Nearly always these partake of the nature of the ordinary dream, as can be seen by a careful analysis of their conditions, and are mere coincidences occupying a very brief space of time. A typical example of this is to be found in one of the stories told by Camille Flammarion, the French astronomer, in his book "The Unknown." A young man who had fallen in love with a young woman was deeply grieved to be parted from her by the injunction of parents. Separated by a long distance, they kept up a clandestine [{675}] correspondence for more than a year. For a considerable period, however, he had not heard from her, and he was beginning to be anxious lest anything had happened to her. One night she appeared to him in a dream in his room in white garments with a pale face and, placing her cold hand in his, she bade him good-bye. He awoke with a start. He found it difficult to sleep and was very anxious about her. The next day he learned that she had died the night before and concluded that his dream was a last message from her. The end of the story, however, as it is told, spoils this nice sentimental conclusion. When he awoke he found he had in his hand a glass of ice water which had been standing on the table beside him. The grasping of this had awakened him. During the awakening process the thoughts of her in his mind gathered round the cold sensation in his hand and gave him the dream of her and the last farewell.
There are many instances in which dreams of future events seem to come true. Indeed, so many of these stories have been told that it is hard to persuade some people that dreams have no meaning and can have no meaning. By this we mean that they can by no possibility represent prophetic foresight. What patients need to be made to understand is that dreams represent only straggling sensations trying to get into our consciousness, just barely succeeding, and then arousing trains of ideas unconnected in themselves, but which we connect afterwards when we recollect our dreams. This whole subject has been studied so thoroughly in Maury's work on "Le Sommeil et les Rêves" about the middle of the last century and Freud "Ueber den Traum" and Sante de Sanctis' "I Sogni" Turin, 1899, at the end of the century, that there can be no further doubts about the matter for those who are open to conviction. Most people, however, want to believe that their dreams mean something. They like to think that they are in some way picked out from the multitude and that their dreaming has a significance more than is accorded to other people. It is, indeed, this self-centeredness that makes for the belief in premonitions and prophetic dreams and, as in all cases, these feelings work out their own revenge.
If they will listen to reason, however, most people may be rather readily convinced that their dreams cannot have any serious significance. In the chapter on [Premonitions] we have already called attention to the situation that exists with regard to the possibility of future events giving information of themselves in advance of their happening. Simultaneous events may perhaps in some way give warnings. The possibility of action on the mind at a distance, especially where minds are involved, has been discussed and admitted. The cases in which it is supposed to have happened are, to my mind, all dubious and are mere coincidences. For future events, however, there is no possible physical explanation. When we turn to explanations in the borderland between spirit and matter we find nothing satisfactory. The future event exists nowhere. No spirit even knows it; it is dependent on human free will. To the Creator it is known only as a contingent possibility dependent on free will. The information does not come from Him, for then there would be more design in these incidents. Such dreams would effect some serious purpose, while usually they have but minor significance in the stories as told and they often concern only the most trivial things.
What is thus true of premonitions can readily be applied to dreams. [{676}] There is no reasonable source of information with regard to future events. What, then, are we to say of the dreams that come true? There is no doubt that dreaming is extremely common. Probably, as was said, we never sleep without dreams. There are a billion dreams at least, probably many billions of dreams every night, then, in this little world of ours. When these are startling they cling to us. It would be surprising if some of them did not come true. Indeed, it is inevitable, according to the theory of probabilities, that some of them will connect themselves directly with future events. We have a few thousands of such startling coincidences in the history of the race. Out of these have been made all the data supposed to underlie the teaching that dreams have a prophetic significance. It is much easier to understand with regard to dreams than even with regard to telepathy coincidence explains all the supposedly wonderful warnings of events that actually happen after we have had apparently premonitory dreams.
An interesting example of a premonition that did not come true, the subject of which was sure that it was a waking premonition and not a dream, though it seems more likely that it was as suggested by the narrator a sleep vision, is told by Sir Arthur Mitchell in his "Dreaming, Laughing, Blushing" (London, 1905). A number of scientists who discussed the story declared that if it had only come true it would have been one of the most startling manifestations of premonition and of the clairvoyant power of dreams, or at least of their telepathic significance, that we have ever had. It involved so many distinguished scientists that there could have been no doubt about it. It was so detailed and those details were known to so many authorities in science, that it would have carried great weight and it would have been extremely difficult to have people accept it as a mere coincidence. It is easy to see now after the event that, if it had been fulfilled, it would have been, in spite of its startlingness, a mere coincidence. Since it was not fulfilled, however, it represents one of the best evidences that we have for the insignificance of premonitory or telepathic dreams.
Sir William T. Gairdner, K. C. B., whose interesting typhus delirium experience appears in the paper by Professor Coates on "Sleep, Dreams and Delirium" (Glas. Med. Jour., Vol. xxxviii, 1892, pp. 241-261), has written to me about his dreams generally, and he concludes his letter with the narrative of a dream, which, as he correctly says, "if it had only fulfilled itself, might have become famous." He prefaces the narrative by this statement: "In all my individual experience, now extending over more than the usual term of life, I have never met with anything suggestive in the remotest degree of telepathy or second sight, or of dream prophecies or any other fact bearing on the marvellous." He then goes on to tell the dream to which I have referred. "In crossing the Atlantic In 1891," he says, "in delightful weather and perfect bodily health, and without a shade of anxiety on my mind so far as I was aware (in waking consciousness), I was suddenly aroused in the very early morning, say, three or four a. m., out of a perfectly sound, and, as I should call it, dreamless sleep, by the apparition of a telegram written on the usual paper, and presumably from home, in these words: 'Miss Dorothea died at ——,' all the rest being blurred and indistinct, but these words having a startling distinctness and a vivid sense of reality. I was not, I think, in the least degree alarmed at first, and certainly had no superstition about it on discovering that it was only a dream; but, failing to get any more sleep, I rose early, took my bath as usual, and went on deck, where I had to repeat the story of my dream to each one of some three or four companions who were on board, of whom I will only mention Sir. John Batty Tuke, Professor Young of Owens College, and Professor [{677}] Cunningham, then of Trinity College, Dublin. Any of these gentlemen will confirm my saying that I attached no special importance to this dream in the way of a scare or a superstition, but in this way it got abroad to a certain extent within a small circle on board in such a way as would have ensured it a widespread fame had it only come true. In discussing the matter at breakfast I remarked (alluding to telepathy) that the telegram was clearly, judging from its terms, not from my wife or any member of my immediate family, and could only have been despatched by a servant or some one with whom I could not be supposed to be in telepathic rapport. From this point of view it clearly refuted itself, and yet the effect upon my mind was such that, upon arriving at New York, I at once despatched a telegram announcing my arrival and making inquiry, the reply to which showed that the family were pursuing a quite undisturbed course at St. Andrews."
Sir William describes himself as aroused out of sound sleep by the apparition of a telegram, but I think this only means that he became suddenly awake on seeing the telegram during sleep. He does not say whether he knew in his dream that he was a passenger on a great ship on the mid-ocean, but he says that the telegram was written on the usual paper by which I take it that he means the paper used here on shore.
If it happened that the death of Miss Dorothea took place about the time of the appearance of the telegram to so distinguished a man as Sir William in his sleep, I scarcely think there would be any more startling record of a so-called telepathic message. But most happily the death did not take place, so that the story of the dream will be forgotten. Tens of thousands of similar dream stories have that fate.
Children's Dreams.—There is an old tradition that to tell our dreams causes them to come back, or at least to recur in some other form. This tradition is so old and so universal that probably there is more in it than might at first be thought. This emphasizing of certain forms of unconscious cerebration probably encourages their repetition, or, at least, the repetition of further processes of the same kind. There seems to be no doubt, too, that the reading of certain kinds of imaginative writing and the looking at exciting pictures sometimes leads to dreams about them. Certainly children should not be told terrifying stories and the more nervous they are and the more affected they are by such stories, which to some people make renewed temptations to tell them, the more should they be avoided.
Any physician who has had much experience with city children, especially in New York City, is likely to know how exciting, tragic and, above all, melodramatic scenes serve as the basis for disturbing dreams and night terrors. They will not, of course, in vigorous, healthy and strong-minded children, but these are the ones who are most prone to play out of doors and so are likely to be less bothered. Just the nervous, old-fashioned, delicate children who prefer the theater to sports of other kinds, are likely to be most affected in this unfortunate way. The scenes become so real to children that they impress them very deeply and are readily rehearsed in the unconscious cerebration of sleep. Many a child sees in its dreams someone, often a near relative, fastened on the carriage of a sawmill and inevitably approaching a buzz-saw, or fastened inextricably to the rails while an express train thunders down on them. That they should wake up with a start and a scream of terror and lose most of their night's sleep and disturb that of others, is not surprising. It is well known how witnessing actual danger, as of an automobile accident, or a railroad wreck, disturbs a child's imagination for long after; and its theater experiences are almost as actual as the reality.
Many of the colored supplements of Sunday newspapers seem to be particularly undesirable literature for children in this respect, though, of course, there are many other reasons why children should not be encouraged to look at them. It is not unusual for the newspapers to give lurid pictures of wonderful dreams or things that happen in dreams. This is undoubtedly a suggestion that acts in causing nearly all children, but especially those of nervous organization, to dream much more than would ordinarily be the case. It recalls the old warning about telling dreams. These sets of pictures certainly serve to develop the imagination of the child along undesirable lines. Possibly some of them which emphasize the fact that after eating certain very undesirable foods, dreams are much more likely to come than at other times may not be without their prophylactic sanitary value, but this is a doubtful advantage compared to the psychic harm that they bring. I am not of those who would limit the fairy stories and other pleasant essays in imagination which delight children so much and form a desirable part of their education, but artistic effort that is terrifying or deterrent, whether with pen or brush, should be kept away from them until after their mental control is well established. Children will probably dream anyhow, and, therefore, should have a pleasant fund of imaginative material as a basis for their dreams.