The Philosophy of Mystery · 22 of 35

Material Causes of Dreams

“ Iago. Nay, this was but his dream.

Othello. But this denoted a foregone conclusion;

’Tis a shrewd doubt, tho’ it be but a dream.”

Othello.

Astr. We looked for more from you, Evelyn, than these proofs of a negative.

I presume still to think your philosophy is very weak in controversion of the inspiration of a dream, and its supernatural causes. I cannot but believe, with Baxter, that dreams may be “spirits in communion with us.”

Ev. And you will define these shadowless ministers in the fashion of Master Richard Burthogge, Medicinæ Doctor, (in his book, printed by Raven, in the Poultry, in 1694.) I have a smack, you see, of medical bibliomania, Astrophel. Burthogge, although one of the most rational interpreters of dreams and spectres, thinks their internal causes purely metaphysical; and then refutes his own opinion point blank by this sophistry,—that “there are things incorporated, but invisible, which we call spirits;” as who should say, with Shakspere’s fairies, “We have the gift of fern seed; we are invisible.”

No; we will account for the causes of dreams, Astrophel, without the ministry of spirits.

Analyzing, then, the notions of all, it is clear that the essence of the dream is recurrence of ideas. In the words of Walpole,—“The memory retains the colouring of the day.”

Now memory is the first faculty to fail in age, and you know old people seldom dream: the same objects are applied, but there is little or no association, for the brain is dull and feeble; imbecility, indeed, is mad memory.

The two common periods associated with the dream, are the past and the future, involving memory and prognostication; the latter being but the memory of an intention,—an image excited in the mind by analogy. Even when present sensations excite the dream, it is ever associated, as you remember, with something before seen or felt.

The waking thought will thus again modify the dream; and Dr. Abercrombie has a curious illustration of this combining of two minds,—one waking subject, one dream, and one disturbing cause.

The French invasion was the universal topic in Edinburgh; and the city was, indeed, one company of volunteers. It was decided that the tocsin of alarm on the approach of the enemy, was to be the firing of the castle guns, followed by a chain of signals. At two, an officer was awoke from a vivid dream of guns and signals, and reviews of troops, by his lady, who herself was affrighted by a similar dream, with a few associations of a different nature. And whence all this alarm?— the falling of a pair of tongs on the hearth, the noise of which was quite sufficient for the production of their dreaming associations.

Astr. It would seem to me that Evelyn was too anxious to find employment for the brain, in thus imputing so much to substantial causes.

There is a funny scrap, I remember to have read, and of which I may shrewdly suspect my friend to be the scribbler. “Whence we may compare the powers of mind to a court of judicature:—the outward senses being as the solicitors that bring the causes; the common sense, as the master of requests, who receives all their informations; and phantasy (or imagination), like the lawyers and advocates that bandy the business to and fro in several forms, with a deal of noise and bustle; reason, as the judge, that having calmly heard each party’s pretensions, pronounces an upright sentence; and memory, as the clerk, records the whole proceedings.” But say, if the dream is but the memory of an impression, are metaphysics to be counted as a cypher, in our discussion of the nature of intellect?

Ev. Nay, the psychologist must ever call metaphysics to his aid, especially when speaking of the health or disorder of mind: there is an intimate blending of metaphysics and philosophy. But believe not, Astrophel, that I presume to develope that mysterious influence which is going on between mind and matter, so essential to the manifestation of the former, during its earthly condition. The mystery will ever be a sealed letter to the intellect. It is enough that we have evidence of its existence without yearning for deeper insight of final causes. I have assured you that I do not believe thought or reflection, or any act of mind to be material, and speak even with all due courtesy to the abstract metaphysician, and the divine who, doubtless from pure and holy motives, would seek to cut the Gordian knot of this sublime enigma.

Even Dr. Abercrombie is content with observing that the correction of illusions by the sane mind is by the comparing power of reason, but he leaves the illusion itself unexplained. Indeed, the most luminous of pathologists have ever feared to touch organization; Sir Humphrey Davy leaves his beautiful imaginings vague and inconclusive, because he stops short of the brain.

The mere psychologist will ever persevere in placing even the palpable causes of illusion beyond the reach of our inquiries.

Thus the rhapsodies of Lucretius were a series of professed fables, and the theories of Macrobius a tissue of capricious distinctions, as you may learn from his classification.

1st. ονειρος, somnium, dream. A figurative vision to be interpreted.

2nd. οραμα, vision. A vision which has afterwards been exactly fulfilled.

3rd. χρηματισμος, oraculum. An intimation in sleep of what we ought to do.

(I suppose as the shade of Hector appeared to Æneas, warning him, the night before, to escape from the flames of Troy.)

4th. ενυπνιον, insomnium. A sort of night-mare.

5th. φαντασμα, visus and incubus.

Here is a perfect jumble of classification, the first three only being vaunted as prophetic, or inspired; the fourth a night-mare; and the fifth, if it be any thing, a spectral illusion.

Others have deemed themselves mighty wise in discovering dreams to be the “action of intellect on itself.”

Abercrombie, the most learned analyst of the mind since Reid and Stewart, has four varieties of the dream:

1st. From wrong association of new events.

2nd. Trains of thought from bodily association.

3rd. Revival of old associations.

4th. Casual fulfilment of a dream!

You perceive the first and third are merely memory, with right and wrong arrangements; the second, excitement of ideas from present sensations; the fourth, if it be not a mere coincidence, is the result, as I have explained, of imparted impetus, or deep thinking on subjects presented to the mind. The eccentricities of dreaming are not more curious than those of the reminiscent faculty when awake; indeed, memory itself may seem to be sometimes dreaming, and at others even fast asleep. Those who survived the plague in Athens (as we read in Thucydides), lost for a time the recollection of names, their own and those of their friends, and did not regain it until their health was re-established.

Mori, during his frequent moods of excitement, quite lost his memory of music, so that, for many minutes, he could neither read a note nor play from memory.

There have been persons who have very suddenly forgotten their own names, which they were about to announce on a visit to a friend.

“Mr. Von B——, envoy to Madrid, and afterwards to Petersburg, a man of a serious turn of mind, yet by no means hypochondriacal, went out one morning to pay a number of visits. Among other houses at which he called, there was one where he suspected the servants did not know him, and where he consequently was under the necessity of giving in his name, but this very name he had at that moment entirely forgotten. Turning round immediately to a gentleman who accompanied him, he said, with much earnestness, ‘For God’s sake, tell me who I am.’ The question excited laughter, but as Mr. Von B—— insisted on being answered, adding that he had entirely forgotten his own name, he was told it; upon which he finished his visit.”

The eccentric impressions of this faculty will be often intermittent, or marked by sudden yet regular remissions.

There is a very curious case on record, of a lady whose “memory was capacious, and well stored with a copious stock of ideas. Unexpectedly, and without any forewarning, she fell into a profound sleep, which continued several hours beyond the ordinary term. On waking, she was discovered to have lost every trait of acquired knowledge; her memory was a blank. All vestiges, both of words and things, were obliterated and gone; it was found necessary for her to learn every thing again. She even acquired by new efforts the art of spelling, reading, writing, and calculating, and gradually became acquainted with the persons and objects around, like a being for the first time brought into the world. In these exercises she made considerable proficiency; but, after a few months, another fit of somnolency invaded her. On rousing from it, she found herself restored to the state she was in before the first paroxysm; but she was wholly ignorant of every event and occurrence that had befallen her afterwards. The former condition of her existence she now calls the old state, and the latter the new state; and she is as unconscious of her double character as two distinct persons are of their respective natures. For example, in her old state, she possesses all her original knowledge; in her new state, only what she acquired since. If a lady or gentleman be introduced to her in the old state, and vice versâ (so indeed of all other matters), to know them satisfactorily she must learn them in both states. In the old state she possesses fine powers of penmanship, while in the new she writes a poor awkward hand, not having had time or means to become expert! During four years and upwards, she has had periodical transitions from one of these states to the other. The alterations are always consequent upon a long and sound sleep. Both the lady and her family are now capable of conducting the affair without embarrassment; by simply knowing whether she is in the old or new state, they regulate the intercourse, and govern themselves accordingly!”

Other instances are more protracted; the impressions previous to a certain moment only being capable of renewal.

Mrs. S——, an intelligent lady, belonging to a respectable family in the state of New York, some years ago undertook a piece of fine needle-work. She devoted her time to it almost constantly for a number of days; but before she had completed it she became suddenly delirious. In this state, without experiencing any material abatement of her disease, she continued for about seven years, when her reason was suddenly restored. One of the first questions which she asked on this convalescence related to her needle-work. It is a remarkable fact that, during the long continuance of her delirium, she said nothing, so far as was recollected, about her needle-work, nor concerning any such subjects as usually occupied her attention when in health.

We read in Dr. Abercrombie, of a lady reduced by disease, in whose mind the memory of ten years was lost. “Her ideas were consistent with each other, but they referred to things as they stood before her removal (to Edinburgh).”

In these instances it is probable that the fault may be referred to the original impression, some disorder or state of the brain causing it to be only superficially impressed during these ten years of oblivion.

There is a curious story in the history of the Royal Academy of Sciences, which Beattie has recorded in these words: —

“A nobleman of Lausanne, as he was giving orders to a servant, suddenly lost his speech and all his senses. Different remedies were tried, without effect, for six months; during all which time he appeared to be in a deep sleep or deliquium, with various symptoms at different periods, which are particularly specified in the narration. At last, after some chirurgical operations, at the end of six months his speech and senses were suddenly restored. When he recovered, the servant to whom he had been giving orders when he was first seized with the distemper, happening to be in the room, he asked whether he had executed his commission; not being sensible, it seems, that any interval of time, except, perhaps, a very short one, had elapsed during his illness.”

Ida. I have read two stories of melancholy romance, which are not mal-à-propos to your arguments, Evelyn, in which the memory of one intense impression has “gone into a being,” influencing the current of every after-thought, and the mind seeming ever after unconscious of all past or present, but the incident of one moment.

A gentleman, on the point of marriage, left his intended bride for a short time. He usually travelled in the stage-coach to the place of her abode; but the last journey he took from her was the last of his life. Anxiously expecting his return, she went to meet the vehicle, when an old friend announced to her the death of her lover. She uttered an involuntary scream, and one piteous exclamation, “He is dead!” From this fatal moment, for fifty years, has this unfortunate female daily, in all seasons, traversed the distance of a few miles to the spot where she expected her future husband to alight from the coach, uttering, in a plaintive tone, “He is not come yet; I will return to-morrow.”

A young clergyman, on the eve of marriage, received a severe injury. During his future life of celibacy, which was protracted to the 80th year, this one idea only possessed his mind, that his hour of happiness was approaching, and to the last moment he talked of his marriage with all the passion of a devoted lover.

Ev. Thanks to your own memory, Ida, for these incidents. That the possession of the faculty of this impression of memory can be demonstrated, we might doubt, were verbal description only employed; but when we see the artist trace the features of a person long lost to us from memory, we know that such ideas existed, and were then re-excited in his mind.

The power of the intellect in retaining these impressions is wonderful. Cyrus is said to have remembered the names of all his soldiers, and Themistocles those of two thousand Athenians.

We have records from Seneca and others, that some will remember, after one perusal or hearing, very long poems; and even have repeated, word for word, the unconnected jumble of a newspaper. Pascal, as we are told by Locke, never forgot anything. Almost equally retentive was the memory of my excellent teacher, Sir Astley Cooper, and hence his nearly unexampled accumulation of facts. The memory of Ben Jonson was retentive to perfection, until the fortieth year of his age. In his youth, he could repeat an entire volume after its perusal; nay, even the whole of his own works, or as he quaintly writes, “All that ever I made.” We know that Bloomfield composed his “Farmer’s Boy” in the bustle of a shoe manufactory, and wrote from his memory.

Astr. I have heard that the particles of the body are constantly changing: if so, how can memory exist in the brain?

Ev. The answer is easy. Because particles of exact similarity are deposited as others are removed. The parts thus regenerated, of whatever structure they may be, still being identical and unchanged in function.

If the dream be an inspiration, Astrophel, it is like “a spirit of the past,” and does not “speak like sybils of the future.”

But ere I offer some analogies of waking memory, in illustration of the causes of the dream, I must again fatigue you by a glance at the physiology of memory; the origin or mode of impression of a sense, and the mode of recurrence of such impression, i.e. the excitement of the dream.

Aristotle has asserted that senses cannot receive material objects, but only their species, or ειδωλον; and Mr. Locke entertained the same idea. For this effect, however, matter must have touched a sense, and its impression, as Baron Haller thought, must have been mechanical. For instance, the rays emanating from a body, and impinging on the retina, or an undulation of sound on the labyrinth of the ear, stamp an image on the brain, by which, (in accordance with a prior observation on illusion,) some minute change is inevitably effected; some minute cerebral atoms are displaced.

If you propose to me that curious physiological question,—in what consists the function of a nerve—in oscillation, or in undulation of a fluid, in electricity, or in magnetism? or how the nerve carries this impression to the brain? or if you desire me to meet the subtle objection, which Dr. Reid advanced against the opinion of Aristotle and of the more modern psychologists,—I might weary you with conjectures like those of Newton and Hartley, that some ethereal fluid was, by the impulse of peculiar stimulus to its nerve, the cause of the senses; or that the mental phenomena are an imparting, or influence of the immaterial soul by corporeal vibration; or that dreams are “ motions of fibres:” and at length, with humility confess this to be a mystery we cannot yet fathom. And this I do the more willingly, as it may prove my devotion to the proper limits of our study; moreover, the question itself is not essential to my argument.

Yet it is certain that external impressions of every object or subject, reach the brain through the medium of a nerve; and when the same fibrils of those nerves, or that spot of brain on which the original image rested, are again irritated by their proper stimulus, or by the same or a similar body, an association is produced, and memory is the result.

For the insurance of this sense of touch, and feeling, and perception, it is essential that the impression at the end of a nerve shall be perfectly transmitted along its course to the brain, so that the brain shall be conscious, or sensible of this impression. For if a nerve be cut asunder, or a ligature be placed on any portion of it between the skin and the brain, the sensation instantly ceases. It is not essential, however, that the contact should take place at the moment of the perception; and the explanation of this involves one of the most curious phenomena of the body’s feeling; and, indeed, the metaphysical mystery of the nature of memory, which is too abstruse a point to be touched by us here. After amputation, the patient may still complain of pain, and heat, and cold, in the dissevered limb; he experiences the memory of a sensation; he feels, as it were, the ghost of his arm or leg. On the night succeeding the operation, the groaning patient has often cried out to me, with pain in the toe or finger of that limb; and when he is moved or shifts his position, he will attempt to hold his leg, or will beg his nurse to take care that she does not touch or run against it. Nay, I have frequently, on asking a patient how he felt, even after the lapse of many months from the operation, been answered, that he was well, but had not lost the pain in his leg; or that his leg or his arm were lying by his side, when perhaps the limb was undergoing the process of maceration in the dissecting-room, or the bones were bleached and dangling in the museum.

The pain, or common feeling of the limb, has stamped an image or eidōlon on the brain, which is not easily effaced; there remains an internal sensibility on this point of memory. If the subject be subsequently presented to the mind by a touch at the end of the stump, or even by a thought, the idea of the limb that had lain dormant, will be re-excited by that wondrous sympathy of brain and nerve, and the result will be a consciousness of having once possessed, or of having experienced a pain in this leg.

And, on this principle of the force of memory, we may explain many of our excited feelings: those which remain after we have been wafted in a boat, or rolled along in a carriage, or whirled aloft in a swing; the nervous impression in the brain is re-excited ere it was exhausted.

Now, an image may be stamped on the brain, in a tumult, without our cognizance or perception, and then revived in slumber;—we wake in wonder at having seen what we never saw or thought of before. Such is the dream of Lovel, in the “Antiquary;” and such the rationale of that tale of mystery, respecting the £6. in the Glasgow bank, which a dream seems certainly to have developed.

And it is evident that these impressions may recur the easier in slumber, because there is no fresh impression on the senses to produce confusion. But then all these images may be presented at one time; so that we may have either a chaos, or a correct concatenation,—an incident, which Hobbes and other early metaphysicians confess to be inexplicable to them.

In the words of Spurzheim, “Memory is the reproduction of a perception;” and Gall believed that “Remembrance is the faculty of recollecting that we have perceived impressions; and memory, the recollection of the impressions themselves.”

I read, that Esquirol has drawn a distinction between hallucination and illusion,—the first is from within, the second from without. The argument I have adduced of memory and impression,—the one at the beginning, the other at the end, of nerves,—will, I think, illustrate this perfectly. Hallucination, being internal, is of the past; illusion, external,—of the present.

Another metaphysician, Bayle, it is clear, was not ignorant of the basis of phrenology, or of this difference, when he alludes to “certain places on the brain, on which the image of an object, which has no real existence out of ourselves, might be excited.”