Chapter V: Dreams (2)

In like manner we ordinarily see and hear and feel as a consequence of cerebral excitement occasioned by specific impressions concentrated through the organs of sight and hearing and touch. But it is quite reasonable to believe in the possible existence of a brain so delicately organized as to be capable of reacting to impressions which are too diffuse and too feeble to arouse the ordinary apparatus of sensation. With such a brain it might be possible to experience perception without eye-sight. Evidence furnished by the facts of somnambulism and hypnotism indicates that the receptivity of the brain may become temporarily exalted to a degree which warrants the inference that clairvoyance itself may be thus brought within the capacity of certain peculiarly sensitive organizations. The same extraordinary receptivity occasionally seems to attend the act of dreaming. For example, one of my acquaintances, a lady of a highly wrought nervous temperament, the wife of a distinguished physician in a neighboring State, dreamed one night that a favorite cousin, a beautiful little girl, who lived at a distance of twelve or fifteen miles, was very dangerously ill. She saw the child lying on its mother’s lap, evidently at the point of death, when some one brought a tub of warm water and proceeded to give the patient a bath. This revived the little one so that she recovered. The dream made a very considerable impression upon my friend, by reason of its peculiar character, and because dreaming was for her a very unusual experience. Next morning she rose as usual, but during the forenoon she was startled by the receipt of a message requesting her to come at once to the house of her uncle, as his little daughter had been taken suddenly ill with the croup, and had expired during the preceding night. Hastening to the bereaved household, she found her aunt sitting with the dead child on her lap, precisely as she had appeared in the dream. The little girl had been suddenly attacked during the night, and, as she lay gasping in her mother’s arms, some one advised a warm bath, and brought a tub of water into the room for that purpose. Unfortunately, just as they were hopefully preparing to dip the child into the water, she had ceased to breathe.

The lack of conformity between the conclusion of this dream and the actual fact reminds one of the blurring of the images that are transferred from one brain to another in the acts of telepathy recently investigated by the Society for Psychical Research. Something similar is frequently observed in connection with the phenomena of hypnotism. The hypnotised subject does not always perceive clearly or wholly the sensation that is suggested by the agent who operates upon his brain.

For another example of apparently clairvoyant dreaming, I am indebted to a friend, a well-known gentleman of unimpeachable veracity, who, when a young man in the army, during the war of the great rebellion, was taken very ill, and was sent home to New England from one of the most remote outposts of the campaign. No one of his family had the slightest information or suspicion of his illness, until the night before his arrival, when his father dreamed that the absent son was sick, and would arrive the next day, at an hour unusual for travelers coming from the South. So vivid was this dream, and so powerful was its influence upon the mind of the dreamer, that he went at the specified hour to the railway station, with a carriage full of blankets and pillows, to receive his son. When the train arrived, and the invalid actually appeared, the mutual astonishment of father and son can better be imagined than described.

In a recent work on hypnotism,[68] Fischer has related several personal experiences of a similar transfer of impressions during the waking state. It is highly probable that if such impressions are received by a sleeping brain, they may operate like other suggestive irritants to produce dreams, which may be sometimes so vigorously projected upon the consciousness of the dreamer that he may be awakened, and may still perceive the evolution of his dream as an hallucination, even after waking. Thus, on one occasion, during a malarial fever, I dreamed of seeing a friend who lived at a great distance. So vivid was the impression that I started up awake; and there, at the foot of the bed, in broad daylight, was my friend, looking calmly at me. Several seconds, at least, were required to dissipate the vision. In an article already quoted,[69] Sir Edmund Hornby, late Chief Judge of the Supreme Consular Court of China and Japan, “who describes himself as ‘a lawyer by education, family, and tradition, wanting in imagination, and no believer in miracles,’” relates his experience of a similar spectral visitation. After stating that “it was his habit at Shanghai to allow reporters to come to his house in the evening, to get his written judgment for the next day’s paper,” he says:

“They generally availed themselves of the opportunity, especially one reporter, who was also the editor of an evening paper. He was a peculiar man, reticent about himself, and I imagine had a history. In appearance he was also peculiar. I only knew him as a reporter, and had no other relations with him. On the day when the event occurred, in 1875 or 1876, I went to my study an hour or two after dinner, and wrote out my judgment. It was then about half-past eleven. I rang for the butler, gave him the envelope, and told him to give it to the reporter who should call for it. I was in bed before twelve. I am a very light sleeper, and my wife a very heavy one. Indeed, it is difficult to rouse her out of her first sleep. The bed--a French one--faced the fire-place; on the mantel-piece was a clock, and the gas in the chandelier was turned down, but only so low as to admit of my seeing the time at any time of the night, for--waking easily and frequently--I often smoked a cigarette before I went to sleep again, and always desired to know the hour.

“I had gone to sleep, when I was awakened by hearing a tap at the study door, but thinking it might be the butler--looking to see if the fire were safe and the gas turned off--I turned over with the view of getting to sleep again. Before I did so, I heard a tap at my bed-room door. Still thinking it might be the butler, who might have something to say, I said, ‘Come in.’ The door opened, and, to my surprise, in walked Mr. ----. I sat up and said, ‘You have mistaken the door; but the butler has the judgment, so go and get it.’ Instead of leaving the room he came to the foot edge of the bed. I said, ‘Mr. ----, you forget yourself! Have the goodness to walk out directly. This is rather an abuse of my favor.’ He looked deadly pale, but was dressed in his usual dress, and was certainly quite sober, and said, ‘I know that I am guilty of an unwarrantable intrusion, but finding that you were not in your study I have ventured to come here.’ I was losing my temper, but something in the man’s manner disinclined me to jump out of bed to eject him by force. So I said, simply, ‘This is too bad, really; pray, leave the room at once.’ Instead of doing so he put one hand on the foot-rail, and gently, and as if in pain, sat down on the foot of the bed. I glanced at the clock, and saw that it was about twenty minutes past one. I said, ‘The butler has had the judgment since half-past eleven; go and get it.’ He said, ‘Pray forgive me; if you knew all the circumstances, you would. Time presses. Pray give me a _précis_ of your judgment, and I will take a note in my book of it,’ drawing his reporter’s book out of his breast pocket. I said, ‘I will do nothing of the kind. Go down stairs, find the butler, and don’t disturb me--you will wake my wife--otherwise I shall have to put you out!’ He slightly moved his hand. I said, ‘Who let you in?’ He answered, ‘No one.’ ‘Confound it,’ I said, ‘What the devil do you mean? Are you drunk?’ He replied, ‘No, and never shall be again; but I pray your lordship give me your decision, for my time is short.’ I said, ‘You don’t seem to care about _my_ time, and this is the last time I will ever allow a reporter in my house.’ He stopped me short, saying, ‘This is the _last_ time I shall ever see you anywhere.’

“Well, fearful that this commotion might arouse and frighten my wife, I shortly gave him the gist of my judgment in as few words as I could. He seemed to be taking it down in short-hand; it might have taken two or three minutes. When I finished, he rose, thanked me for excusing his intrusion and for the consideration I had always shown him and his colleagues, opened the door and went away. I looked at the clock; it was on the stroke of half-past one.

(Lady Hornby now awoke, thinking she had heard talking; and her husband told her what had happened, and repeated the account when dressing next morning.)

“I went to the court a little before ten. The usher came into my room to robe me, when he said, ‘A sad thing happened last night, sir. Poor ----was found dead in his room.’ I said, ‘Bless my soul! dear me! What did he die of, and when?’ ‘Well, sir, it appears he went up to his room as usual at ten to work at his papers. His wife went up about twelve to ask him when he would be ready for bed. He said, “I have only the judge’s judgment to get ready, and then I have finished.” As he did not come, she went up again, about a quarter to one, to his room and peeped in, and thought she saw him writing, but she did not disturb him. At half-past one she again went to him and spoke to him at the door. As he did not answer she thought he had fallen asleep, so she went up to rouse him. To her horror he was dead. On the floor was his note book, which I have brought away. She sent for the doctor, who arrived a little after two, and said he had been dead, he concluded, about an hour.’ I looked at the note book. There was the usual heading:

“‘In the Supreme Court, before the Chief Judge.

---- _v._ ----

“‘The Chief Judge gave judgment this morning in this case to the
following effect’--and then followed a few lines of indecipherable
shorthand.

“I sent for the magistrate who would act as coroner, and desired him
to examine Mr. ----’s wife and servants as to whether Mr. ---- had
left his home, or could possibly have left it without their knowledge,
between eleven and one on the previous night. The result of the
inquest showed he died of some form of heart disease, and had not, and
could not have left the house without the knowledge of at least his
wife, if not of his servants. Not wishing to air my ‘spiritual
experience’ for the benefit of the press or the public, I kept the
matter at the time to myself, only mentioning it to my Puisne Judge
and to one or two friends; but when I got home to tiffin I asked my
wife to tell me as nearly as she could remember what I had said to her
during the night, and I made a brief note of her replies and of the
facts.

“As I said then, so I say now--I was not asleep, but wide awake. After
a lapse of nine years my memory is quite clear on the subject. I have
not the least doubt, I saw the man--have not the least doubt that the
conversation took place between us.

“I may add that I had examined the butler in the morning--who had
given me back the MS. in the envelope when I went to the court after
breakfast--as to whether he had locked the door as usual, and if any
one could have got in. He said that he had done everything as usual,
adding that no one could have got in if even he had not _locked_ the
door, as there was no handle outside--which there was not. I examined
the coolies and other servants, who all said they opened the door as
usual that morning--turned the key and undid the chains, and I have no
doubt they spoke the truth. The servants’ apartments were separated
from the house, but communicated with it by the gallery at the back,
some distance from the entrance hall.

“The reporter’s residence was about a mile and a quarter from where I
lived, and his infirmities prevented him from walking any distance
except slowly; in fact, he almost invariably drove.

“EDMUND HORNBY.”

The publication of this remarkable story led to its correction in several important particulars. From the _North China Herald_ (August, 1884) it appears that not only was Sir Edmund’s memory defective in connection with several of the minor details of the narrative, but he had also been either wholly misinformed, or was quite forgetful regarding the actual time of the editor’s death. That person was, in fact, alive and in his usual health at the time of his supposed apparition in the judge’s chamber, and did not die till between eight and nine o’clock on the same morning. He had “attended a temperance committee meeting the night before, and had left about half-past ten in good health and excellent spirits.... He slept at home, rose shortly before eight, and visited his office to arrange some _matter_ for that day’s paper. He then returned to his room to dress, and in a few minutes afterward was found dead upon the floor.”

Between these conflicting witnesses it is of course impossible to decide. But for our purpose that is quite unnecessary. It is clear that Sir Edmund believed that the visible image of an acquaintance had appeared before him in his chamber at night. It is also evident that the judge was a man whose nerves had been damaged, probably by tobacco--for he was a “light sleeper”--waking often, and indulging in the luxury of a cigarette during the course of the night. If we may credit the writer in the _Herald_, his brain was in a process of deterioration, proved by the decidedly treacherous character of his memory. The whole story, therefore, becomes exceedingly instructive as an illustration of the manner in which a belief in apparitions may be originated. The most probable explanation of the incident is found in the hypothesis of a dream excited in an irritable brain that had been aroused by the preparation of the manuscript which had occupied the thoughts of the judge immediately before retiring for the night. The course of this dream was so vivid that the sleeper awoke, but continued, like some other dreamers similarly awakened, to witness the evolution of his vision in the form of a genuine hallucination. A remarkable example of a similar production of hallucination through disease of the brain is related by the late Dr. E. H. Clarke.[70] One of his patients, a vigorous old gentleman, of eighty years, a great lover of music, and a frequent attendant at operas and concerts, retired one night at the usual hour, and in his usual health. He soon fell asleep, “and slept well till about two A. M., when he was awakened by the sound of music, which seemed to come from the street near his house. Thinking a serenade was going on, he got up to ascertain where it was, but discovered nothing. The sound ceased when he arose. On returning to bed, he heard the sound of music again, and was at the same time surprised by the appearance of three persons, standing near each other in his chamber, opposite the foot of his bed. It was his habit to sleep with the gaslight burning feebly, near the head of his bed. He turned the gas on to its full power, and inspected the intruders. They appeared to be musicians, who were humming and singing, as if in preparation for a musical performance. He rang a bell, which summoned his man servant. John soon arrived, and was ordered to put the strangers out. ‘There is nobody here, sir,’ was John’s reply to the order. For a moment Mr. A. was not only amazed, but alarmed. ‘What!’ he exclaimed, ‘do you see no one there?’ ‘No one,’ said John. ‘Go where those chairs are, and move them,’ was Mr. A.’s next direction. John did so. The strangers stepped aside, but did not go out. By this time Mr. A. had gathered his wits about him, and was satisfied that he was the victim of a hallucination; and he determined to observe its phenomena carefully. Accordingly, he bade his servant depart, and prepared to watch his visitors. But they were so life-like and human, that he was again staggered, and recalling John, told him to go for the house-keeper. She soon came, and on being interrogated, confirmed John’s statements that there were no strangers in the chamber and no sounds to be heard. Convinced by the testimony of two witnesses, Mr. A. yielded to the decision of his reason, and again resolved to go on with the investigation of the strange phenomena. The musicians had now resumed their position, near the window and opposite the foot of the bed. Mr. A. turned the light of the gas full upon them. He looked at his watch, which marked the hour of half-past two. He then arranged his pillows, so as to sit almost upright in bed, and waited for the next scene of the play. He was able to note the size, form, dress, and faces of the performers. One was a large man, who bore some resemblance to Brignoli. The two others were of less size, and shorter stature than their companions. All were habited in dress coats, with white waist coats, and wore white cravats and white gloves. After a little time spent in coughing and clearing their throats, they began to sing. They sang at first a few simple airs, ‘Sweet Home’ among others. They then attempted more difficult music, and gave selections from Beethoven and Mozart. Between the pieces they chatted with each other in a foreign language, which Mr. A. took to be Italian, but they did not address him. Occasionally they changed their position, turned in various directions, and part of the time sat down. Mr. A. said the singing was excellent; he had rarely heard better. After the first feeling of surprise and amazement had passed away, he enjoyed the music exceedingly. The performance continued in this way for some time, when it suddenly came to an end. The singing ceased, and the singers vanished. He looked at his watch, and found that the time was four o’clock. The concert in his brain had lasted nearly an hour and a half, almost the length of an ordinary concert. He reflected for a while upon this strange occurrence, but not being able to arrive at any satisfactory explanation of it, he turned his gas down and went to sleep. The next morning he called at my office, as previously stated, to ascertain if possible what pranks his brain had been playing, and if he should regard them as warning of his approaching departure.”

In this case the patient was suffering from “a moderate degree of deafness, persistent tinnitus aurium, occasional vertigo, and slight loss of memory.” Towards the close of life, two or three years later, “incoherence, delirium, stupor, and the like, indicated with sufficient certainty the presence of severe cerebral disease.” The remarkable hallucination which he experienced was undoubtedly the product of the morbid changes which were progressing in his brain.

These cases form an ascending series which illustrates the receptive and constructive capacities of the human brain when its sensory apparatus has become unusually or morbidly excitable. But this preternatural mobility may display itself in other departments besides those of mere sense-perception. The sphere of pure intellect may thus be invaded by ideas springing from impressions which address the reasoning faculties alone, so that in sleep a dream may lead the judgment to decisive conclusions that were scarcely recognized or heeded during the hours of wakefulness. In this way we may learn to understand how the anxieties experienced by the husband of the Virgin Mary may have ripened into a dream, of intensity sufficient to guide his subsequent action. Nothing could be more natural for one, like him, ignorant of physiology and of second causes in general, than the ascription of such an event to the immediate intervention of the Great First Cause--the only cause which he could rationally apprehend. Hence the universal primitive belief that in dreams God spake to man. Upon this belief was laid the foundation of many of the religious convictions which have grown and ripened with the progress of the race until their shadowy origin has been well nigh forgotten.

Many are wont to affirm that the age of illumination through the intervention of dreams is past, but there is no good reason for the belief that such dreams may not still occur. A lady, carefully educated in the doctrines of the popular theology, had been very much distressed by the unruly behavior of her only child, a little imp who had scarcely learned to talk. While thus depressed in spirits she dreamed that the Day of Judgment had come. She found herself with her husband and child and the whole human race assembled upon the face of the earth, waiting in agony for the awful decision of their fate. Finally the heavens were opened, and Jesus appeared, dividing the wicked from the good. As he drew near the place where she was standing, she could no longer endure her anxiety regarding the destiny of her daughter; she rushed forward, and implored the Divine Judge to spare her child. With a look of ineffable compassion he assured the trembling suppliant that her prayer was granted, and she awoke in a state of great agitation, but much comforted as to the future of her little girl, who in due course of time grew up to be a very exemplary young woman. Now, if the dream of Joseph was a revelation, a dream like this is quite as worthy of similar estimation. They both occurred as the result of analogous conditions of the brain and mind, and were both excited by second causes of a similar character. It is impossible for any one to show that the relation between the First Cause and either set of second causes was any more intimate and special in one case than in the other.

The wonderful exaltation of certain faculties during the unequal sleep of the different organs of the mind, is usually to be considered as something relative rather than absolute. But there is little reason to doubt that sometimes the excitement of the waking portions of the brain does really transcend the ordinary functional capacity of the structure. Under such conditions the undivided concentration of attention upon the comparatively limited circle of ideas which are thus produced, greatly increases the intensity of the resulting impressions upon the mind in consciousness. Hence the grandeur of the visions which may thus arise; hence, also, the possibility of their construction in accordance with fact rather than with fancy; as in the case of the visions of the ancient Hebrew prophets. As the darkness of night, by shutting out the earth from sight, opens our eyes to the glory of the starry sky, so, in like manner, sleep, by closing the senses against the distractions of the external world, may sometimes afford the conditions enabling a richly gifted intellect to comprehend the course and the destination of those deep and silent streams of thought which move on, unnoticed during the hours of wakeful life.

Whatever may be true of this matter of fore-sight, it is certain that under similar conditions the memory of past events may be so quickened as to yield results quite comparable with actual clairvoyance. A good illustration of this has been recorded by Abercrombie.[71] A gentleman named Rowland had been prosecuted for certain arrears of tithe which he believed had been long previously paid by his deceased father. “But, after an industrious search among his father’s papers, an investigation of the public records, and a careful inquiry among all persons who had transacted law business for his father, no evidence could be discovered to support his defence. The period was now near at hand when he conceived the loss of his lawsuit to be inevitable, and he had formed his determination to ride to Edinburgh next day and make the best bargain he could in the way of compromise. He went to bed with this resolution, and, with all the circumstances of the case floating upon his mind, had a dream to the following purpose: His father, who had been many years dead, appeared to him, as he thought, and asked him why he was disturbed in his mind. In dreams men are not surprised at such apparitions. Mr. R. thought that he informed his father of the cause of his distress, adding that the payment of a considerable sum of money was the more unpleasant to him because he had a strong consciousness that it was not due, though he was unable to recover any evidence in support of his belief. ‘You are right, my son,’ replied the paternal shade; ‘I did acquire right to these teinds, for payment of which you are now prosecuted. The papers relating to the transaction are in the hands of Mr. ----, a writer (or attorney), who is now retired from professional business, and resides at Inveresk, near Edinburgh. He was a person whom I employed on that occasion for a particular reason, but who never, on any other occasion, transacted business on my account. It is very possible,’ pursued the vision, ‘that Mr. ---- may have forgotten a matter which is now of a very old date; but you may call it to his recollection by this token--that when I came to pay his account there was difficulty in getting change for a Portugal piece of gold, and that we were forced to drink out the balance at a tavern.’

“Mr. R. awoke in the morning with all the events of the vision impressed on his mind, and thought it worth while to ride across the country to Inveresk, instead of going to Edinburgh. When he came there he waited on the gentleman mentioned in the dream, a very old man; without saying anything of the vision, he inquired whether he remembered having conducted such a matter for his deceased father. The old gentleman could not at first bring the circumstance to his recollection, but, on mention of the Portugal piece of gold, the whole returned upon his memory; he made an immediate search for the papers and recovered them, so that Mr. R. carried to Edinburgh the documents necessary to gain the cause which he was on the verge of losing.”

Here it would be a valuable addition to knowledge if the parties in the history just related could be subjected to intelligent interrogation. Enough, however, may be discovered in the narrative to render it certain that the dream was merely a revival in consciousness of knowledge that had been long previously forgotten. There was a vague recollection of some such information evidently struggling for recognition; otherwise Mr. R. could not have held the belief in spite of the lack of evidence, that his father had paid the tithes in dispute. He had probably heard from his father some account of a transaction which had taken place so long before that the only surviving actor, the aged lawyer, had forgotten everything about it, and could only recall the event through the associations connected with the Portugal piece of gold. In the lawyer’s case the cerebral register only needed the stimulus afforded by the association of ideas, in order to make it again place before the mind impressions which had long subsided below the level of consciousness. For Mr. R., sleep afforded the limitation of cerebral function needful for a concentration of attention sufficient to penetrate to the level of the residual vibrations which persisted as the sole representatives of the original impressions through which his knowledge of the event had been primitively obtained. Parallel examples are furnished by the cases of individuals who, upon their death-beds, during the dissolution of the brain, have resumed a long disused vocabulary, speaking the language and thinking the thoughts of their childhood. “He ‘babbled of green fields,’” said Mistress Quickly, narrating the closing scenes in the life of the famous Sir John Falstaff. Dr. Rush[72] relates the case of a learned Italian gentleman who, “in the beginning of the yellow fever which terminated his life, ... spoke English only; in the middle of the disease, he spoke French only; but on the day of his death, he spoke only in the language of his native country.” In like manner the old Swedish settlers in Philadelphia who had forgotten their native language, or, at least, had not spoken it for half a century, would pray in Swedish on their death-beds.[73] Sleep and dissolution operate alike to release the lower levels of the mnemonic apparatus from the overshadowing influence of later impressions, so that, like an ancient palimpsest, it presents once more its long-forgotten characters for inspection by the mind.