Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 7.djvu/473

453 453 The next general characteristic of dreams is that, though re sembling waking experience in many respects, they seem never exactly to reproduce the order of this experience. Most of our dreams differ very widely from any events ever known to us in waking life, and even those which most closely resemble certain portions of this life introduce numerous changes in detail. These deviations involve one or two distinct elements. First of all, there is a great confusion of the order in time, space, etc., which holds among real objects and events. Widely remote places and events are brought together, persons set in new relations to one another, and so on. Secondly, the objects and scenes are apt to assume a greatly exaggerated intensity. They take a firmer hold of us, so to speak, than our waking experience. We may when awake think of dreams as unsubstantial and unreal, but to the dreamer at the moment his imagined surroundings are more real, more impressive, than the actual ones which he perceives when awake. Dream-fancy exaggerates the various aspects of objects, makes what is large still larger, what is striking still more striking, what is beautiful still more beautiful, and so on. Having touched on these approximately universal characteristics of dreams, we will now specify a few of the more variable features. For example, in a large number of our dreams we appear to be passive spectators of events which we are incapable, or rather do not think, of control ling in any way. In other dreams, agiin, we seem to be lively actors in the scene, talking, moving, &c., as we are wont to do in waking life. In a class of dreams lying midway between these two extremes we appear to be impelled to act, to be struggling to seize some offered good or to avert some threatening evil, yet to be unable to execute our wishes. Once more, dreams differ very much as to their degree of reasonableness. It is certain that in many cases the dreamer is easily imposed on, sees no con tradictions, does not seek to understand the events which unfold themselves before his fancy, and so on. In some instances, indeed, the mind of the dreamer loses even the sense of identity in objects, and metaiuorphizes persons in the most capricious manner ; and this confusion of identity may embrace the dreamer himself, so that he imagines himself to be somebody else, or projects a part of himself, so to speak, into another personality, which thus becomes an alter ego and an object for the contemplation of tho remaining self. Yet though it is true that many, probably a large proportion, of our dreams, are thus unintelligible to waking thought, there is a number of well authenticated dreams in which persons have proved themselves to be possessed not only of their ordinary, but even cf an extra ordinary, power of reflection. We refer to the well-known stories of the intellectual achievements of Condillac, Con- dorcct, Coleridge, &c., when dreaming. Once more, great differences are observable in dreams with respect to the feelings excited by the visionary experiences. Sometimes the circumstances in which we find ourselves affect us much as in waking life; danger terrifies us, beauty delights us, and so on. At other times, however, we are not thus affected ; what would puzzle, confuse, or shock our minds in waking experience fails to do so in dream-life. Finally, there are certain exceptional features of dream-life, as a vague consciousness of dreaming, which assumes the form of a dream within a dream, and the repetition of the images of previous dreams with a recognition of the familiarity of the dream scenes. It need hardly be added that dreaming varies greatly, both in quantity and in quality, according to individual temperament, habits of thought, itc. Theories of Dreaming. From the slight sketch of the character of the dreaming process just given, it might be conjectured that the human mind at all times would be profoundly impressed with the fact of dreaming, and seek to arrive at some explanation of what on the surface is un doubtedly so mysterious and so wonderful a phenomenon. And as a matter of history we find that men have in all the known stages of their intellectual development endeavoured to account for the visions of the night. The various theories thus put forward fall into two main classes the super natural and the natural. By the former we mean all ex planations which assume the action of forces unknown to our waking experience; by the latter those which make no such assumption, but seek to interpret dream-phenomena as products of forces familiar to waking perception. The supernatural hypothesis, again, falls into two divisions, according as the dream is regarded as the immediate effect of some reality corresponding to the actual world of our waking experience, or as it is conceived as a mediate result depending on the volition and command of some absent being. We thus have three main methods of explaining dreams : (a) The naive objective explanation ; (&) the religious explanation ; (c) the scientific explanation. (a) The Dream as Immediate Objective Experience. Ac cording to recent researches the savage mind regards dream ing as no less real an objective experience than waking. The objects and scenes which flit before the dreaming fancy of the primitive man are real material existences, the sounds he seems to hear are real external sounds, the dream figures which stand before his imagination and converse with him are real persons. How then does he conceive the relation of this dream-world to the world of waking experience ] This question has lately been answered by Mr E. B. Tylor and Mr Herbert Spencer. The belief in the objective reality of dreams requires the savage to conceive a double nature both for objects (animate and inanimate) external to himself and for himself. The vision of dead ancestors, of material objects long since lost or destroyed, easily suggests the idea of a duplicate of the original person of thing, a second self or soul. On the other hand, when the savage dreams that he goes forth to accustomed scenes, to hunt, to fight, and so on, he accounts for the dream by the supposition that his own second self or soul leaves tho body and passes forth to the particular locality. Thus the dream-life shapes itself to our primitive philosopher as an intercourse of souls or duplicate selves, co-ordinate with, and of equal reality with, the experience of waking life. It appears to follow from the unfamiliarity of dream scenes, personages, &c., that the region visited during sleep will be projected by the savage mind quite outside the world of waking observation. Mr Spencer connects with this fact the earliest theories of another world or a spiritual state, (For a fuller account of the part played by dreams in primitive ideas consult E. B. Tylor, Primitive Culture, vol. i. chap. xi. ; II. Spencer, Principles of Sociology, i. ch. x. et seq.) (b] The Dream as a Communication from a /Supernatural Beinrj. It is plain that even in the savage s conception of dreaming there is room for the thought of a divine announcement. When once the idea of superior beings, deities, demons, &c., is reached, it becomes natural to regard the visit of some departed soul as the despatch of a messenger to the dreamer. In this way the first mode of explanation passes insensibly into the second. In higher stages of religious thought the view of a dream as a divine revelation takes a less crude form. The immediate object present to the dreamer is no longer conceived as possessing the same degree of materiality. Something is still present, no doubt, and so the dream is in a sense objective ; biit the reality is less like a tangible material object, and is trans formed more or less completely into something unsubstantial, spiritual, and phantasmal. On the other hand, the dream is objective in the sense of being a message or revelation from some actual divine personage. The essence of the