A still more remarkable narration is that of Gassendi,[48] which he thus relates as occurring to himself:
“A good friend of mine, Louis Charambon, judge of the criminal court at Digne, had died of the plague. One night, as I slept, I seemed to see him; I stretched out my arms toward him, and said, ‘Hail thou who returnest from the place of the dead!’ Then I stopped, reflecting in my dream as follows: ‘One cannot return from the other world; I am doubtless dreaming; but if I dream, where am I? Not at Paris, for I came last to Digne. I am then at Digne, in my house, in my bedroom, in my bed.’ And then, as I was looking for myself in the bed, some noise, I know not what, awoke me.”
In all these and like instances, it is very probable the individuals were much more awake than asleep, for certainly the power to judge correctly is not exercised in dreams, involving even the most incongruous impossibilities. As Dendy[49] says, “if we know that we are dreaming, the faculty of judgment cannot be inert, and the dream would be known to be a fallacy.” There would therefore be no occasion for any such management of it as that made use of by Reid and Beattie, or for the recollection of Aristotle. The dream and the correction of it by the judgment would go together and there would be no self-deception at all—not even for an instant. Dreams would accordingly be impossible. The essential feature of mental activity during sleep, absolute freedom of the imagination, would not exist.
Relative to Gassendi’s case, it is impossible to believe that he was fully asleep, and the fact that he was awakened by some noise, the nature of which was unrecognized, and which was therefore probably slight, tends to support this view. Moreover, although he was, as he thought, enabled to detect the fallacy of his dream in one respect, his judgment was altogether at fault in others. Thus he had great difficulty in making out where he was, and actually so far lost all idea of his identity with the person dreaming as to look for himself in his own bed! Certainly an individual whose judgment was thus much deranged would scarcely be able to reason correctly as to the fact of his dreaming or not, or to question the possibility of the dead returning to this world.
My opinion therefore is, that during sleep the power of bringing the judgment into action is suspended. We do not actually lose the power of arriving at a decision, but we cannot exert the faculty of judgment in accordance with the principles of truth and of correct reasoning. An opinion may therefore be formed during sleep, but it is more likely to be wrong than right, and no effort that we can make will enable us to distinguish the false from the true, or to discriminate between the possible and the impossible.
That faculty of the mind—the judgment—which when we are awake is pre-eminently our guide, can no longer direct us aright. The stores of experience go for naught, and the mind accepts as truth whatever preposterous thought the imagination presents to it. We are not entirely rendered incapable of judging, as some authors assert, but the power to perceive the logical force of circumstances, to take them at their true value and to eliminate error from our mental processes, is altogether arrested, and we arrive at absurd conclusions from impossible premises.
But there is no doubt that at times the faculty of judgment is suspended as regards some parts of our mental operations during sleep, and this, to such an extent, that we are like Gassendi in the case quoted, not capable of recognizing our own individuality. Thus it is related of Dr. Johnson, that he had once in a dream a contest of wit with some other person, and that he was very much mortified by imagining that his opponent had the better of him. “Now,” said he, “one may mark here the effect of sleep in weakening the power of reflection; for had not my judgment failed me, I should have seen that the wit of this supposed antagonist, by whose superiority I felt myself depressed, was as much furnished by me as that which I thought I had been uttering in my own character.”
Van Goens dreamt that he could not answer questions to which his neighbor gave correct responses.
An interesting case, in which the judgment was still more at fault, has recently come to my knowledge.
Mrs. C. dreamed that she was Savonarola, and that she was preaching to a vast assembly in Florence. Among the audience was a lady whom she at once recognized to be her own self. As Savonarola, she was delighted at this discovery, for she reflected that she was well acquainted with all Mrs. C.’s peculiarities and faults of character, and would, therefore, be enabled to give special emphasis to them in the sermon. She did this so very effectively that Mrs. C. burst into a torrent of tears, and, with the emotion thus excited, the lady awoke. It was some time before she was able to disentangle her mixed up individualities. When she became fully awake she perceived that the arguments she had employed to bring about the conversion of herself were puerile in the extreme, and were directed against characteristics which formed no part of her mental organization, and against offenses which she had not committed.