As a general thing, however, dreams do not possess any such compactness and coherence. They are usually derived from many different portions of the cerebral organ, even when they seem to exhibit a fluently connected course. Thus, I dreamed, one night, that I was walking in a garden filled with peculiar oriental shrubbery. In this garden I discovered one of my brothers and a friend, who is widely known in literary circles, engaged in flying a kite. With great adroitness they had succeeded in causing the kite-string to describe in the air the outline of the letter Z. I congratulated them on the adoption of so truly scientific a method of kite-flying; telling them, also, that I had once succeeded in making a kite-string describe a fourth line, thus:
As they expressed surprise at this, I told them that in the May number of the Atlantic Monthly, for 1883, they would find an article on this method of kite-flying, written by Oliver Wendell Holmes.
Nothing can seem more absurd than such a sequence of ideas. They follow each other without a break, yet without any logical coherence, very like the order in which ideas arise to occupy the mind of an insane person. Indeed, such dreams suggest the doctrine that the condition of a dreamer’s brain is functionally identical with what obtains in certain forms of insanity. At first sight it would seem as if such a dream could have no possible basis in fact. But a brief retrospection enabled me to trace each individual item to its source in memory, and I was able to construct the following key to the vision: During the previous evening I had been examining a number of East Indian photographs. Among the most remarkable of them was a picture of the glorious gardens of the Taj, at Agra. Another represented the ruined Buddhist tower at Sarnath, a structure remarkable for the numerous triangular figures carved as ornaments upon its sides. Hence the garden and the zigzag kite-string in the dream. During the day before, while conversing with a neighbor regarding the financial misfortunes of an acquaintance, I had remarked that if he had stopped kite-flying, and had settled down to legitimate business at last, he would doubtless do well in the future. Hence the kite. I had recently received an interesting letter from my literary friend in which he had mentioned my brother. Hence the two principal actors of the dream. Just before retiring, that night, I had discussed with my wife the subject of subscribing for a number of periodical magazines. Hence the Atlantic Monthly; and, as the celebrated Oliver Wendell Holmes was the author most intimately associated in my mind with that periodical, his introduction among the characters of the dream followed most naturally in accordance with the law of the association of ideas.
The question is continually asked, why are certain dreams so vivid and so easily remembered, while others are of the faintest and most evanescent character? My own experience leads me to believe that there is a morbid element underlying all unusually vivid dreams. It is not merely because of differences in the depth of sleep. The flitting fancies which occupy the introduction and the termination of sleep, rarely possess any power to fix the attention or to linger in memory. But, if the body be disturbed by anything which causes a departure from the even course of health, such as follows unusual or violent emotion, or an attack of illness, or an insufficient alimentation, or great and sudden changes of atmospheric pressure, the visions of the night become wonderfully exaggerated in every particular. During a voyage at sea, while suffering considerably with thirst, one night I dreamed that a fountain of sparkling water suddenly appeared before me. A young girl dipped a pitcher in the flowing stream, and held it out, all dripping with delicious coolness, for me to drink. Pressing eagerly forward, I awoke, to find myself sitting up in my narrow berth, with hands extended for the draught. Every narrative of shipwreck is filled with similar experiences. Slow starvation is always accompanied by dreams of singular intensity and persistence. As an illustration of the corresponding influence of previous emotion, I may cite the experience of a friend who had been greatly shocked by reading the account of the manner in which the lunatic, Freeman, had killed his little son in imitation of Abraham’s contemplated sacrifice of Isaac. This gentleman dreamed that he was about to sacrifice his favorite daughter. He called her to him; told her that he was about to cut off her head as a religious sacrifice; and took up the knife for that purpose. She exclaimed, “Oh, papa! I have never disobeyed you yet!” and extended her neck, to receive the fatal stroke, when he awoke, trembling in every limb, and drenched with perspiration. For a long time the horror of this dream affected him as terribly as if it had been an actual experience.
It is usually difficult to arrive at any exact estimate of the time occupied by a dream; but it appears certain that in some instances the succession of images excited during sleep must be exceedingly rapid. Abercrombie, in his work on the “Intellectual Powers and the Investigation of Truth,” p. 275, has related several illustrative examples of this fact. In my own experience, one night, as I lay half asleep, I heard the watchman on his round, as usual, examining the fastenings of my front door. At once I began to dream that I was revisiting my father’s house, the home of my childhood. The family were at breakfast in the front parlor, while I walked through the back rooms, examining the doors and the windows, and found it impossible to close and to fasten them. I then took a bath, dressed myself, and walked out into a large garden behind the house. It was filled with tropical trees, of which some were young. The old ones, which I recognized after an absence of thirty years, astonished me by their surprising luxuriance. A lovely, trailing convolvulus, in full bloom, attracted my admiration. After walking for some time I came upon a plum tree which was very small when I left home, and had now reached a height not exceeding twelve feet. This slow growth excited considerable surprise on my part. Returning to the house, I passed the day with my parents, and, at night, undertook to shut up the house, but could not fasten any of the doors or windows. This caused me great uneasiness, for there was a large gypsy camp not far from the east end of the building. My anxiety was presently justified by a noise in the parlor. Hastening to the door, and looking into the room, I saw a large painting disappearing through a hole in the wall next to the encampment of thieves. I immediately cried out, to frighten away the robbers; and was awakened by my wife, shaking me, and asking what was the matter, just in time to hear the watchman walking down the front steps, after the completion of the investigation which had suggested my dream.
Another experience may serve to illustrate the fact that dreams are greatly intensified by illness, and that their duration may be exceedingly brief. Suffering, one night, from an attack of intestinal colic, marked by a rapid succession of painful paroxysms, between which, however, I fell asleep without the aid of medicine, I dreamed in one of these snatches of slumber that I was walking with my brother on the road to the volcano of Kilauea. In my hand were four diamond shirt buttons. They were white, and were covered with fine asbestos wool. My brother’s wife expressed serious doubts regarding their value; but I at once reminded her that the Emperor of China had given to the English Ambassador, for presentation to the Queen of England, a number of diamonds which were so rough and so cheap in appearance that the ambassador, who was also a marquis, could not suppress his contempt as he received the gift. But, when carried to London, and cut by the royal jewelers, their brilliance had astonished everyone. I now desired to deposit my diamonds with a jeweler, for safe-keeping. My brother recommended a house near the volcano, but I had seen another, a few squares further up the road, and accordingly resorted thither. Not finding any satisfactory evidence of business, I retraced my steps to the place first recommended. Entering the door, I found myself in a narrow room, with a long, low counter on one side. Behind this were several men, and several cases filled with jewelry. I handed my buttons to a large, good-looking fellow, who was bustling around in his shirt-sleeves. He immediately put one of the jewels into his mouth, when I heard something crack, as if either his teeth or the diamond had split. Consoling myself with the recollection that, if broken, a diamond could be mended with cement, I asked for a certificate of deposit. While this was being written, the entire building slipped away from over us, and glided down the slope of the mountain, towards the ocean, leaving us, and all that had been within the house, uncovered in the open air. This did not disconcert any one. The jeweler finished his writing; I pocketed the receipt, and with my brother pursued our walk through the mountain forests beyond the crater of the volcano. Presently we arrived at an eminence from which we could look down upon the ocean, and could see the line of the coast prolonged for many miles on either side of a cape of land. The western coast was very grand—mountain promontories rising behind each other as far as the eye could reach. Having feasted our eyes with this magnificent panorama of earth and sea and sky, we turned away in the direction of a grove, in which was visible a large building of stone, with castellated walls, and turrets with pointed roofs at the corners. My brother informed me that this was a German settlement, called Little Clacius. Approaching the castle, we were received in a magnificent hall by a beautiful woman who offered to conduct us through the building. She led us through a series of lofty rooms, splendidly painted, gilded, frescoed, and furnished with inlaid tables and polished chairs. On either side were ranged large vases, in which grew what I seemed instinctively to recognize by the name of the Lace Mimosa—each plant consisting of a flat sheet of green lace-work, like a coralline, studded with lovely pale yellow blossoms. Passing through three such rooms, we entered a fourth, across the floor of which our fair guide whirled herself with a pirouette into the presence of a young woman clad in a richly figured dressing-gown, drawn lightly around her form as she sat in an easy chair, nursing her baby. We were formally introduced to this lady, who received us with the most evident indifference, a circumstance which gave us no concern, for the view from the open window at once engrossed my attention. Directly before me was a shining river, pouring down the mountain side and falling about fifteen feet into a deep dark pool that widened beneath the window from which I gazed. High banks, covered with magnificent trees, sloped down into the water, and cast their shadows across its rippling surface, forming a most charming landscape. The breadth of the scene, the depth of the coloring, the perfection and the multiplicity of all the details that pressed upon the attention, could not have been surpassed in vividness by any real existence. I was admiring the view, and was beginning to feel surprised that so large a river could exist in such a place, when I was suddenly awakened by a renewal of the intermittent pain.
In this example each individual detail could have been easily traced to its source in memory. Pictures, and actually existent scenery furnished the detached items which were combined in a brain that for the time being was released from the control of the reason and the will. Irritated by painful sensations the brain was inordinately excitable, and sleep was less profound. Hence the remarkable intensity of the pictures which were presented to the eye of the mind. The indescribable richness and variety of the vision was probably due to the fact of extensive bodily disturbance, opening a wide range of territory from which impressions were communicated to the morbidly sensitive brain. The unusual permanence of the whole dream in memory may be explained by the observation of Maury, that the ease with which dreams are recollected varies inversely with the depth of the sleep in which they occur. Dreams which are produced in sound sleep are seldom recalled after waking, because they are but slightly connected with impressions received by the brain during wakefulness.[62] But dreams which occupy the mind when sleep is light and partial are excited by cerebral movements which are closely associated with external impressions that originate either at the moment of awaking or immediately after that event; consequently, the bond of union between the ideas of the dream and our waking ideas is nearly if not quite as perfect as the bonds which serve to connect the thoughts that occupy any portion of our conscious life. Hence such dreams are more easily reproduced from memory by any disposition that arouses a retrograde association of ideas.
The dream above related, though excited by an unhealthy condition of the body, was not at all disagreeable. But it is often the case that disorders of particular organs serve to originate visions with special and evident characteristics related to their source. Thus, one of my patients, during an attack of uterine and hemorrhoidal congestion, would dream that a heavy weight had been laid upon the lower part of the abdomen. On another occasion, having gone to sleep, apparently in perfect health, she dreamed of a terrible pain in the head, and that her husband and a physician were applying a cupping glass to the back of her neck. This woke her up, and she found that she was actually suffering with a very severe headache. Another lady, shortly after confinement, dreamed that her baby had teeth, and that it was biting her nipple. Next day she discovered a tender spot in the breast, which rapidly developed a mammary abscess. Forbes Winslow[63] has collected a considerable number of similar cases. In certain instances not only have dreams been originated by special local pain, but the incipient stages of insanity have been revealed by exaggerated dreams. One of my patients, for a considerable time before the evolution of an attack of melancholia, would dream, every night, that a big black dog came into her bed. Another, who suffered with cardiac palpitation, caused by excessive tea-drinking, was often visited in sleep by a mocking imp who seated himself upon the pit of her stomach, and pressed her ribs together with his hands.
The distress or alarm which accompanies such dreams is sometimes sufficient to arouse the sleeper. Often, however, he strives, in his vision, to escape from some impending horror, or to lift up his voice in a cry for help, but the will is powerless to reach the necessary muscles, and no movement results. In such cases the portion of the brain in which the will resides is awake, but the conducting fibres which intervene between the cortex of the brain and the locomotive ganglia in the cerebro-spinal axis are asleep, and cannot be sufficiently aroused to transmit the impulses derived from the action of the will.