“Halfe in a dreme, not fully well awaked;”
and in Sir Walter’s “Antiquary:” “Eh, sirs, sic weary dreams as folk hae between sleeping and waking, before they win to the long sleep and the sound.” So will your philosophy dwindle somewhat in its consequence, Sir Clerke.
Ev. We are not jealous of these glimpses of a poet, Castaly; they impart a value to their rhymes: we enrol such poets in the rank of philosophers.
Ida. Solve me this question, Evelyn: is there any relative difference between the subjects of dreams before and after sleep?
Ev. It has been thought that there is more reference to reality in the first, and more confusion and wandering of imagination in the second; but as nature is often excited rather than exhausted at night, there may be equal brightness with the morning dream, occurring after the recreation and refreshment of sleep.
Cast. We may concede, then, some wisdom to the Sybarites, who destroyed their morning heralds, the cocks, that they might enjoy their matin dreams undisturbed. And I remember one of Pope’s allusions to the virtues of this υπαρ, or morning dream:
“What time the morn mysterious visions brings,
While purer slumbers spread their golden wings.”
Astr. We have often discoursed on the psychology of Locke, Evelyn, and we are now involved in one of its most interesting points—innate idea. Is the dreamer conscious of his dream? It has been asserted, especially by two profound metaphysicians, Beattie and Reid, that they persuaded themselves in their dreams that they were dreaming, and would then attempt to throw themselves off a precipice; this awoke them, and proved the impression a fiction. Were there not present in this, volition and consciousness; and is it not an evidence of an innate idea without sensation?
Ev. No. A train of thought and passive memory may take place without volition, even in a waking mind; a train of reasoning cannot. So feeling and passive thought may in the mere dream, but not a conscious acting on it. The phenomena, and the expressions used to describe these impressions, are precisely illustrative of another condition of sleep, to which we have not yet pointed. This notion of Beattie was but an echo of Aristotle. The Stagyrite himself was subject to dreams of danger, and, after a while, he used to whisper to himself: “Don’t be frightened,—this is only a dream:” the glaring proof that it was not; and yet psychologists still talk of the management of a dream.