DREAMING.
We have hitherto spoken of sleep in its most complete or profound form,— that is, the state of complete unconsciousness. But with the absence of consciousness of external things, there may be a state of mental activity, of which we are more or less distinctly conscious at the time, and of which our subsequent remem brance in the waking state also varies in com pleteness: the impression being sometimes vivid, definite, and enduring; sometimes shadowyand evanescent ; sometimes not amounting to more than the feeling that we have dreamed ; and sometimes not even this being preserved, not withstanding that there may be positive as surance that the sleep has been thus disturbed. This state, known as dreaming, is one of the highest interest to the psychologist; but the limits imposed upon us forbid our doing more than enumerate its leading phenomena.
The chief feature of the state of dreaming appears to be, that there is an entire absence of voluntary control over the current of thought ; so that the principle of thought calling up another, according to the laws of asso ciation—has unlimited operation. Sometimes the train of thought thus carried on is remark ably consistent. We witness scenes that have occurred during our waking hours, and seem to hear, see, move, talk, and perform all the actions of life. We may experience every kind of mental emotion, and may even compare, reason, judge, and will, during our sleep ; and our reasoning processes have frequently a re markable clearness and completeness, — the data on which they are founded being sup posed to be accurate. This consistency is usu ally the greatest, when the mind simply takes up a train of thought on which it had been engaged during the waking hours, not long previously ; and it may even happen that, in consequence of the freedom from distraction occasioned by the suspension of ordinary sen sations, the intellectual operations may be carried on during sleep with uncommon vigour and success. Thus, to name only two instances, Condorcet saw, in his dreams, the final steps of a difficult calculation, which had puzzled hini during the day ; and Condillac states that, when engaged with his " Cours d'Etude," he frequently developed and finished a subject in his dreams, which he had broken off before retiring to rest.
The imagination, equally with the reasoning processes, sometimes moves in a consistent course. Thus, Dr. Good relates the case of a friend who composed a little ode of about six stanzas, and set the same to agreeable music, in his sleep, the impression remaining so vividly that he was able to write down both the words and music on awaking in the morning ; and. Coleridge relates of himself that his fragment, entitled " Kuhla Khan," was composed during sleep, which had come upon him whilst reading the passage in " Purchas's Pilgrimage " on which the poetical description is founded, and was written down immediately on awaking. The images, he says, " rose up before him as things, with a parallel production of the correspondent expressions, without any sensation or con sciousness of effort." It would seem ne cessary, in most cases of this kind, that the results should be committed to paper imme diately on waking, before the train of thought, continued from the dream, has been disturbed by any other. Thus, Coleridge tells us that, after having written for some little time, he was interrupted by a person on business, who continued with him above an hour ; and on the departure of his visitor, he found, to his surprise and mortification, that "though he still retained some vague and dim recollection of the general purport of the vision, yet, with the exception of some eight or ten scattered lines and images, all the rest had passed away like the images on the surface of a stream into which a stone had been cast ; but, alas ! without the after-restoration of the latter." In other
cases, a strong general impression of what has passed through the mind in sleep may remain on waking, without power of recalling the par ticulars. This was the case in the well-known instance of the musician Tartini, to whom the arch-fiend appeared in his sleep, and was challenged by him to a trial of skill : the dreamer lay entranced by the transcendent performance of his visitor, which surpassed anything he had ever heard or conceived ; on awaking, however, he could not reproduce the succession of notes, although he imme diately seized his violin, and endeavoured to do so ; but, under the strong general impres sion of what he had heard, he produced a new composition, which retains the name of the " Devil's Sonata." But, although dreams may possess a re markable coherence, whether as regards pro cessses of reasoning, or the new combinations of the imagination, the general fact is, that such coherence is altogether wanting, and that there is a complete incongruousness in the thoughts and images which pass through our minds. All probabilities, and even possibilities of " time, place, and circu m stance " are violated ; the dead pass before us as if alive and well ; even the sages of antiquity hold personal con verse with us ; our friends at the antipodes are brought upon the scene, or we ourselves are conveyed thither, without the least per ception of distance ; and the strangest combi nations of reality and fancy are presented, either as objects passing before our con sciousness, or as affecting our own condition. But of this incongruity we are seldom in the least aware. We are not capable of testing the probability or possibility of the phenornena by our ordinary experience. And, as a conse quence of this, nothing surprises us in dreams ; the feeling of surprise being the result, and indeed the measure, of our perception of the unlikelihood of a phenomenon. Not only is there usually a want of congruity in the in tellectual processes, but a great disturbance in the ordinary play of the emotions. " Thus, in our dreams we may walk on the brink of a precipice, or see ourselves doomed to imme diate destruction by the weapon of a foe or the fury of a tempestuous sea, and yet feel not the slightest emotion of fear ; though, during the perfect activity of the brain, we may be naturally disposed to the strong manifestation of this feeling. Again, we may see the most extraordinary object or event without surprise, perform the most ruthless crime without com punctiOn, and see what in our waking hours would cause us unmitigated grief, without the smallest feeling of sorrow." * This is, how ever, by no means uniformly the case. In fact, our emotions in the dreaming state are often highly wrought ; and it frequently seems that the excitement of some particular emotion gives the direction to the whole train of thought, and causes it to possess an unusual coherence and probability. This is most remarkable, perhaps, when the emotion in question has greatly occupied the mind in the previous waking hours. Thus, a female, whose husband is at sea, and for whose safety she naturally feels anxious, especially in stormy weather, is very apt to dream of shipwreck and all its at tendant circumstances ; or, on the other hand, a man in love dreams of his mistress, of married life, and of its various enjoyments. Even here, however, the congruity is frequently in terrupted by the intervention of some strange occurrence ; the oddity of which may be per ceived by the dreamer as being discordant, not with the intellectual but with the emotional state.