Light fumes are merry, grosser fumes are sad,
Both are the reasonable soul run mad;
And many monstrous forms in sleep we see,
That neither were, nor are, nor e’er can be.”
The little variations in the tissue of a dream are not rectified by judgment. So the vision may have led us to the very consummation of the highest hopes with love and beauty, and then, if an object even of degradation or deformity shall cross the dream, an association shall be formed imparting a feeling of loathing and horror.
You may take Hobbes’ illustration, Astrophel, which you will probably prefer to mine. Hobbes says of the compositions of phantoms, “Water when moved at once by divers movements, receiveth one motion compounded of them all; so it is in the brain, or spirits stirred by divers objects; there is composed an imagination of divers conceptions that appeared single to the sense; as sense at one time showeth the figure of a mountain, at another of gold, and the imagination afterwards composes them into a golden mountain.”
I believe Parkhurst also will tell you, that the Hebrew word for dream, refers to things erroneously viewed by the senses; for each may assume, individually, an intimate accordance with another, although the first and last appear perfectly incongruous, as the Chinese puzzle will be a chaos, if its pieces be wrongly placed; a faulty rejoining, in fact, of scenes and objects reduced to their constituent elements.
“I dreamed once,” said Professor Maass, of Halle, “that the pope visited me. He commanded me to open my desk, and he carefully examined all the papers it contained. While he was thus employed, a very sparkling diamond fell out of his triple crown into my desk, of which, however, neither of us took any notice. As soon as the pope had withdrawn, I retired to bed, but was soon obliged to rise on account of a thick smoke, the cause of which I had yet to learn. Upon examination, I discovered that the diamond had set fire to the papers in my desk, and burnt them to ashes.”
This dream deserves a short analysis, on account of the peculiar circumstances which occasioned it. “On the preceding evening,” continues Professor Maass, “I was visited by a friend, with whom I had a lively conversation upon Joseph II.’s suppression of monasteries and convents. With this idea, though I did not become conscious of it in the dream, was associated the visit which the pope publicly paid the emperor Joseph at Vienna, in consequence of the measures taken against the clergy; and, with this again was combined, however faintly, the representation of the visit which had been paid me by my friend. These two events were by the subreasoning faculty compounded into one, according to the established rule—that things which agree in their parts, also correspond as to the whole; hence the pope’s visit was changed into a visit paid to me. The subreasoning faculty, then, in order to account for this extraordinary visit, fixed upon that which was the most important object in my room, namely, the desk, or rather the papers it contained. That a diamond fell out of the triple crown, was a collateral association, which was owing merely to the representation of the desk. Some days before, when opening the desk, I had broken the glass of my watch, which I held in my hand, and the fragments fell among the papers; hence no farther attention was paid to the diamond, being a representation of a collateral series of things. But afterwards, the representation of the sparkling stone was again excited, and became the prevailing idea; hence it determined the succeeding association. On account of its similarity, it excited the representation of fire, with which it was confounded; hence arose fire and smoke. But, in the event, the writings only were burnt, not the desk itself, to which, being of comparatively less value, the attention was not at all directed.”
Impressions of memory may not perhaps appear consistent with imagination, but, on the principle I have advanced, it will be found that, although the idea excited by memory be consistent, these ideas may, by fanciful association, become imagination; appearing, on superficial view, to illustrate the doctrine of innate idea. But is this doctrine proved? We may seem to imagine that which we do not remember, as a whole; but, as a curve is made up of right lines,—as a mass is composed of an infinity of atoms,—so may it follow, that what is termed “innate idea,” if minutely divided, may be proved to arise from memory; made up of things, however minute, which we have seen or heard of. Analysis may thus unravel many a “strange mysterious dream.”