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 254 DREAM his dreams at will by operating upon the mind through the senses. With this view he left his knees uncovered, and dreamed that he was travelling at night in a diligence with a vivid impression of cold knees produced by the rigor of the weather. Waller relates the case of a gentleman who was a victim of terror on account of a dream, which he could never look upon except as a real occurrence. He was lying in bed, and as he imagined quite awake, when he felt the distinct impression of a hand placed upon his shoulder, which produced such a state of alarm that he durst not move in bed. The shoulder which had experienced the im- pression had been uncovered, and the cold to which it was exposed produced the sensa- tion. Persons in whom one of the senses is defective frequently have their dreams modi- fied by this circumstance. Darwin relates the case of a deaf gentleman who in his dreams always appeared to converse by means of the fingers or in writing. He never had the im- pression of hearing speech, and for the same reason one who has been blind from his birth never dreams of visible objects. The condi- tion of the digestive apparatus has a very marked influence on dreams. When the func- tions of the digestive organs are properly per- formed, the dreams, if affected at all from this cause, are pleasant ; if however any disturb- ance exists in this part of the system, the dreams are apt to be painful, usually propor- tioned in intensity to the amount of disturbance of the alimentary canal. To this class of sen- sations may be referred those dreams produced by the use of opium and intoxicating drinks, which in part at least act by the impression made upon the digestive organs. Dreams induced by this cause are remarkable for the extrava- gance of the phantasmagoria they exhibit, fre- quently presenting shapes the most fugitive and fanciful. The dreamer often seems endowed with such elasticity that it appears as if he could easily mount to and float upon the clouds above him. De Quincey, in the " Confessions of an Opium Eater," has portrayed most vividly the effects of that narcotic in the production of dreams. But it does not require the aid of a narcotic as powerful as opium, or indeed any- thing beyond what ordinarily occurs in a state of dreaming, to create ideas of time and space apparently as incongruous as those narrated by the opium eater. The sleeper who is sud- denly awakened by a loud rap does not begin and terminate his dream with this simple oc- currence, but experiences a long train of events requiring hours and even days for their fulfil- ment, all evidently occasioned by the sound which awakens him, and concentrated within the brief space of time it occupies. A person who was suddenly aroused from sleep by a few drops of water sprinkled in his face, dreamed of the events of an entire life in which hap- piness and sorrow were mingled, and which finally terminated with an altercation upon the borders of a lake, into which his exasperated companion, after a considerable struggle, suc- ceeded in plunging him. It is evident that the association of ideas in this case which produced the lake, the altercation, and the sudden plunge, was occasioned by the water sprinkled upon the face, and the presumption is probable that the whole machinery of an entire life was due to the same cause. Dr. Abercrombie relates a similar case of a gentleman who dreamed that he had enlisted as a soldier, joined his regiment, deserted, was apprehended, carried back, tried, condemned to be shot, and led out to execu- tion. After the usual preparations a gun was fired, and he awoke with the report to discover that the cause of his disturbance was a noise in the adjacent room. Kant says we can dream more in a minute than we can act during a day, and that the great rapidity of the train of thought in sleep is one of the principal causes why we do not always recollect what we dream. Dreams are often produced by the waking associations which precede them ; and the most recent associations occur the most frequently in our dreams. So, too, dreams are often characteristic of the peculiar idiosyncra- sies of the dreamers : a miser dreams of his gold, a philosopher of science, a merchant of his ventures, the musician of melody, and the lover of his mistress. Tartini, a distinguished violin player, is said to have composed his "Devil's Sonata" under the inspiration of a dream, in which the devil appeared to him and invited him to a trial of skill upon his own in- strument, which he accepted, and awoke with the music of the sonata so vividly impressed upon his mind that he had no difficulty in com- mitting it to paper. In like manner Coleridge professes to have composed his poem " Kublt Khan" in a dream. He had, he says, taken an anodyne prescribed for a slight indisposi- tion, and fell asleep in his chair while reading in Purchas's " Pilgrimage " of a palace built by Khan Kubla. He continued for about three hours in a profound sleep, and awoke with a vivid impression that he had composed from 200 to 300 lines of verse. He at once wrote the fragment as it is now preserved. At this point he was called out to attend to some business. When he returned, after an absence of more than an hour, the poem, with the exception of a few scattered lines and images, had van- ished from his memory. Instances like the above occasionally occur where the mind in a state of waking is aided by the processes car- ried on during sleep. Condillac, says Cabanis, often brought to a conclusion in his dreams reasonings which he had not completely worked out on retiring to bed ; and Condorcet saw in dreams the final steps of a calculation which had baffled him when awake. But such cases are rare. As a general rule dreams are want- ing in coherence and unsubstantial in reason- ing. Nothing is more common than for the mind in dreams to blend together objects and events which could not have an associated ex- istence in reality. We never dream of a past