Thus, also, do our minds go flitting round apparently during the night. We remember only such things as are brought into our consciousness directly and emphatically during the process of wakening. During our day dreaming we recall only those things which for some reason led us to think consciously about them and then follow out our thoughts to definite conclusions. It is an interesting study to follow back our day dreams through their wanderings to the origin. As a rule, however, we lose track of the connections and after a time remember only some of the wonderful transformations and transmigrations of thought; and so it is in our dreams.
With regard to the frequency of dreaming. Sir Arthur Mitchell in his book "Dreaming, Laughing, and Blushing" (London, 1905), insists on the great probability of the constancy of our dreaming during sleep. He says:
It seems to me that there is no such thing as dreamless sleep. During the whole continuance of sleep, the mind, I believe, is occupied with a certain kind of thinking which works round what I have called hallucinations. I do not expect to be able to prove the correctness of this opinion as to the persistence of dreams all through sleep, but I think that it can easily be shown to be possibly correct. I go further, and say that many things show that it is probably correct. I may not be able to prove absolutely its correctness, but it is proper to bear in mind that it is quite as difficult to prove absolutely that it is not correct. My difficulty is frankly avowed. Many things, however, are taught in biology as being certainly true. In regard to which a like avowal could be made but is not made. There is what has been called a "conjectural biology."
We do not and we cannot remember much of what we have been thinking about while we are awake. This is unquestionably true in a large sense. But, nevertheless, we do not doubt that we have been thinking continuously. We do not suppose that at any time all thinking had ceased, though we may be completely unable to recall what it was about.
He shows further that many writers on dreams and careful students of the subject in the past have come to the same conclusion. Robert Dale Owen, for instance, deliberately endeavored to find out whether he had always been dreaming just before he awoke. After months of observation he records that in every instance he was conscious of having dreamed. Hazlitt, a century ago, tried the same thing for a prolonged period and notes that whenever he was waked, and immediately recollected himself as to possible dreaming, he was always aware that he had been dreaming. Sir Arthur Mitchell himself has tried this same experiment on himself and for a considerable time has scarcely ever failed to put to himself this question about dreaming when he awoke and always got a satisfying affirmative answer. Personally, for several years, I have been interested enough in this subject to recur frequently to it immediately on awaking and I cannot say that I have ever, under those circumstances, failed to find that there had been some vague dream fancies at least running through my mind before I was fully awake. This opinion as to the constancy of dreaming during sleep has many authorities in its support. Sir Arthur Mitchell has quoted a number, some of them distinguished physicians, who add the weight of their testimony to this view:
It is not a new thing to hold that there is no sleep without dreaming—in other words, that dreaming goes on unceasingly all through sleep. I have stated my own [{673}] opinion strongly, but the same opinion has been nearly as strongly expressed by others. Sir Benjamin Brodie, for instance, may be said to express it when he writes, "I believe that I seldom if ever sleep without dreaming." Sir Henry Holland expresses it still more plainly when he says: "No moment of sleep is without some condition of dreaming." Goodwin says much the same thing when he asserts that "sleep is not a suspension of thought"—in other words, that dreaming is sleep-thinking. Dr. John Reid still more clearly holds the opinion, though he does not furnish me with a short apt quotation. Hazlitt, too, may be taken as holding that there is no such thing as dreamless sleep.
Descartes and his followers may, perhaps, be regarded as holding that the mind is unceasingly at work in sleep—even in the "profoundest sleep," though "the memory retains it not," and Isaac Watts says that "the soul never intermits its activity," and that we may "know of sleeping thoughts at the moment they arise, and not retain them the next moment."
Hippocrates, Leibnitz, and Abercrombie have also been quoted as holding that there is no dreamless sleep, and so far as they express themselves on the subject they appear to do so.
A strong weight of opinion in all ages favors the view that during sleep dream-thoughts are constantly running through our mind, though we recollect only those which are impressed upon us at the moment of awaking. We do not even recall those unless, for some reason, we have paid special attention to them. That is just exactly what is true of day dreaming. After it is over we have no idea at all of the thoughts that occupied our minds for hours, though we are all aware that at any given moment, if we turned our consciousness inwards we found that there was something that we were thinking about.
Short Duration of Dreams.—This view of the constant occurrence of dreams during sleep is confirmed by other things that we have come to know as to dreams and dream states. Probably the most interesting of these is with regard to the length of dreams. As our memory of dreams is only such as we have from the thoughts of sleep getting into our consciousness just at the moment of awaking, dreams are never as long as they sometimes seem to be. As a matter of fact, they occupy but a few moments, though in that time a long story may seem to unroll itself. Probably nothing gives more assurance to people who are persuaded that they are losing much rest because of their dreams than this explanation of the brevity of the phenomena. Nervous people wake frequently. Whenever they wake they find themselves dreaming. As a consequence, they acquire the persuasion that they have been dreaming "all the night long," and it is not hard for them to suggest to themselves in the early morning that they are not rested. Nervous people seldom feel rested in the early morning, it is their worst time, and with the occurrence of dreams as a suggested reason for this, they exaggerate the feeling of tiredness with which they get up. A frank discussion of this question of the duration of dreams is often the best possible therapeutic auxiliary for such cases. It gives them a new series of suggestions and, above all, relieves them of unfavorable suggestions.
Prof. Maury of the University of Paris tells a striking story of a very brief dream of his own which shows how short may be the time occupied by what seems surely a long dream. He had been reading before going to bed a very striking book on the Reign of Terror. He dreamt that he himself was arrested during the Terror, taken to prison, that his name was called on the list of the condemned, that he was carried to the guillotine, fastened to the [{674}] board, pushed beneath the knife and that he woke just as the knife struck his neck. Of course he awoke with the usual sense of thankfulness and relief that comes at such times. When he awoke he found that a light curtain rod had fallen from the bed above him and had struck just across his neck. His dream evidently had all come to him during the extremely short time necessary for him to become fully awake after the rod had hit him. His mind was occupying itself with the history that he had read before going to bed. When the rod struck him the long story of his arrest and imprisonment, the journey to the place of the guillotine and the preparations for execution, all came to him as a series of rapid ideas during his coming to consciousness.
It is probable that most of our dreams are not much longer than this. One of my earliest recollections is of an old gentleman coming into the country school during my first year as a pupil and telling us the story of a dream of his of the night before quite as brief as that of Professor Maury. He had fallen asleep after dinner in his chair and, having a cold that stopped up his nose and his mouth being shut, he had the usual dream of being out of breath from running. It took him back to the story of the massacre of Wyoming, near the scene of which the school was situated. He dreamt that for hours he had been running away from the Indians and seemed at last utterly unable to escape them because he was out of breath. He made such efforts in his chair that his wife awakened him and then he found that he had been asleep altogether only a very few minutes.
Significance of Dreams.—Many people are quite sure that their dreams have a definite significance quite apart from any mere wandering of the mind or the suggestion of half-waking and the ideas that gather round sensations not fully in the consciousness. A number of people, for instance, have dreams of events that are happening at a distance at the moment that they dream. The Psychic Research Society of England has gathered a number of these and it is indeed difficult to understand many of them. There seems no doubt, however, that in many cases there is an illusion of memory, by which, after an event, dreams that might be taken to refer in some vague way to the happening, are clothed with a wealth of detail which appears to make them wonderful premonitory representations of future events or repetitions of simultaneous events. One of the most familiar of this form of dreams is what has been called a phantasm of the dying. People dying at a distance seem to have some wonderful power of making themselves appear to very near friends, especially brothers and sisters, and, above all, twins, and to friends with whom they have been very intimately associated. Occasionally such phantasms are seen during waking hours, or what are supposed to be waking hours, though it must not be forgotten that dreams may come very easily and almost unconsciously in short naps, but much more frequently in what are known to be dreams.