But how, all the senses being defunct in sleep, does there remain an internal one which retains consciousness? How is it, that while the eyes see not, the ears hear not, we notwithstanding understand in our dreams? The hound renews the chase in a dream: he barks, follows his prey, and is in at the death. The poet composes verses in his sleep; the mathematician examines his diagram; and the metaphysician reasons well or ill; of all which there are striking examples.
Are they only the organs of the machine which act? Is it the pure soul, submitted to the empire of the senses, enjoying its faculties at liberty?
If the organs alone produce dreams by night, why not alone produce ideas by day? If the soul, pure and tranquil, acting for itself during the repose of the senses, is the sole cause of our ideas while we are sleeping, why are all these ideas usually irregular, unreasonable, and incoherent? What! at a time when the soul is least disturbed, it is so much disquieted in its imagination? Is it frantic when at liberty? If it was produced with metaphysical ideas, as so many sages assert who dream with their eyes open, its correct and luminous ideas of being, of infinity, and of all the primary principles, ought to be revealed in the soul with the greatest energy when the body sleeps. We should never be good philosophers except when dreaming.
Whatever system we embrace, whatever our vain endeavors to prove that the memory impels the brain, and that the brain acts upon the soul, we must allow that our ideas come, in sleep, independently of our will. It is therefore certain that we can think seven or eight hours running without the least intention of doing so, and even without being certain that we think. Pause upon that, and endeavor to divine what there is in this which is animal.
Dreams have always formed a great object of superstition, and nothing is more natural. A man deeply affected by the sickness of his mistress dreams that he sees her dying; she dies the next day; and of course the gods have predicted her death.
The general of an army dreams that he shall gain a battle; he subsequently gains one; the gods had decreed that he should be a conqueror. Dreams which are accomplished are alone attended to. Dreams form a great part of ancient history, as also of oracles.
The "Vulgate" thus translates the end of Leviticus, xix, 26: "You shall not observe dreams." But the word "dream" exists not in the Hebrew; and it would be exceedingly strange, if attention to dreams was reproved in the same book in which it is said that Joseph became the benefactor of Egypt and his family, in consequence of his interpretation of three dreams.
The interpretation of dreams was a thing so common, that the supposed art had no limits, and the interpreter was sometimes called upon to say what another person had dreamed. Nebuchadnezzar, having forgotten his dream, orders his Magi to say what it was he had dreamed, and threatened them with death if they failed; but the Jew Daniel, who was in the school of the Magi, saved their lives by divining at once what the king had dreamed, and interpreting it. This history, and many others, may serve to prove that the laws of the Jews did not forbid oneiromancy, that is to say, the science of dreams.
SECTION IV.
Lausanne, Oct. 25, 1757.