[87] The fundamental character of emotion in dreams has been more or less clearly recognised by various investigators. Thus C. L. Herrick, who studied his own dreams for many months, found that the essential element is the emotional, and not the ideational, and that, indeed, when recalled at once, with closed eyes and before moving, they were nearly devoid of intellectual content (Journal of Comparative Neurology, vol. iii. p. 17, 1893). R. MacDougall considers that dreaming is 'a succession of intense states of feeling supported by a minimum of ideational content,' or, as he says again, more accurately, 'the feeling is primary; the idea-content is the inferred thing' (Psychological Review, vol. v. p. 2). Grace Andrews, who kept a record of her dreams (American Journal of Psychology, October 1900), found that dream emotions are often stronger and more vivid than those of waking life; 'the dream emotion seems to me the most real element of the dream life.' P. Meunier, again ('Des Rêves Stéreotypés,' Journal de Psychologie Normale et Pathologique, September-October 1905), states that 'the substratum of a dream consists of a cœnæsthesia or an emotional state. The intellectual operation which translates to the sleeper's consciousness, while he is asleep, this cœnæsthesia or emotional state is what we call a dream.'
[88] The night-terrors of children have frequently been found to have their origin in gastric or intestinal disturbance. Graham Little brings together the opinions of various authorities on this point, though he is himself inclined to give chief importance to heart disease producing slight disturbances of breathing, since he has found that in nearly two-thirds of his cases (17 out of 30) night-terrors were associated with early heart disease (Graham Little, 'The Causation of Night-Terrors,' British Medical Journal, 19th August 1899). It should be added that night-terrors are more usually divided into two classes: (1) idiopathic (purely cerebral in origin), and (2) symptomatic (due to reflex disturbance caused by various local disorders); see e.g. Guthrie, 'On Night-Terrors,' Clinical Journal, 7th January 1899. J. A. Symonds has well described his own night-terrors as a child (Horatio Brown, J. A. Symonds, vol. i.). Lafcadio Hearn (in a paper on 'Nightmare-Touch' in Shadowings) also gives a vivid account of his own childish night-terrors.
[89] It has not, I believe, been pointed out that such dreams might be invoked in support of the James-Lange or physiological theory of emotion, according to which the element of bodily change in emotion is the cause and not the result of the emotion.
[90] This physiological symbolism was clearly apprehended long ago by Hobbes: 'As anger causeth heat in some parts of the body when we are awake; so when we sleep the overheating of the same parts causeth anger, and raiseth up in the brain the imagination of an enemy. In the same manner as natural kindness, when we are awake, causeth desire and desire makes heat in certain other parts of the body; so also, too much heat in those parts, while we sleep, raiseth in the brain an imagination of some kindness shown. In sum, our dreams are the reverse of our waking imaginations; the motion, when we are awake, beginning at one end, and when we dream at another' (Leviathan, Part 1. ch. 2).
[91] 'The pains of disappointment, of anxiety, of unsuccess, of all displeasing emotions,' remarks Mercier (art. 'Consciousness,' Tuke's Dictionary of Psychological Medicine), 'are attended by a definite feeling of misery which is referred in every case to the epigastrium.' He adds that the pleasures of success and good repute, aesthetic enjoyment, etc., are also attended by a definite feeling in the same region. This fact indicates the extreme vagueness of organic sensation. There is in fact much uncertainty and great difference of opinion as to the nature, and even the existence, of organic sensation; see e.g. a careful summary of the chief views by Dr. Elsie Murray, 'Organic Sensation,' American Journal of Psychology, July 1909.
[92] More than ten years later, the same dreamer, who had entirely forgotten the circumstances of this dream, again had a vivid dream of murder after eating pheasant at night; this time it was she herself who was to be killed, and she awoke imagining that she was struggling with the would-be murderer.
[93] F. Greenwood, Imagination in Dreams, p. 31.
[94] Dreams of railway travelling, and especially of losing trains, are not always associated with headache or any other recognisable condition. They constitute a very common type of dream not quite easy to explain. Dr. Savage mentions, for instance, that in his own case scarcely a week passes without such a dream, though in real life he scarcely ever loses a train and never worries about it. Wundt considers that the dreams in which we seek something we cannot find or have left something behind are due to indefinite coenaesthesic disturbances involving feelings of the same emotional tone, such as an uncomfortable position or a slight irregularity of respiration. I have myself independently observed the same connection, though it is not invariably traceable.
[95] E. H. Clarke, Visions, p. 294.
[96] An amusing, though solemn, interpretation of an ordinary dream of murder, railway travelling, and impending death, as experienced by Anna Kingsford, is furnished by her friend and biographer, Edward Maitland, Anna Kingsford, vol. i. p. 117.