No; we will account for the causes of dreams, Astrophel, without the ministry of spirits.
Analyzing, then, the notions of all, it is clear that the essence of the dream is recurrence of ideas. In the words of Walpole,—“The memory retains the colouring of the day.”
Now memory is the first faculty to fail in age, and you know old people seldom dream: the same objects are applied, but there is little or no association, for the brain is dull and feeble; imbecility, indeed, is mad memory.
The two common periods associated with the dream, are the past and the future, involving memory and prognostication; the latter being but the memory of an intention,—an image excited in the mind by analogy. Even when present sensations excite the dream, it is ever associated, as you remember, with something before seen or felt.
The waking thought will thus again modify the dream; and Dr. Abercrombie has a curious illustration of this combining of two minds,—one waking subject, one dream, and one disturbing cause.
The French invasion was the universal topic in Edinburgh; and the city was, indeed, one company of volunteers. It was decided that the tocsin of alarm on the approach of the enemy, was to be the firing of the castle guns, followed by a chain of signals. At two, an officer was awoke from a vivid dream of guns and signals, and reviews of troops, by his lady, who herself was affrighted by a similar dream, with a few associations of a different nature. And whence all this alarm?—the falling of a pair of tongs on the hearth, the noise of which was quite sufficient for the production of their dreaming associations.
Astr. It would seem to me that Evelyn was too anxious to find employment for the brain, in thus imputing so much to substantial causes.
There is a funny scrap, I remember to have read, and of which I may shrewdly suspect my friend to be the scribbler. “Whence we may compare the powers of mind to a court of judicature:—the outward senses being as the solicitors that bring the causes; the common sense, as the master of requests, who receives all their informations; and phantasy (or imagination), like the lawyers and advocates that bandy the business to and fro in several forms, with a deal of noise and bustle; reason, as the judge, that having calmly heard each party’s pretensions, pronounces an upright sentence; and memory, as the clerk, records the whole proceedings.” But say, if the dream is but the memory of an impression, are metaphysics to be counted as a cypher, in our discussion of the nature of intellect?
Ev. Nay, the psychologist must ever call metaphysics to his aid, especially when speaking of the health or disorder of mind: there is an intimate blending of metaphysics and philosophy. But believe not, Astrophel, that I presume to develope that mysterious influence which is going on between mind and matter, so essential to the manifestation of the former, during its earthly condition. The mystery will ever be a sealed letter to the intellect. It is enough that we have evidence of its existence without yearning for deeper insight of final causes. I have assured you that I do not believe thought or reflection, or any act of mind to be material, and speak even with all due courtesy to the abstract metaphysician, and the divine who, doubtless from pure and holy motives, would seek to cut the Gordian knot of this sublime enigma.
Even Dr. Abercrombie is content with observing that the correction of illusions by the sane mind is by the comparing power of reason, but he leaves the illusion itself unexplained. Indeed, the most luminous of pathologists have ever feared to touch organization; Sir Humphrey Davy leaves his beautiful imaginings vague and inconclusive, because he stops short of the brain.