusions. My head seemed to expand to the size of a bushel basket; then it would slowly contract again. My body seemed to grow out of shape into the most distorted forms of rickets. Audible sounds seemed to come from the most remote distances. Impending shadows of a great darkness hovered over the bed. Waves of heat, and tingling darts of numbness traversed my limbs. These singular and rather uncomfortable sensations continued until relieved by an ordinary Dover’s powder.

In this experience the confusion of ideas, though less agreeable, was essentially similar to that occasioned by the action of the hasheesh. In both cases there was the same diminution of the intensity of external sensation accompanied by an exaggeration of internal impressions. The brain and the nerves were in a condition of irritable weakness, caused by disease, which interfered with the normal generation and association of ideas. Having thus partially escaped from the control of the senses and the will, the mutilated succession of ideas which reached the field of consciousness could only be perceived as a series of illusions. Here, again, was a waking dream, of origin and course analogous to the illusions and hallucinations which accompany every form of delirium.

It is not alone under the influence of disease or of drugs that the automatic action of the brain furnishes ideas for the inspection of the mind. Riding, one day, in a street-car, and reading a philosophical work, I came upon a paragraph devoted to a discussion of the doctrine of the association of ideas. Immediately, out of memory, flashed a momentary vision of the quarter deck of the old frigate, United States, upon which appeared the figure of a very small midshipman, talking to a gigantic personage, the captain of the ship. This was an incident which I had actually witnessed forty years before. I was, at first, somewhat puzzled in the attempt to account for the occurrence of a vision so apparently incongruous with the subject matter of the book; but a little reflection convinced me that the exciting cause of this seemingly involuntary act of memory was really the idea of association suggested by the book. This had unconsciously aroused the apparatus of association in the brain, and the particular scene thus brought before the mind had been further suggested by the circumstance that the last object, external to the printed page, upon which I had fixed my attention, was a large ship, lying in the river, near the bridge, just crossed by the car in which I rode.

Numerous other examples of a similar character might be related to illustrate the fact that the brain is a reservoir of sensory impressions, some of which, at the moment of their original incidence, have aroused the mind to a greater or less degree of conscious attention, and have then all lapsed into a latent or potential condition. But, though latent, they are none the less persistent, and only await the suppression of other inhibitory forces to become once more capable of arousing attention. Such inhibitory impulses are continually furnished by the action of the sensory organs on the one hand, and by the energy of the mind upon the other. So soon, therefore, as the organs of sense and of voluntary impulse are sealed with sleep, if the remaining portions of the brain are still operative, and are left to their own unrestrained activity, a more or less disorderly series of ideas occupies the mind. This constitutes a dream. The difference, therefore, between waking thought and a dream is analogous to the difference between a page upon which the words have been arranged in a rational order, and another page upon which some of the same words have been set down at random. Inasmuch as the majority of our sensations are derived through the organs of sight, and since the larger portion of the sensory region of the cortex of the brain is concerned in the act of vision, it is no more than might be expected that the ideas suggested in sleep should generally proceed from the visual apparatus of the brain. The superior power of visual impressions to attract attention may also serve to explain the fact that the majority of dreams are composed of images that were originally perceived in the act of vision. Hence our dreams, for the most part, constitute a series of pictures undisturbed by sound, or by other forms of sensation. But this is not always so. It is highly probable that when the organs of external sense are allowed to sleep without disturbance, our dreams consist of visual impressions alone. But, if any unusual sound, or smell, or other sensation is experienced during sleep, it may penetrate the field of consciousness, and may become the starting point of a dream quite filled with sounds. Thus a young lady, who had passed the evening at a musical concert, was aroused, soon after retiring, by the striking of a clock which had been recently placed in her chamber. At the moment of waking, she was dreaming of an orchestral performance of Wagner’s music. Doubtless the dream was suggested by the unaccustomed sound of the clock.

The possibility of thus suggesting, and in some degree guiding, the form and course of a dream, has been often demonstrated.[58] One of my early schoolmates, a boy of remarkably susceptible nervous temperament, furnished an excellent example of this species of direction. Tickling his nose with a straw made him dream that a dragon-fly was assaulting his face. On another occasion, a few drops of vinegar placed upon his tongue caused him to dream of eating oranges. Again, one of his companions roguishly breathing in his ear the statement that the schoolmaster was after him with a long rattan, he bounded out of bed, and could scarcely be restrained from bursting out of doors in his evident alarm. I was myself awakened, one night, by the ringing, as it seemed, of my doorbell; but, hastening at once to the door, no one was there. As I was expecting a call from a certain patient, I concluded that the bell had been rung by an impatient messenger who could not wait. Falling again asleep, I was a second time startled by a similar ring. Looking out of the window above the door, it was evident that no one was there. I finally concluded that the sound must have been perceived in a dream, and I recalled the fact that each time, as I woke, the sound of a carriage, passing the house, had attracted my attention. Undoubtedly, the state of expectancy in which I was sleeping had operated as the predisposing cause of dreaming, and the noise of wheels upon the pavement had served as the exciting cause of a dream in which the sound-vibrations communicated to the brain had produced by an association of ideas the particular perception which, though asleep, I was waiting to receive.

In certain cases the impression produced by a dream is so vivid that a considerable time after waking must elapse before it can be relegated to its true position in the world of hallucinations. Dreaming, once, that my wife called to me from another room, I instantly awoke; and only the fact that she was with me could satisfy me that it was all a dream. Taine[59] relates that “M. Baillarger dreamed one night that a certain person had been appointed editor of a newspaper; in the morning he believed it to be true, and mentioned it to several persons who were interested to hear it;--the effect of the dream persisted all the forenoon, as strongly as that of a real sensation; at last, about three o’clock, as he was stepping into his carriage, the illusion passed off; he comprehended that he had been dreaming.”

The following incident from the experience of Prof. Jessen, physician to the insane asylum in Homheim, near Kiel,[60] still further illustrates this form of hallucination:

“On a wintry morning,” writes the professor, “between five and six o’clock, I was aroused, as I thought, by the head nurse, who reported to me that some people had come for one of the male patients, and who at the same time asked me whether I had any particular orders to give. I replied that the patient might depart, and after he had left the room I turned around to go to sleep again. All at once it struck me that I had previously not heard anything regarding the intended departure of this patient, but that only the prospective departure of a woman of the same name had been reported to me. This compelled me to inquire more particularly after the circumstances, and accordingly I lighted a candle, rose, dressed myself, and went to the room of the head nurse. To my surprise I found him only half dressed, and, in reply to my inquiry after the people who had called for the patient, he said, with an expression of astonishment, that he did not know anything of it, as he had but just left his bed, and no one had called him. This answer did not arouse my consciousness, but I rejoined that then the steward must have been in my room, and that I should accordingly go to see and ask him regarding the matter. When descending a few steps in the middle of the corridor which led to the room of the steward, I suddenly became conscious of having dreamed only what until that moment I had believed to be an experience whose reality I had not doubted in the least.”

In some instances the fact of having dreamed is never recognized, and the dreamer carries through life the delusion that his vision was an actual occurrence. Among the Indians of Guiana, and the same thing is true of many other savages, dreams are looked upon as actual events in which the dreamer is visited by spirits or even by other living men. A recent English traveler[61] says: “It becomes important, therefore, fully to recognize the complete belief of the Indian in the reality of his dream-life, and in the unbroken continuity of this with his working life. It is easy to show this belief by many incidents which came under my notice. For instance, one morning, when it was important to me to get away from a camp on the Essequibo River, at which I had been detained for some days by the illness of some of my Indian companions, I found that one of the invalids, a young Macusi, though better in health, was so enraged against me that he refused to stir, for he declared that, with great want of consideration for his weak health, I had taken him out during the night and had made him haul the canoe up a series of difficult cataracts. Nothing could persuade him that this was but a dream, and it was some time before he was so far pacified as to throw himself sulkily into the bottom of the canoe. At that time we were all suffering from a great scarcity of food, and hunger having its usual effect in producing vivid dreams, similar effects frequently occurred. More than once the men declared in the morning that some absent men, whom they named, had come during the night and had beaten or otherwise maltreated them; and they insisted upon much rubbing of the bruised parts of their bodies.”

It is highly probable that from these facts, and from others of a similar character, may be derived the true explanation of many of the supposed examples of intercourse with divine or angelic persons which occupy so important a place in early mythology. An incident in the childhood of the prophet Samuel can scarcely admit of any other interpretation. In other cases, notwithstanding the intensity of the dream, its true character is recognized by the dreamer during the very act of vision. Thus, I once dreamed that I saw a young girl standing before me. So vivid was the perception, that the actual presence of such a person could not have produced a more perfect impression upon the waking brain. Yet, at the same instant, I comprehended the fact that it was merely a dream, and remarked the difference between the intensity of the visual image in this and in other dreams. Such speedy recognition of the hallucination does not always accompany the act of waking out of a dream. In some cases, as we shall have occasion to see, the images which have figured in a dream are still perceived for a certain period of time after awaking.

The majority of dreams are composed of visual images. The dreamer looks upon a picture which changes silently before his eyes, without appealing to any other sense than that of sight. But in certain cases any other sense may become excited, producing illusions or hallucinations as perfect as the images of healthy vision. They may be suggested by external impressions, as in my dream of a ring at the door bell, which proved to be an auditory illusion excited by the sound of passing carriage wheels; or they may, at least apparently, find their starting point in accidental states of the bodily organization. If attention be paid to this matter, it will be observed that all unusual modes of dreaming, and all extraordinary vividness of dream-impressions can be connected with some departure from the physiological conditions of quiet sleep. Either disease, or exhaustion, or emotional disturbance, or narcotic intoxication of the brain may be noted as the immediate cause of such derangement of the cerebral functions. After drinking several cups of coffee before retiring, I dreamed of a large yellow flower which exhaled a very fragrant odor. During the same night I also dreamed of drinking wine, which agreeably excited the senses of taste and of smell. Upon another occasion, having been disturbed by the entrance of burglars into my house, I dreamed that a burglar was fumbling under my pillow, and was raising my head and shoulders with the mattress upon which I slept. I seemed to feel the changes of pressure and of contact as distinctly as if awake. The connection of voluptuous illusions with erotic dreams is too familiar to require particular mention.

Dreams are not always limited to the revival and combination of the images of sensation. Intellectual combinations are sometimes thus presented to the mind. The most familiar illustrations of this fact are furnished by the experience of mathematicians who have worked out mathematical problems in their dreams. One of my patients, an expert book-keeper, dreamed of adding up six columns of figures at once. In the morning he still remembered his dream; and, on adding up the columns, found that he had actually produced the right sum in each case. A college student of my acquaintance, who was puzzled by a geometrical proposition, wrote out the correct solution during his sleep. This was something more than simple dreaming; it trenched upon actual somnambulism. Another acquaintance dreamed of being in heaven, and, while there, experienced relief from doubt regarding certain theological doctrines which had previously exercised his mind. I have myself composed several sentences during the course of a dream, and have, while dreaming, sometimes esteemed them worthy of preservation; but my waking recollection has never coincided in this particular with the opinions formed during sleep.

Great difference between dreams may be remarked in their coherence and continuity of evolution. Some are composed of the most inconsistent elements without order or logical arrangement. In others the incidents follow very closely in the line of a natural and rational development, so that the dreamer seems to be present as a spectator of a perfectly coherent drama. It is probable that these differences depend upon variations in the degree of completeness with which the different parts of the brain and of the body are overwhelmed by sleep. If different and widely separated portions are sufficiently wakeful to suggest ideas to the mind, the resulting congeries will consist of discordant and incoherent elements. But if wakefulness is limited to a particular organ of the body or to a circumscribed territory of the brain, the resulting impressions in consciousness should be correspondingly restricted, and will manifest a more orderly connection with each other. In some cases a tendency to simultaneous wakefulness of particular portions of the cerebral register seems to become habitual, so that the same set of ideas may be often renewed in the same order during sleep, constituting a repetition of the same dream. In this way I have frequently dreamed of a volcanic eruption of molten lava from a lofty mountain. This frequent revival of the same train of images is probably due to the fact that in childhood I actually witnessed a volcanic outbreak, and that a very highly colored picture of Vesuvius in eruption hangs in my sitting room, so that my brain has become profoundly impressed with this particular image. When other portions of the brain are asleep, if the special region concerned with this picture be aroused, the mind receives the same impression which it received when first excited by that portion of the organ of memory.

As a general thing, however, dreams do not possess any such compactness and coherence. They are usually derived from many different portions of the cerebral organ, even when they seem to exhibit a fluently connected course. Thus, I dreamed, one night, that I was walking in a garden filled with peculiar oriental shrubbery. In this garden I discovered one of my brothers and a friend, who is widely known in literary circles, engaged in flying a kite. With great adroitness they had succeeded in causing the kite-string to describe in the air the outline of the letter Z. I congratulated them on the adoption of so truly scientific a method of kite-flying; telling them, also, that I had once succeeded in making a kite-string describe a fourth line, thus: [Symbol] As they expressed surprise at this, I told them that in the May number of the Atlantic Monthly, for 1883, they would find an article on this method of kite-flying, written by Oliver Wendell Holmes.

Nothing can seem more absurd than such a sequence of ideas. They follow each other without a break, yet without any logical coherence, very like the order in which ideas arise to occupy the mind of an insane person. Indeed, such dreams suggest the doctrine that the condition of a dreamer’s brain is functionally identical with what obtains in certain forms of insanity. At first sight it would seem as if such a dream could have no possible basis in fact. But a brief retrospection enabled me to trace each individual item to its source in memory, and I was able to construct the following key to the vision: During the previous evening I had been examining a number of East Indian photographs. Among the most remarkable of them was a picture of the glorious gardens of the Taj, at Agra. Another represented the ruined Buddhist tower at Sarnath, a structure remarkable for the numerous triangular figures carved as ornaments upon its sides. Hence the garden and the zigzag kite-string in the dream. During the day before, while conversing with a neighbor regarding the financial misfortunes of an acquaintance, I had remarked that if he had stopped kite-flying, and had settled down to legitimate business at last, he would doubtless do well in the future. Hence the kite. I had recently received an interesting letter from my literary friend in which he had mentioned my brother. Hence the two principal actors of the dream. Just before retiring, that night, I had discussed with my wife the subject of subscribing for a number of periodical magazines. Hence the Atlantic Monthly; and, as the celebrated Oliver Wendell Holmes was the author most intimately associated in my mind with that periodical, his introduction among the characters of the dream followed most naturally in accordance with the law of the association of ideas.

The question is continually asked, why are certain dreams so vivid and so easily remembered, while others are of the faintest and most evanescent character? My own experience leads me to believe that there is a morbid element underlying all unusually vivid dreams. It is not merely because of differences in the depth of sleep. The flitting fancies which occupy the introduction and the termination of sleep, rarely possess any power to fix the attention or to linger in memory. But, if the body be disturbed by anything which causes a departure from the even course of health, such as follows unusual or violent emotion, or an attack of illness, or an insufficient alimentation, or great and sudden changes of atmospheric pressure, the visions of the night become wonderfully exaggerated in every particular. During a voyage at sea, while suffering considerably with thirst, one night I dreamed that a fountain of sparkling water suddenly appeared before me. A young girl dipped a pitcher in the flowing stream, and held it out, all dripping with delicious coolness, for me to drink. Pressing eagerly forward, I awoke, to find myself sitting up in my narrow berth, with hands extended for the draught. Every narrative of shipwreck is filled with similar experiences. Slow starvation is always accompanied by dreams of singular intensity and persistence. As an illustration of the corresponding influence of previous emotion, I may cite the experience of a friend who had been greatly shocked by reading the account of the manner in which the lunatic, Freeman, had killed his little son in imitation of Abraham’s contemplated sacrifice of Isaac. This gentleman dreamed that he was about to sacrifice his favorite daughter. He called her to him; told her that he was about to cut off her head as a religious sacrifice; and took up the knife for that purpose. She exclaimed, “Oh, papa! I have never disobeyed you yet!” and extended her neck, to receive the fatal stroke, when he awoke, trembling in every limb, and drenched with perspiration. For a long time the horror of this dream affected him as terribly as if it had been an actual experience.

It is usually difficult to arrive at any exact estimate of the time occupied by a dream; but it appears certain that in some instances the succession of images excited during sleep must be exceedingly rapid. Abercrombie, in his work on the “_Intellectual Powers and the Investigation of Truth_,” p. 275, has related several illustrative examples of this fact. In my own experience, one night, as I lay half asleep, I heard the watchman on his round, as usual, examining the fastenings of my front door. At once I began to dream that I was revisiting my father’s house, the home of my childhood. The family were at breakfast in the front parlor, while I walked through the back rooms, examining the doors and the windows, and found it impossible to close and to fasten them. I then took a bath, dressed myself, and walked out into a large garden behind the house. It was filled with tropical trees, of which some were young. The old ones, which I recognized after an absence of thirty years, astonished me by their surprising luxuriance. A lovely, trailing convolvulus, in full bloom, attracted my admiration. After walking for some time I came upon a plum tree which was very small when I left home, and had now reached a height not exceeding twelve feet. This slow growth excited considerable surprise on my part. Returning to the house, I passed the day with my parents, and, at night, undertook to shut up the house, but could not fasten any of the doors or windows. This caused me great uneasiness, for there was a large gypsy camp not far from the east end of the building. My anxiety was presently justified by a noise in the parlor. Hastening to the door, and looking into the room, I saw a large painting disappearing through a hole in the wall next to the encampment of thieves. I immediately cried out, to frighten away the robbers; and was awakened by my wife, shaking me, and asking what was the matter, just in time to hear the watchman walking down the front steps, after the completion of the investigation which had suggested my dream.

Another experience may serve to illustrate the fact that dreams are greatly intensified by illness, and that their duration may be exceedingly brief. Suffering, one night, from an attack of intestinal colic, marked by a rapid succession of painful paroxysms, between which, however, I fell asleep without the aid of medicine, I dreamed in one of these snatches of slumber that I was walking with my brother on the road to the volcano of Kilauea. In my hand were four diamond shirt buttons. They were white, and were covered with fine asbestos wool. My brother’s wife expressed serious doubts regarding their value; but I at once reminded her that the Emperor of China had given to the English Ambassador, for presentation to the Queen of England, a number of diamonds which were so rough and so cheap in appearance that the ambassador, who was also a marquis, could not suppress his contempt as he received the gift. But, when carried to London, and cut by the royal jewelers, their brilliance had astonished everyone. I now desired to deposit my diamonds with a jeweler, for safe-keeping. My brother recommended a house near the volcano, but I had seen another, a few squares further up the road, and accordingly resorted thither. Not finding any satisfactory evidence of business, I retraced my steps to the place first recommended. Entering the door, I found myself in a narrow room, with a long, low counter on one side. Behind this were several men, and several cases filled with jewelry. I handed my buttons to a large, good-looking fellow, who was bustling around in his shirt-sleeves. He immediately put one of the jewels into his mouth, when I heard something crack, as if either his teeth or the diamond had split. Consoling myself with the recollection that, if broken, a diamond could be mended with cement, I asked for a certificate of deposit. While this was being written, the entire building slipped away from over us, and glided down the slope of the mountain, towards the ocean, leaving us, and all that had been within the house, uncovered in the open air. This did not disconcert any one. The jeweler finished his writing; I pocketed the receipt, and with my brother pursued our walk through the mountain forests beyond the crater of the volcano. Presently we arrived at an eminence from which we could look down upon the ocean, and could see the line of the coast prolonged for many miles on either side of a cape of land. The western coast was very grand--mountain promontories rising behind each other as far as the eye could reach. Having feasted our eyes with this magnificent panorama of earth and sea and sky, we turned away in the direction of a grove, in which was visible a large building of stone, with castellated walls, and turrets with pointed roofs at the corners. My brother informed me that this was a German settlement, called Little Clacius. Approaching the castle, we were received in a magnificent hall by a beautiful woman who offered to conduct us through the building. She led us through a series of lofty rooms, splendidly painted, gilded, frescoed, and furnished with inlaid tables and polished chairs. On either side were ranged large vases, in which grew what I seemed instinctively to recognize by the name of the Lace Mimosa--each plant consisting of a flat sheet of green lace-work, like a coralline, studded with lovely pale yellow blossoms. Passing through three such rooms, we entered a fourth, across the floor of which our fair guide whirled herself with a pirouette into the presence of a young woman clad in a richly figured dressing-gown, drawn lightly around her form as she sat in an easy chair, nursing her baby. We were formally introduced to this lady, who received us with the most evident indifference, a circumstance which gave us no concern, for the view from the open window at once engrossed my attention. Directly before me was a shining river, pouring down the mountain side and falling about fifteen feet into a deep dark pool that widened beneath the window from which I gazed. High banks, covered with magnificent trees, sloped down into the water, and cast their shadows across its rippling surface, forming a most charming landscape. The breadth of the scene, the depth of the coloring, the perfection and the multiplicity of all the details that pressed upon the attention, could not have been surpassed in vividness by any real existence. I was admiring the view, and was beginning to feel surprised that so large a river could exist in such a place, when I was suddenly awakened by a renewal of the intermittent pain.

In this example each individual detail could have been easily traced to its source in memory. Pictures, and actually existent scenery furnished the detached items which were combined in a brain that for the time being was released from the control of the reason and the will. Irritated by painful sensations the brain was inordinately excitable, and sleep was less profound. Hence the remarkable intensity of the pictures which were presented to the eye of the mind. The indescribable richness and variety of the vision was probably due to the fact of extensive bodily disturbance, opening a wide range of territory from which impressions were communicated to the morbidly sensitive brain. The unusual permanence of the whole dream in memory may be explained by the observation of Maury, that the ease with which dreams are recollected varies inversely with the depth of the sleep in which they occur. Dreams which are produced in sound sleep are seldom recalled after waking, because they are but slightly connected with impressions received by the brain during wakefulness.[62] But dreams which occupy the mind when sleep is light and partial are excited by cerebral movements which are closely associated with external impressions that originate either at the moment of awaking or immediately after that event; consequently, the bond of union between the ideas of the dream and our waking ideas is nearly if not quite as perfect as the bonds which serve to connect the thoughts that occupy any portion of our conscious life. Hence such dreams are more easily reproduced from memory by any disposition that arouses a retrograde association of ideas.

The dream above related, though excited by an unhealthy condition of the body, was not at all disagreeable. But it is often the case that disorders of particular organs serve to originate visions with special and evident characteristics related to their source. Thus, one of my patients, during an attack of uterine and hemorrhoidal congestion, would dream that a heavy weight had been laid upon the lower part of the abdomen. On another occasion, having gone to sleep, apparently in perfect health, she dreamed of a terrible pain in the head, and that her husband and a physician were applying a cupping glass to the back of her neck. This woke her up, and she found that she was actually suffering with a very severe headache. Another lady, shortly after confinement, dreamed that her baby had teeth, and that it was biting her nipple. Next day she discovered a tender spot in the breast, which rapidly developed a mammary abscess. Forbes Winslow[63] has collected a considerable number of similar cases. In certain instances not only have dreams been originated by special local pain, but the incipient stages of insanity have been revealed by exaggerated dreams. One of my patients, for a considerable time before the evolution of an attack of melancholia, would dream, every night, that a big black dog came into her bed. Another, who suffered with cardiac palpitation, caused by excessive tea-drinking, was often visited in sleep by a mocking imp who seated himself upon the pit of her stomach, and pressed her ribs together with his hands.

The distress or alarm which accompanies such dreams is sometimes sufficient to arouse the sleeper. Often, however, he strives, in his vision, to escape from some impending horror, or to lift up his voice in a cry for help, but the will is powerless to reach the necessary muscles, and no movement results. In such cases the portion of the brain in which the will resides is awake, but the conducting fibres which intervene between the cortex of the brain and the locomotive ganglia in the cerebro-spinal axis are asleep, and cannot be sufficiently aroused to transmit the impulses derived from the action of the will.

In all ages of the world a belief in the prophetic character of certain dreams has prevailed. Numerous examples are recorded in which a warning intimation of approaching disaster has been thus received. Thus the holy evangelist, St. Matthew, relates that Joseph, the husband of Mary, was guided by dreams to escape with his family from the murderous designs of Herod and of his son Archelaus. The literature of the middle ages is filled with similar narratives. Coming down to recent times, it is not difficult to gather numerous examples of dreams which have been excited by presentiments of good or evil. A lady who was about to embark upon the ill-fated steamer Arctic, dreamed so vividly of shipwreck that she refused to take passage, and thus escaped the frightful disaster which overwhelmed the ship and its numerous passengers. Max Simon[64] relates the case of a lady who, in spite of a similar warning, embarked upon a steamship and lost her life, through the explosion of the boiler during the voyage. On another occasion[65] a noble lady dreamed that a wing of the palace in which her children were sleeping was about to fall down. Starting up, she called her waiting maids, and insisted that they should bring the children to her chamber. The women endeavored to calm her agitation, quoting an old proverb to the effect that “dreams go by contraries.” As she persisted in her commands, they feigned obedience, but soon returned to say that the young princes were sleeping too quietly to be removed. The princess would not be thus composed; and at last the servants reluctantly brought the little boys from their room. They had scarcely reached their mother’s apartments, when the disaster of which she had dreamed was realized, and the bedroom from which they had just been carried, was crushed into a mass of ruins.

The ancient explanation of such events consisted in a reference to the Deity, who was supposed to address his favorites through the medium of dreams. The modern skeptical explanation views all such revelations as mere accidents. Among the myriads of dreamers, say the “five-sense philosophers,” the infinite variety of combinations which disturb the brain during sleep, cannot fail to produce occasionally such coincidences. When these are of a striking character, the seemingly prophetic vision is remembered, but the cases of discrepancies between vision and result are not recorded, and are soon forgotten. This opinion may very probably be correct in the vast majority of instances; but, if so, we are not in a position to assert any scientific demonstration of the fact. There is, moreover, so far as the ancient religious view is concerned, a certain transcendental sense in which it is true that God may guide his creatures through the agency of dreams, as well as in a thousand other different ways; but this metaphysical process we can no more comprehend than we can understand or explain the interaction of mind and matter in the brain. The psycho-physiologist must content himself, at present, with the attempt to show that it may not be incompatible with natural law for coming events to cast their shadows before them through the forms of a dream. The following observations lend color to such a possibility.

The extraordinary susceptibility of the brain during certain conditions of sleep has already been noted as a cause for the superior vividness of coloring and intensity of action which sometimes characterizes our dreams. In this respect a slightly morbid condition of the brain, comparable to the effects of hasheesh, probably exists. In such cases the brain may be disturbed to a degree sufficient for the awakening of consciousness by causes that would ordinarily be powerless to reveal themselves. Recording his experience of an earthquake at Lesina, in the night of Sept. 8, 1884, Buschick states, in the Journal of the Austrian Meteorological Society, that a few seconds before the shock he was awakened with a feeling of strange discomfort and apprehension. Once before, on a similar occasion, he had been in like manner aroused from sleep just before the commencement of an earthquake, probably by a feeble and ordinarily imperceptible agitation of the soil. At a time when I was for many months severely overtasked, I always woke up in the night whenever about to receive a call to a patient. Before the sound of footsteps became audible on the sidewalk, I would wake. Presently some one would be heard, approaching the house, and then the doorbell would ring. So often was this experience repeated, that I learned to expect a summons whenever awakened during the night. Gradually, however, as my health improved with rest, this morbid excitability disappeared, and has never been renewed. It seems probable that in this example the sensitiveness of the brain during sleep was so great that audible impressions were received with vigor sufficient to awake consciousness before they were sufficiently strong to arrest the attention when actually awake. The extreme sensibility of the brain, under certain conditions, to impressions from a distance, is further illustrated by the experience of persons laboring under diseases which produce serious departures from a healthy cerebral circulation. Thus, one of my patients, while suffering with cerebral hyperæmia, could hear children talking half a mile away, at a distance where no one else could hear them. This susceptibility is doubtless the foundation of many well authenticated cases of presentiment. Another of my patients, a lady of remarkably sensitive nervous organization, though otherwise in apparently good health, was one evening lying alone upon her bed. Suddenly, she became greatly agitated with the conviction that something had happened to her husband, who had not yet returned from his place of business. He presently, however, came quietly into the house, and greeted his wife as usual. She exclaimed at once, “What has happened to you, my dear?” “Nothing,” he replied. “Yes,” she said, “something has happened, just now; I felt that you were in trouble.” “Oh, yes,” answered he, after a moment’s reflection, “as I was passing by the park, on my way home, two men tried to stop my horse, but I whipped up, and got away from them without any trouble.”

On another occasion the same patient was one day suddenly oppressed by a conviction that something had happened to her mother and sister, who were driving together at some distance from home. After a short time they actually returned in a sorry plight, without their carriage. The horse had run away, upsetting them upon the road.

In all these cases it is worthy of remark that there was present an unusual degree of cerebral erethism. Solicitude, weariness, anxiety, inordinate irritability of the brain. It is possible that under such conditions one may hear premonitory sounds, may in some sort feel distant agitations which our healthy organs are usually incapable of apprehending. When such a brain during sleep is unoccupied with the ordinary objects of sensation, feeble impulses, which usually remain unnoticed, may sometimes suffice to arrest the attention. We may thus explain the possibility of impressions derived from distant events passing into the consciousness of a dreamer, and arousing hallucinations of which the immediate cerebral mechanism is the same as that of the ordinary hypnagogic hallucination. Thus, the Rev. Canon Warburton relates the following experience[66]:

“Somewhere about the year 1848 I went up from Oxford to stay a day or two with my brother.... When I got to his chambers I found a note on the table apologising for his absence, and saying that he had gone to a dance somewhere in the West End, and intended to be home soon after one o’clock. Instead of going to bed, I dozed in an arm-chair, but started up wide awake exactly at one, ejaculating, ‘By Jove, he’s down!’ and seeing him come out of a drawing-room into a brightly illuminated landing, catching his foot in the edge of the top stair, and falling headlong, just saving himself by his elbows and hands. (The house was one which I had never seen, nor did I know where it was.) Thinking very little of the matter, I fell a-doze again for half an hour, and was awakened by my brother suddenly coming in and saying, ‘Oh, there you are! I have just had as narrow an escape of breaking my neck as I ever had in my life. Coming out of the ball-room, I caught my foot, and tumbled full length down the stairs.’”

An incident of this character might very properly be ranked as a mere coincidence, were it not for the fact that it is one only of a considerable number of well attested acts of vision connected either with the hypnagogic state or with the act of dreaming itself. The comparative rarity of such events lends them a marvelous aspect; yet there is really nothing about them any more wonderful or preternatural than the demonstrated possibility of telegraphic signaling across the sea without the intervention of an electric wire.[67] Under ordinary circumstances a metallic conductor must serve as the avenue of communication between distant stations; but if a sufficiently sensitive piece of apparatus be placed in contact with the water on either side of an arm of the sea, communications may be transmitted from one to the other by a diffusion of impulses through the entire body of water.