“I lately dreamed that I walked upon the banks of the great canal in the neighborhood of Glasgow. On the side opposite to that on which I was, and within a few feet of the water, stood the splendid portico of the Royal Exchange. A gentleman whom I knew was standing upon one of the steps, and we spoke to each other. I then lifted a large stone and poised it in my hand, when he said that he was certain I could not throw it to a certain spot, which he pointed out. I made the attempt, and fell short of the mark. At this moment a well-known friend came up, whom I knew to excel at putting the stone; but, strange to say, he had lost both his legs, and walked upon wooden substitutes. This struck me as exceedingly curious, for my impression was that he had only lost one leg, and had but a single wooden one. At my desire he took up the stone, and, without difficulty, threw it beyond the point indicated by the gentleman upon the opposite side of the canal. The absurdity of this dream is extremely glaring, and yet, on strictly analyzing it, I find it to be wholly composed of ideas which passed through my mind on the previous day, assuming a new and ridiculous arrangement. I can compare it to nothing but to cross reading in the newspapers, or to that well-known amusement which consists in putting a number of sentences, each written on a separate piece of paper, into a hat, shaking the whole, then taking them out, one by one, as they come, and seeing what kind of medley the heterogeneous compound will make when thus fortuitously put together. For instance, I had, on the above day, taken a walk to the canal along with a friend. On returning from it, I pointed out to him a spot where a new road was forming, and where, a few days before, one of the workmen had been overwhelmed by a quantity of rubbish falling upon him, which fairly chopped off one of his legs, and so much damaged the other that it was feared amputation would be necessary. Near this very spot there is a park, in which, about a month previously, I practiced throwing the stone. On passing the Exchange, on my way home, I expressed regret at the lowness of its situation, and remarked what a fine effect the portico would have were it placed upon more elevated ground. Such were the previous circumstances, and let us see how they bear upon the dream. In the first place, the canal appeared before me. 2. Its situation is an elevated one. 3. The portico of the Exchange occurring to my mind as being placed too low became associated with the elevation of the canal, and I placed it close by on a similar altitude. 4. The gentleman I had been walking with was the same whom in the dream I saw standing upon the steps of the portico. 5. Having related to him the story of the man who lost one limb and had a chance of losing another, this idea brings before me a friend with a pair of wooden legs, who, moreover, appears in connection with patting the stone, as I knew him to excel at that exercise. There is only one other element in the dream which the preceding events will not account for, and that is the surprise at the individual referred to having more than one wooden leg. But why should he have even one, seeing that in reality he is limbed like other people? This also I can account for. Two years ago he slightly injured his knee while leaping a ditch, and I remember jocularly advising him to get it cut off. I am particular in illustrating this point with regard to dreams, for I hold that if it were possible to analyze them all, they would invariably be found to stand in the same relation to the waking state as the above specimen. The more diversified and incongruous the character of a dream, and the more remote from the period of its occurrence the circumstances which suggested it, the more difficult does its analysis become; and, in point of fact, this process may be impossible, so totally are the elements of the dream often dissevered from their original sense, and so ludicrously huddled together.”
A dream which Professor Maas,[74] of Halle, relates as having occurred to himself, affords an excellent example of the dependence of dreams upon actual events, and shows how these latter are distorted and perverted by the imagination of the sleeper.
“I dreamed once,” he says, “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 burned them to ashes.”
In analyzing the circumstances which gave rise to this dream, Professor Maas relates the following events, which constituted its basis:
“On the preceding evening 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 which 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 crystal of my watch, which I held in my hand, and the fragments fell among the papers; hence no further 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 burned, not the desk itself, to which, being of comparatively little value, the attention was not directed.”
Feuchtersleben[75] takes the same view of dreaming as that enunciated in this chapter. Thus he says:
“Dreaming is nothing more than the occupation of the mind in sleep with the pictorial world of fancy. As the closed or quiescent senses afford it no materials, the mind, ever active, must make use of the store which memory retains; but as its motor influence is likewise organically impeded, it cannot independently dispose of this store. Thus arises a condition in which the mind looks, as it were, on the play of the images within itself, and manifests only a faint or partial reaction.”
Locke[76] contends that “the dreams of a sleeping man are all made up of the waking man’s ideas oddly put together.”
Observation and reflection show us that the mind originates nothing during sleep; it merely remembers—and often in the most chaotic manner—the thoughts, the fancies, the impressions which have been imagined or received by the individual when awake. Sometimes ideas are reproduced in dreams exactly as they have occurred to us in our waking moments, and this may take place night after night with scarcely the alteration of a single circumstance. A friend informs me that he is very subject to dreams of this character, and that on some occasions the repetition has taken place as many as a dozen times.
A very striking instance of this kind occurred to me a few years since, and made a deep impression on my mind. I had just read Schiller’s ode to Laura, as translated by Sir E. Bulwer Lytton, beginning,