The transition from sleep is very natural to that of dreams, the wonderful and mysterious phenomena of that state, the ideal transactions and vain illusions of the mind. According to Wolfius, an eminent philosopher of Silesia, every dream originates in some sensation, and is continued by the succession of phantoms; but no phantasm can arise in the mind without some previous sensation. And yet it is not easy to confirm this by experience, it being often difficult to distinguish those slight sensations, which give rise to dreams, from phantasms, or objects of imagination.[81] The series of phantasms which thus constitute a dream, seems to be accounted for by the law of the imagination, or association of ideas; though it may be very difficult to assign the cause of every minute difference, not only in different subjects, but in the same, at different times, and in different circumstances. And hence M. Formey, who adopts the opinion of Wolfius, concludes, that those dreams are supernatural, which either do not begin by sensation, or are not continued by the law of imagination.[82]
The opinion is as old as Aristotle, who asserted, that a dream is only the [Greek: Phantasma] or appearance of things, excited in the mind, and remaining after the objects are removed.[83] The opinion of Lucretius, translated in our motto, was likewise that of Tully.[84] Locke also traces the origin of dreams to previous sensations. "The dreams of sleeping men," says this profound philosopher, "are all made up of the waking man's ideas, though for the most part oddly put together."[85] And Dr. Hartley, who explains all the phenomena of the imagination by his theory of vibrations and associations, says, that dreams are nothing but the imaginations or reveries of sleeping men, and that they are deducible from three causes—viz, the impressions and ideas lately received, and particularly those of the preceding day, the state of the body, more especially of the stomach and brain, and association.[86]
Macrobius mentions five sorts of dreams. 1st. vision—2nd. a discovery of something between sleeping and waking—3rd. a suggestion cast into our fancy, called by Cicero, visum,—4th. an ordinary dream—and fifth, a divine apparition or revelation in our sleep; such as were the dreams of the prophets, and of Joseph, as also of the Eastern Magi.
CAUSE OF DREAMS.
Avicen makes the cause of dreams to be an ultimate intelligence moving the moon in the midst of that light with which the fancies of men are illuminated while they sleep. Aristotle refers the cause of them to common sense, but placed in the fancy. Averroes, an Arabian physician, places it in the imagination; Democritus ascribes it to little images, or representations, separated from the things themselves; Plato among the specific and concrete notions of the soul; Albertus to the superior influences, which continually flow from the sky, through many specific channels.
Some physicians attribute the cause of dreams to vapours and humours, and the affections and cares of persons predominant when awake; for, say they, by reason of the abundance of vapours, which are exhaled in consequence of immoderate feeding, the brain is so stuffed by it, that monsters and strange chimera are formed, of which the most inordinate eaters and drinkers furnish us with sufficient instances. Some dreams, they assert, are governed partly by the temperature of the body, and partly by the humour which mostly abounds in it; to which may be added the apprehensions which have preceded the day before; and which are often remarked in dogs, and other animals, which bark and make a noise in their sleep. Dreams, they observe, proceed from the humours and temperature of the body; we see the choleric dreams of fire, combats, yellow colours, etc. the phlegmatic of water baths, of sailing on the sea; the melancholies of thick fumes, deserts, fantasies, hideous faces, etc. they that have the hinder part of their brain clogged, with viscous humours, called by physicians Ephialtes incubus, dream that they are suffocated. And those who have the orifice of their stomach loaded with malignant humours, are affrighted with strange visions, by reason of those venemous vapours that mount to the brain and distemper it.
POETICAL ILLUSTRATIONS OF THE EFFECTS OF THE IMAGINATION IN DREAMS.
Were we to enter more profoundly into the mysterious phenomena of dreams, our present lucubrations might become too abstruse; and, after all, no philosophical nor satisfactory account can be given of them. Such of our readers therefore, as may wish for a more minute inquiry into the opinions above stated, we beg leave to refer to the respective authors whom we have already quoted. The reader, who is fond to find amusement even in a serious subject, from the scenes of nocturnal imagination, will be glad, perhaps for a moment, to be transported into the regions of poetic fancy. And here we find that the fancy is not more sportive in dreams, than are the poets in their descriptions of her nocturnal vagaries. On the effects of the imagination in dreams, the following effusion, put into the mouth of the volatile Mercurio, is an admirable illustration:—
O, then I see, Queen Mab has been with you.
She is the fancy's midwife, and she comes
In shape no bigger than an agate stone
On the fore-finger of an Alderman,
Drawn with a team of little atomies,
Athwart men's noses as they lie asleep:
Her waggon spokes made of long spinners' legs;
The cover of the wings of grasshoppers;
The traces of the smallest spider's web;
The collars of the moonshine's watery beams;
Her whip of cricket's bone; the lash of film;
Her waggoner, a small grey coated gnat,
Not half so big as a round little worm,
Prickt from the lazy finger of a maid.
Her chariot is an empty hazel nut,
Made by the joiner squirril, old grub,
Time out of mind the fairies' coachmakers:
And in this state she gallops night by night,
Thro' lovers' brains, and then they dream of love;
On courtiers' knees, that dream on curtsies strait;
O'er lawyers' fingers, who strait dream on fees;
O'er ladies lips, who strait on kisses dream,
Which oft the angry Mab with blisters plague,
Because their breath with sweetmeats tainted are.
Sometimes she gallops o'er a lawyer's nose,
And then dreams he of smelling out a suit,
And sometimes comes she with a tithe-pig tail,
Tickling the parson as he lies asleep;
Then dreams he of another benefice;
Sometimes she driveth o'er a soldier's neck
And then he dreams of cutting foreign throats,
Of breaches, ambuscades, Spanish blades,
Of healths fire fathom deep; and then anon
Drums in his ears, at which he starts and wakes,
And being thus frighted, swears a pray'r or two,
And sleeps again.
Lucretius, and Petronius in his poem on the vanity of dreams, had preceded our immortal bard in a description of the effects of dreams on different kinds of persons. Both the passages here alluded to, only serve to shew the vast superiority of Shakspeare's boundless genius: their sense is thus admirably expressed by Stepney: