In that world we are excited to joy, to grief; we are moved to pity, we are stirred to anger; and yet these emotions are aroused by things that do not exist. Time seems to have lost its landmarks; distance offers no barriers; the dead return and the past comes once again to cheer or to grieve us.
We live in a land of Dreams. Many of the thoughts that pass thru our brains are forgotten before we awake. It often happens that people talk in their sleep, thus proving that they are dreaming, but on being awakened they deny that they dreamed, for their dreams have left no trace upon their memory.
The question whether we ever sleep without dreaming is as old as the days of the ancient Greek philosophers, and there are many able authorities on both sides of the question.
Locke, a great writer on mental phenomena, is of the opinion that dreaming is not always present during sleep; but many of the ancient as well as the modern writers contend that the mind is never at rest but continues uninterruptedly even in sleep, and that to cease to dream would be to cease to live.
Sir William Hamilton argues as follows: “When we dream, we are assuredly asleep, but the mind is not asleep, because it thinks. It is therefore manifest that mental processes may go on even tho the body is unconscious. To have no recollection of our dreams does not prove that we have not dreamed, altho the dream may have left no trace on our memories.”
Dreams, like our waking thoughts, are dependent on the laws of association. Altho the senses, are usually torpid in sleep, some of them continue to transmit to the mind imperfect sensations which they receive. Experiments have been tried to determine how far external impressions will cause dreams. A bottle of hot water applied to the feet of a sleeping man caused him to dream that he was on the crater of a volcano and that the hot earth was scorching his feet. Another man, having a blister applied to his head, dreamed that he was being scalped by Indians. A match suddenly lit may cause a man to dream of a terrible storm with lightning and thunder. Darwin relates the case of a man who was born deaf and dumb, and who never dreamed that he conversed with others except thru the sign language. So, also, a blind man never dreams of seeing vivid colors. Thus we see that our dreams are in many cases dependent upon our senses.
The condition of our digestion may also influence our dreams. If the digestive functions are properly performed, our dreams are apt to be pleasant, whereas every one knows the torturing dreams that may follow an indigestible supper of Welsh rabbit or lobster. In the same way the dreams that are caused by opium or other drugs or by intoxicating liquors are apt to be of a disagreeable nature.
The mind works with wonderful rapidity during sleep. A person who is suddenly awakened by a loud noise may dream of many things in the short second before he awakens. A long story may spin itself out in his brain,—adventure, robbery, war,—until he is awakened by what he believes is a shot. A certain writer was suddenly aroused from a sound sleep by a few drops of water sprinkled on his face. He dreamed of the events of an entire life in which sorrow and happiness were mingled, of a fight on the banks of a stream into which an enemy plunged him. We can dream more in a minute of time than we can enact in a day.
So, too, dreams are often characteristic of the peculiar life and thoughts of the dreamer. A miser will dream of saving money, a merchant of business deals, a musician of melody, etc. As a general thing our dreams are wanting in coherence. They do not seem true to life. They mix together things that are absurd and unconnected. We never dream of the past as a thing that is past, but as a reality. People that are long dead appear to us as living.