16 I-
 

 
 ON DREAMS, 
 
 IN THEIR 
 
 MENTAL AND MORAL ASPECTS, 
 
 AS AFFORDING AUXILIARV ARGUMENTS 
 
 FOR THE EXISTENCE OF SPIRIT, 
 
 FOR A "separate STATE," 
 
 AND FOR A PARTICULAR PROYIDEXCE. 
 
 BY JOHN SHEPPARD, 
 
 AUTHOR OF THOUGHTS OX DEVOTIOX, ETC. ETC. 
 
 Oiide 7€ OTTO)? a.<ppwv earai rj ^j/vx'] enetdctv tov cKppovoi 
 awna-oi dt'x" 7ev»|Tat, ovde rovro ireiretafxai. 'AA\' orav 
 aKparof Kut Ka6ap6i 6 vou? eKKptOt), rare Kal ^povifiwra-ov 
 eiKor avTov elvai. — Cyrus, apud Xeiioph. 
 
 " De tels faits, dent I'univers est lout plein, embarrassent 
 plus les esprits forts qu'ils ne le temoignent." — Bayle, Diet 
 Histor. Majus, Note D. Maldonat. G. 
 
 LONDON : 
 
 JACKSON AND W A L F R D, 
 
 ST. faul's church -xard. 
 
 1847.
 
 London: 
 clay, rujnti'.r, hhkao street hill.
 
 TO THE REVEREND 
 
 JOHN STUART HIPPISLEY HORXEK, 
 
 PRESIDENT OP THE 
 
 FROME SCIENTIFIC AND LITERARY INSTITUTION, 
 
 ST^ese iirssags, 
 
 FOUNDED ON LECTURES THERE DELIA-ERED 
 
 IN MDCCCXLV. AND 3IDCCCXLVI. 
 
 ARE RESPECTFULLY INSCRIBED. 
 
 tilGiO
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 These Essays will be found to contain so 
 unusually large a share of citations, that the 
 writer may be regarded by some rather as 
 a compiler of materials, than as presenting 
 thoughts of his own. 
 
 It will be found, however, that — excepting 
 a very few passages introduced as slightly 
 illustrative, or ornamental — the citations con- 
 sist of facts and authorities. Had these 
 been omitted, any opinions advanced could 
 have had but small weight or worth. Nar- 
 ratives of facts demand space : inferences 
 
 A3
 
 VI PREFACE. 
 
 from them may be nought the less conclusive 
 or probable for being expressed with brevity. 
 
 The writer has scarcely anything to offer 
 from his own experience as to dreams ; and 
 this may appear, at first view, a great dis- 
 qualification for treating of them ; yet perhaps, 
 on second thoughts, it will be deemed in one 
 respect advantageous ; as promising, in some 
 degree, more unbiassed thoughts, than as 
 though he had himself received extraordinary 
 impressions through this medium, which might 
 have too much influenced his judgment on the 
 whole subject. 
 
 These Essays are the substance of lectures 
 given at a literary institution ; since en- 
 larged, and considerably modified in form. 
 Tlie request of respected hearers encou- 
 raged their being prepared for the press ; 
 not without a sense of their imperfections, 
 which in the revision and remodelling was 
 much deepened. Hesitation has been at length 
 overruled by considering, that even if the
 
 PREFACE. Vll 
 
 inferences should appear weak or inconclusive, 
 at least the facts collected are worthy to be 
 thus placed in a combined view and arrange- 
 ment, and to be examined by those who may 
 argue from them more forcibly and justly. 
 The utility of studying these phenomena, — 
 for which, at the beginning of the following 
 Essays, the judgment of Dugald Stewart is 
 adduced, — might be further advocated from 
 the opinion of Lord Bacon, who, in several 
 hints, recommends such an inquiry.^ To the 
 instances which follow, very many might of 
 course have been added, and some of them 
 more curious than any which are here offered ; 
 but part of those are anonymous, or of doubt- 
 ful authority ; and others too marvellous, too 
 seemingly artificial, to be entirely credible. 
 There is none which I should be more inclined 
 to insert than the dream of the Elector Frederic 
 of Saxony, which " in substance (writes Dr. 
 
 1 In his work, " De Aiigraentis Scientiarurn," (referred to 
 in Stewart's Elements, vol. i. pp. 11, 12.) See Bacon's 
 Works, vol. vi. pp. 6, 130, 1 33 ; Dr. Shaw's translation.
 
 Vlli PREFACE. 
 
 Merle d'Aubigne) is unquestionably authentic, 
 though circumstances may have been added. "^ 
 It is, indeed, so far attested, that one cannot 
 wholly discredit it ; but yet so expertly and 
 consistently complete in its allegorical adapt- 
 edness, that one cannot but suspect it to be 
 (as D'Aubigne himself intimates) a sort of 
 enlarged or embellished version. Romanists, 
 no doubt, would represent it as an " invention 
 of the enemy ; " that is, either of the party 
 called by them heretical, or more probably 
 of the great " enemy " by whom they assert 
 Luther and that party to have been themselves 
 impelled. 
 
 An intelligent writer ^ has thought fit to 
 state, in regard to dreams which have been 
 viewed as "supernatural," — "of course, we 
 can only conclude that we are ignorant of the 
 natural principle concerned : " he then relates 
 
 * See his History of the Eeforraatiou, (Bevcridge's transl.) 
 vol. i. pp. 200—203. 
 
 2 In Chambers's Edinh. Journal, ISM.
 
 PREFACE. IX 
 
 three or four very striking instances, which, 
 could the authority for their truth have been 
 ascertained, would have been quite appro- 
 priate for this volume ; and he adds, — " The 
 question with many minds will be, are they 
 natural events ? Here we should suppose no 
 enlightened person could hesitate for a mo- 
 ment to answer in the affirmative. As natural 
 events, how, then, are they to be accounted 
 for ? The only answer is, that the principle, 
 if it be one, is unknown to us." 
 
 Now, if " natural " be here meant to denote 
 the operation of general laws, in such a sense 
 as to exclude special and extraordinary de- 
 sign, I have myself to rank among the not 
 "enlightened persons," who cannot at all view 
 such occurrences as in that sense natural. 
 
 It is true, that in another (and unwonted) 
 sense of the word, — surprising deliverances, 
 predictive dreams or visions, and even the 
 miracles recorded in scripture, — might be 
 termed natural, as being parts of the great and
 
 X PREFACE. 
 
 diverse train or system of events which God 
 has preordained.^ 
 
 Yet they widely differ from the common 
 course of events, in being the reverse of 
 ordinary, and therefore (like the creation of a 
 new world, or of a new living creature, if we 
 had been witnesses of these, or if we have 
 good proof of them) they betoken more forcibly 
 the immediate acting of a sovereign mind for 
 an especial purpose. 
 
 1 Bishop Butler holds that " God's miraculous interpositions 
 may have been, all along, hy r/enerallKvis of wisdom." (Analogy, 
 partii. chap. iv. p. 224 ;) and that "there maybe beings to 
 whom the whole Christian dispensation may appear as natural 
 as the visible known course of things appears to us." (Ibid, 
 part i. cliap. i. p. 37.) And Dr. Price, wliile referring to the 
 bishop, says, " Miracles imply no suspension of the laws of 
 nature." "Tlie interposition of superior power imphed in a 
 miracle may be entirely natural." (Four Dissertations, pp. 80, 
 81, and see p. 437.) Dr. Clarke writes, " Absolutely speaking, 
 in the strict and philosophical sense, either noildng is miracu- 
 lous, namely, if we have respect to the power of God ; or, if 
 we regard our own power and understanding, then almost 
 everyth'infj — as well what we call natural as what we call 
 supernatural— is in tlds sense really miraculous ; and it is only 
 usualness or unusuahiess that makes the distinction." (Clarke 
 on the Attribute's, cS:c. p. 375.)
 
 PREFACE. XI 
 
 But the accepted meaning of tlie word 
 " natural " is, something in the orcUnciry train, 
 grounded on laws of so very broad and cus- 
 tomary operation, as not to indicate any par- 
 ticular and occasional plan or interposition of 
 the Divine Mind. If the writer whom I have 
 cited employed the term in the ?f//usual sense, 
 he might just as allowably have said, concern- 
 ing the creation of the first man or the first 
 mammoth, the healing of the ''paralytic" or 
 the raising of Lazarus, " these were natural 
 events, and if such, how are they to be ac- 
 counted for ?" Would he then have chosen to 
 say, — " The only answer is, that the principle, 
 
 if it he one, is unknown to us" ? Certainly 
 
 that would not be the answer of a tJieist ; and 
 I cannot but judge the tendency of the like 
 answer, as given concerning some dreams, to 
 be, unconsciously, atheistic also. Not that 
 I would put any dreams, except the clexirly 
 prophetical ones of scripture, on a par with 
 tniracles: but there are others, as I judge,
 
 Xll PREFACE. 
 
 which more or less approach that character, 
 and which (whether they be termed natural or 
 supernatural) contribute to render a great and 
 i^vaZwa^/e " principle " the more known to us, 
 namely, the special providence of the Omni- 
 scient Ruler. They do not, indeed, actually 
 involve the divine rule or agency more than 
 the commonest sequences involve it ; but they 
 do make it more signally and impressively 
 apparent.' 
 
 Certain writers who have inferred from 
 dreams, as is attempted in the following pages, 
 auxiliary arguments for the distinct subsis- 
 tence of spirit, have been stigmatized as 
 " pseudopsychologists." The stigma, indeed, 
 may have been chiefly aimed at those of 
 them who contend for the spirit's indepen- 
 dency of matter in a sense or degree beyond 
 
 ' Howard's promptness and punctuality in paying his debts, 
 and liis kindness to relations, were as really parts of his 
 beneficence as liis visits to dungeons; yet the former were 
 much less impressively and signally illustrative of that quality 
 than tlie latter.
 
 PREFACE. Xlll 
 
 what facts and sound reasonings can sub- 
 stantiate. 
 
 But Descartes, Sir Thomas Browne, and 
 Addison, have been so named. ^ I had far 
 rather incur the appellation on such grounds, 
 and in such company, than for opinions of an 
 opposite kind to which it might be far more 
 justly applicable. 
 
 Those are most truly, as I judge, "pseudo- 
 psychologists," who, by the assumption that 
 matter is all — that there is no other or spiritual 
 substance, would make the notion of the soul 
 itself a falsehood. That indifference appears 
 to me quite inexplicable, which is expressed 
 by here and there an intellectual person pro- 
 fessing Christian belief as well as philosophic 
 acumen, on the question whether there be 
 really and without metaphor "a spirit in man." 
 
 1 St. Paul must not be placed in the same line. But under 
 the same imputation he must surely come, who doubted if his 
 " visions " were " in the body or out of the body," (3 Cor. 
 xii. 3,) and who expected to be " absent from the body and 
 present with the Lord." (3 Cor. v. 8.) 
 
 h
 
 XIV PREFACE. 
 
 Were we to surrender the great truth that so 
 it is, — that mind, while ever dependent for its 
 existence on the will of God, is really one and 
 indissoluble, a real unit, or spiritual monad, — 
 thus yielding up what consciousness testifies, 
 and both reason and scripture confirm ; thus 
 granting that the soul of Bacon or of Plato 
 might be only a congeries of particles wonder- 
 fully subtile, and his thoughts only agitations 
 or melodies of these, how could we not 
 discern, yet how ward off, at least one de- 
 structive inference ? — how retain the belief of 
 man's unity, continued identity, nay, person- 
 ality : for, except in a spiritual being or real 
 monad, no proper individuality' can be con- 
 ceived to exist. 
 
 ^ The terra " individual," now so vulgarized, it is true, was 
 used by Cicero to describe the " atoms " or " corpuscles " of 
 Epicurus, (De Natura Deorura, lib. i. cc. xxiv. xxv. xxvi.) and 
 it could there only mean physically or actually indivisible ; 
 since those atoms* — corpuscula — were, as the latter name 
 
 ♦ arn)io<:, insccabilis, iudividuus, corpusculum rainutissimurn. 
 — Ilcdcr. el Scajj. Lexic.
 
 PREFACE. XV 
 
 It is true, we have still stronger arguments 
 for this spiritual existence than the phenomena 
 of dreaming supply ; but, in my judgment, 
 where a subject is all-important, even subor- 
 
 distinctly shows, considered as not " unextended." But, even 
 were the mind supposed to be only one of these indiscerptible 
 atoms, and the tenn individual applied to it, — that hyijothesis, 
 while it might remove one difficulty, would leave another 
 untouched, and perhaps induce some greater. 
 
 The learned Howe, indeed, in his masterly and amusing 
 irony against the Epiciirean atomists,* states, that he had " not 
 met witli any that had asserted the rationality of single 
 corporeal atoms," and so had " not fought with any adversary ;" 
 hut adds, that " he knows not what time may produce."! 
 
 Had he Kved to know what German pliilosophy can produce 
 or reproduce, he might have been still more uncertain, gene- 
 rally, as to the possible products of time. 
 
 It is worth whUe, therefore, to notice such a hypothesis. 
 
 No doubt it removes one difficulty by representing the soul 
 or mind as not actually discerptible or dissoluble, i. e. (as we 
 may presume would be meant) except by Omnipotence. But 
 then it still impKes, — whether intending it or not, — that this 
 mind or soul has parts, and parts which are numberless, For, 
 as the great mathematician Pascal MTites, " however smaU a 
 given space may be, we can conceive one less and less to 
 infinity without ever arriving at an indivisible imextended 
 
 * Living Temple, part i. chap. iii. Works, vol. i. pp.44 — 52, 
 folio edit. f Ibid. p. 47.
 
 XVI PREFACE. 
 
 dinate corroborative arguments should not be 
 unnoticed or foregone. 
 
 If these observations, more lengthened 
 than was at first intended, should appear 
 
 point : " * and he adds, " persons who are not satisfied with 
 these reasons," (which he had stated,) " hut persist in the belief 
 that space is not infinitely divisible, must never pretend to 
 master geometrical demonstrations. — It is possible to be a very 
 able man and a bad geometrician." f Again, " a geometrician 
 can no more exist without this principle, than a man ^A"ithout 
 a soul. We perfectly comprehend it to be false, that in 
 dividing a given space we can ever arrive at an indivisible, 
 that is to say, an unextended point." X 
 
 Now, according to the before-named hypothesis, — that 
 rational " atom " wliich constituted the soul or nodnd of this 
 renowned French geometrician, was doubtless a thing or 
 " individual" of parts ; nay, of infinite paris. If it be denied 
 that these parts could — even by Divine power — be actually 
 severed, it still cannot be denied, I presume, that they existed 
 together ; and that they were mentally separable. 
 
 What wonder, then, if this " atom " or " corpuscle," which 
 was the very soul of Pascal, and whose thoughts, in their 
 sublime littleness, " wandered through eternity," was able to 
 demonstrate, as it did, that every " extended " atom must have 
 " parts to infinity," inasmuch as it had in itself a countless host 
 of witnesses to this fact, firmly united, always consistent, never 
 incoherent! We say not that any one of these undivided 
 
 ♦ Pascal's Thoughts, Ed. Glasg. 1838, p. 353, 
 t Ibid. p. .30].. X Ibid. p. 350.
 
 PREFACE. XVll 
 
 too digressive from my immediate subject, 
 they yet cannot be deemed irrelevant to that 
 chief and ultimate design which the title-page 
 announces. 
 
 parts of the rational atom was, by itself, rational, — but that, 
 by the supposition, they aU, being together and inseparable, 
 formed or made up or evolved, a rationality or soul, which, 
 however small, was yet mighty, alike in mathematics, theology, 
 and satire. 
 
 hS
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 ESSAY L 
 
 SECTION I. 
 
 I X T R O D U C T O R Y. 
 
 DuGALD Stewart's views of Dreaming, pp. 3 — C. Scope of 
 these Essays, 6, 7. Views of Materialists— Epicurus, 7, 
 Lucretius, Hobbes, 8. Locke on Unconsciousness, 8. Watts's 
 and A. Baxter's answers, 9, 10. Richard Baxter, 10. Dr. 
 Abercrombie on unremembered Dreams, 10, 11. Dr. A. 
 Clarke, ibid. 11, 12. Catalepsy, &c. Dr. Mason Good, 13. 
 Sir H. Davy, typhus, 14. Apoplexy, H. Unconsciousness 
 not to be proved, 15. 
 
 SECTION IL 
 
 CELERITY. 
 
 Rapidity of thought in dreams, p. 16. Lord Brougham on 
 this, 16—18. Dr. Abercrombie— Atlantic— Skeleton, 18, 19. 
 Lavater, 19. Archbishop Whately, 20. Stewart's remarks on 
 instantaneous thought questioned, 20, 21. Time requisite for 
 waking thought, 23. Body a hindrance — Socrates — Philo — 
 St. Paul, 23. Some -disconnexion from grosser organs in 
 dreams probable — Addison — Lord Brougham, 23 — 25. Associa- 
 tion — Dream of Etna, 25, 26. Irderior organization, 27. 
 Byron on Dreams, 27.
 
 XX CONTENTS. 
 
 SECTION III. 
 
 INVENTIVENESS AND POWER. 
 
 Sir Thomas Browne's experience, pp. 28, 29. Coleridge's Kubla 
 Khan, 30-32. Caedmon, 32. Addison, 33. Objection that 
 these productions are imaginative, 33. Problems in sleep, H4. 
 Dr. Gregory — Condorcet, 34. Franklin — Scottish lawyer, S.'). 
 Richard Baxter — Cardan— La Mothe le Vayer, 36. Tartini, 
 37. Varieties of dreaming thought, 38. Bishop Newton's 
 inference, 39, 40. 
 
 SECTION IV. 
 
 ETHEREAL VEHICLE. 
 
 Manner of separate spirit's acting, p. 41. Mysteries of spirit and 
 of body, 41. Opinions on the "vehicle," — of Newton — 
 Augustin—Broughton— Plato— Galen--Hierocles-The Rabbis, 
 42, 43. Irenaeus— Origen, 44. Scriptural reasons — " The 
 tabernacle."— Hartley— Paley, 44, 45. Illustrated by micro- 
 scopic research, 4G, 47. Broughton on ideas, 48. Author's 
 experience, 49. Mrs. Sigourney, 50. Medicinal dreams, 51, 
 Vivid dreams during languor— Inference from these, 51, 52. 
 
 SECTION V. 
 
 SLEEP OF THE SOUL. 
 
 A dreaminu sleep, p. 53. Dr. Watts and Dr. T. Burnet on this, 54, 
 55. Euler, Hartley and Bonnet on a dreaming state of the 
 soul after death, 55, 5C. Inscriptions in catacombs, 57. 
 Objection, " dreaming not real life," 57 — is real in some sense, 
 58. Bonnet, on the chrysalis— Inward activity, 58. Waking 
 thoughts often dream-like, 59. 
 
 SECTION VI. 
 
 THE "vehicle" (resumed). 
 
 Opinion of Leibnitz— uses of this opinion, pp. 60, 61. Arch- 
 bishop Whately on eternity, 62. Eternal life potential, 63. 
 Centuries of the deceased saints have been a gain, 64. The 
 ideal period of their millennia, 65, QQ. Simultaneous ideas — 
 M'Culloch, 66, Ql . Objection, "that these are hypotheses, 
 and useless," 67. Study of mind vindicated — Physics and 
 metaphysics compared, 67 — 69. Dream of Zimmermann, 69 — 
 72. Its character, &c. 72, 73.
 
 CONTENTS. Xxi 
 
 SECTION VII, 
 
 IMPORTANCE OF OUR INQUIRY. 
 
 Objection, " These arguments superfluous to confirm revelation," 
 p. 74. But antecedent or collateral proofs not to be abandoned, 
 75. May lead to a concern about the great future, 76, ll] 
 Physical science, why sometimes exclusively preferred^ 77. 
 Yet is but secondary, 77, 78. The Christian's and sceptic's 
 prospects contrasted, 78—80. 
 
 ESSAY II. 
 
 SECTION I. 
 
 INTRODUCTORY. 
 
 Objections to the whole subject from \" its obscurity," p. 83. 
 Answer, mystery is universal, 84. Objection from "the imper- 
 fect action of mind in sleep," 85. Sir Thomas Browne, 85. 
 Galen— Antoninus, 86. Negro debate, 86, 87. Recapitulation 
 of former Essay, 87, 88. Further design, 88, 89. 
 
 SECTION II. 
 
 SUPERSTITIONS CONCERNING DREAMS. 
 
 Divination by dreams, 90. Pharaoh — Astyages— Magi— Cyrus, 
 
 91. Quintus Cicero, 92. The profession of interpreter lucra- 
 tive but perilous, 92, 93. Revolt of Cyrus— Nebuchadnezzar, 
 
 92, 93. Grandson of Aristides— Julian— Timur—Tippoo, 93. 
 Brizo in Delos, 94. Priests — Oracle of Faunus, and of Am- 
 phiaraus, 95. Penelope's dream of her geese, 95 — 97. Invention 
 of dreams— Cicero's, of the boy at the Capitol, 97. Probably 
 invented to please Augustus— Superstitions of that emperor, 
 98, 99. Dream of the egg and treasure, 99. Futile and 
 fictitious dreams no disproof that others were providentially 
 ordered, 100.
 
 XXll CONTENTS. 
 
 SECTION iir. 
 
 DREAMS RECORDED IN SCRIPTURE AS SENT OF GOD. 
 
 Declarations as to true and false dreams, pp. 101, 102. Classes 
 and uses of the true, 102—110, viz.— 
 
 I. Protection of God's servants — Abimelech — Laban— Magi, 
 p. 102. 
 
 II. Encouragement of good men — Jacob — Pharaoh's house- 
 hold—The Midianite, 103, 104. Solomon- St. PaulatTroas— 
 .Tudas Maccabaeus, 104. 
 
 III. Impressing reverence for the true God — Pharaoh — 
 Nebuchadnezzar. 
 
 IV. Distinctly prophetic — Joseph's, of the sheaves — Abram's, 
 of his posterity — Daniel's visions — Nebuchadnezzar's dream, 
 105, 106. 
 
 V. Solemn impression of truth — Eliphaz — Elihu, 106, 107. 
 Such dreams were "visions" — the terms often synonymous, 
 108. Dreams of Daniel, 108. Their plurality of uses, 109. 
 Sent of God, 110, — or let unbelievers explain them, ibid. 
 Dream of Joseph — of the wife of Pilate, ibid. 
 
 SECTION IV. 
 
 DREAMS RECORDED IN ANCIENT SECULAR HISTORY. 
 
 Several mentioned in Scripture were sent to heathens— as 
 Abimelech — Laban — Pharaoh — Nebuchadnezzar — Pilate's 
 wife, p. 111. Ultimate object appears to have been the 
 impressing Jehovah's attributes, 112. Some sort of theism 
 among heathens — But polytheism often combined with virtual 
 atheism, 113. Plato atheist — Hebrews known to be mono- 
 theists, ibid. Jews and proselytes manj', through all lands, 1 14. 
 Remarkable dreams were related of eminent persons, 115, 116. 
 Objection, "that they fostered idolatry" — Juno Sospita — 
 Goblet of Hercules, 116. Some paganism better than atheism 
 — Dr. Jortin-Dr.Parr— Baylc, 117. Death of Lucretius, 117. 
 Divine dreams might amend atheistic paganism, 117, 118. 
 Crcesus and Atys, 118. Alexander, concerning Ptolemy, 119. 
 Cyrus in his last days, 120. Socrates in i)rison — Simonides, 
 121, 122. Cicero, on his own dream of Marius, 122. On the 
 whole, theism was tluis aided, 123. Arcadians, 124. Credulity 
 may be imputed — Hut credible because useful, 125.
 
 CONTENTS. XXUl 
 
 SECTION V. 
 
 rSES OF DREAMS OCCURRIXii IX CHRISTEXDOM. 
 
 Objection, " Miracles have ceased : " — But not what may be 
 termed ^'mental miracles," pp. 128, 129. Bayle's acknow- 
 ledgment, 129. Earl of Rochester — Lady Warre's chaplain, 
 129, 130. 
 
 I. Preservation of Life — Grotius— Salmasius, 131. Scottisli 
 clergyman— Frith of Forth, 132, 133. Impression of the Divine 
 agency— Instance in America, 134, 135. 
 
 II. Preparation for distress — Premonition of a father's 
 death, 136. Sight of deceased children, 137. Doddridge's 
 dream, 138. 
 
 III. Awakening, or deepening and revival, of spiritual 
 thoughts — Brazen serpent — Beings with wings, i;^9, 140. 
 Africaner's dream, 140 — 142. General Burn's, 142—144. 
 
 SECTION VI. 
 
 WHAT THE RIGHT VIEW OF OUR OWX OR OTHERS* DREAMS. 
 
 Superstitions not extinct — Sylla — American Indians — South 
 Africans, 146, 147. Under tyrants, unsafe to tell a drer.m — 
 Constantius— Mount Atlas— Claudius— Petrae executed, 147, 
 148. Triviality of dreams — Mercutio — Addison — Titus Tro- 
 phonius, 149, 150, Ludicrous complaints of dreamers, 151. 
 All this cannot set aside other facts — But how discriminate? 
 152. Augustin, on his mother's dream, 153, 154. Monica's 
 gift of discerning, 154. Caution against being prompted to act 
 by dreams, 155 — Yet exceptions have been here adduced, 155. 
 Wherever they oppose Scripture, or second the passions, to be 
 discarded — Hannibal— Timur — Cromwell. 155 — 157. Main 
 use, the enforcement of great truths, 157, 158. Regulation of 
 the mind concerning them, 158 — 161. 
 
 SECTION VII. 
 
 CONCLUDING REMARKS. 
 
 Gratitude for clearer revelation, 162. Rejecters of it— Tran- 
 scendentalism, 1G3. The starry night — Us realities and mys- 
 teries, 163, 164. Science has surpassed all poetry, 164. 
 "Night-thoughts" — Lessons of night, 165. Realities tran- 
 scend all dreams, 166, 167.
 
 XXIV CONTENTS. 
 
 NOTES. 
 
 NOTE A. 
 
 KUBLA KHAN. 
 
 Coleridge and Opium— Kenilworth Castle, in sleep, pp. 169—171. 
 NOTE B. 
 
 lA MOTHE LE VAYER. 
 
 His character and sayings, pp. 171, 172. 
 
 NOTE C. 
 
 On Zimmermann's Dream, p. 172. 
 
 NOTE D. 
 
 THE SCEPTIC AND CHRISTIAN. 
 
 Shelley's Adonais and Milton's Lycidas compared, pp. 172 — 174. 
 NOTE E. 
 
 DREAMS TAKEN FOR FACTS. 
 
 Children — " Nocturnal " — " Rhapsodies " — Black Sam — Watch- 
 fulness over the mind a duty, pp. 175 — 177. 
 
 NOTE F. 
 
 IDEALISM. 
 
 That of Hume, Fichte, Hegel, &c.— Of the Greeks— Hint of 
 Plato— Bishop Berkeley, pp. 177, 178. 
 
 NOTE, (SUPPLEMENTAL.) 
 DREAM OF CYRUS. 
 
 That of the Rev. H. Woodward compared with it, pp. 178, 179.
 
 ESSAY I.
 
 ESSAY I. 
 
 SECTION I. 
 
 This subject will appear to some, in its 
 nature as in its very name, so visionary, as 
 to afford little prospect of real instruction. 
 Yet an inquiry on the phenomena of dreaming 
 was deemed worthy, by the late eminent Pro- 
 fessor Stewart, to occupy a section in his 
 " Elements of the Philosophy of the Human 
 Mind." He states that three questions may 
 be proposed on it ; which I thus abridge : — 
 " What is the state of the mind in sleep ? 
 How far do our dreams appear to be influenced, 
 by our bodily sensations ? What change does 
 sleep produce on those parts of the body, with.
 
 4 DUGALD STEWART. 
 
 which our mental operations are more imme- 
 diately connected, and how does this change 
 operate in diversifying so remarkably the 
 phenomena which our minds then exhibit, 
 from those of which we are conscious in our 
 waking hours?" The second of these ques- 
 tions he refers " to the medical inquirer ;" 
 the third he judges "to relate to a subject 
 which is placed beyond the reach of the human 
 faculties."^ 
 
 The present writer is in no way entitled to 
 enter on those physiological investigations, 
 which the professional studies of others so 
 much better qualify them to pursue. Nor, 
 while examining the first question, " What 
 is the state of the mind in sleep?" will any 
 pretension be made to treat it in a strictly 
 philosophic manner. The aim is to adduce 
 some recorded facts and popular considera- 
 tions which may cast a degree of light on it, 
 and to connect with these some inferences, 
 which, if well grounded, are certainly not 
 wanting in interest and importance. 
 
 In connexion with the speculations of that 
 distinguished inquirer to whom reference has 
 1 Elements, &c. vol. i. p. 327.
 
 DUGALD STEWART. 5 
 
 been made, it may be mentioned, that, since 
 the selection of this topic, some encourage- 
 ment has been derived from a note which Mr. 
 Stewart appends to them, as follows: "The 
 phenomena of dreaming may form an article not 
 altogether useless in the natural history of 
 man ; inasmuch as they contribute to attract 
 our attention to those intellectual powers, 
 from which it is so apt to be drawn by that 
 external world which affords the first, and 
 (for the common purposes of life) the most 
 interesting field for their exercise. In my 
 own case at least," he adds, " this supposition 
 has been exactly verified : as the speculations 
 concerning the human mind, which I have 
 ventured to present to the public, all took 
 their rise from the subject to which this note 
 refers. The observations which I have stated 
 with respect to it in the text (excepting a 
 very few paragraphs since added) were written 
 at the age of eighteen, and formed a part of 
 the first philosophical essay which I recollect 
 to have attempted. — When I was afterwards 
 led professionally, at the distance of many 
 years, to resume the same studies, this short 
 manuscript was almost the only memorial I 
 B 3
 
 6 STEWART. SCOPE OF THESE ESSAYS. 
 
 liad preserved of these favourite pursuits of 
 my early youth ; and from the views which 
 it recalled to me, insensibly arose the analysis 
 I have since undertaken of our intellectual 
 faculties in general." He then adds, "For 
 some indulgence to the egotism of this note, 
 I must trust to the good-nature of my 
 readers." ' 
 
 But apology was not requisite. The note 
 may be very useful, by pointing out to the 
 young the importance and value of a wise 
 direction and employment of thought in 
 " early youth ;" as the frequent and perhaps 
 usual germ of whatever they may achieve 
 that is worth achieving, whether studiously 
 or actively, in the maturity of after life. 
 To me it has suggested the hope, that since 
 this subject of dreaming originated the chief 
 work of Dugald Stewart, it may here, how- 
 ever differently and slightly treated, give rise 
 to some productive or profitable thoughts in 
 the minds of inquiring readers. 
 
 The principal points which it will be en- 
 deavoured in this first Essay to illustrate, are, 
 the rapidity of thought as exercised in 
 ' Elements, vol. i. p. 574.
 
 VIEWS OF MATERIALISTS. 7 
 
 dreams, — and the intellectual inventiveness 
 and power occasionally exerted in dreaming. 
 These facts, it will be argued, appear to cor- 
 roborate other arguments for the immateriality 
 of the soul, and to indicate also its capacity 
 for thought in a state of separation from the 
 present or visible bodily structure. 
 
 In the second Essay it is proposed to ex- 
 amine, and partially confirm, the prevailing 
 impression, that some dreams have been 
 specially ordered for important ends by the 
 ruling Providence of God; yet strongly, at 
 the same time, to discourage a fanciful or 
 superstitious misuse of that persuasion. 
 
 Let me here premise, that we may infer 
 how naturally arguments for a spiritual sub- 
 stance, and a divine Providence, have been 
 deduced by mankind from certain phenomena 
 of di-eaming, when we are aware how solici- 
 tous the philosophic advocates of materialism 
 have been to account for them mechanically. 
 Thus Epicurus, who held that " the soul is 
 a subtle corporeal substance composed of the 
 finest atoms,"' taught that "dreams are the 
 effect of images casually flying about, which 
 1 Enlield, Hist. Philos. vol. i. p. 467.
 
 8 LUCRETIUS. LOCKE. 
 
 from their extreme tenuity penetrate the body 
 and strike upon the mind,"^ which is itself 
 "formed of particles most subtle in their 
 nature."^ Lucretius has presented the same 
 theory in an elaborate poetic dress. Hobbes, 
 among the moderns, has treated of dreaming 
 with the like design.^ 
 
 A philosopher of exceedingly different cha- 
 racter from these, the great Locke, — some of 
 whose opinions have been employed, contrary 
 to his intention, to support the doctrines 
 of materialists, — argues that thought and 
 consciousness are in sound sleep suspended. 
 But his conclusion rests merely on our fre- 
 quent forgetfulness of having dreamed, and 
 on the testimony of one " that was bred a 
 scholar and had no bad memory," who told 
 him " he had never dreamed in his life, till he 
 had a fever."* Such testimony, if ever so 
 much multiplied, could amount only to this, 
 that the deponents had had no dreams which 
 
 J Eufield, Hist. Philos. vol. i. p. 4.70. 2 jij ^ 409^ 
 
 3 Hallam's Literature, vol. ii. p. 4<0i', and A. Baxter on the 
 
 Soul, p. 19G. 
 * Essay on Human Understanding, book ii. c. i. § 14, p. 46, 
 
 fol. edit.
 
 WATTS. A. BAXTER. 9 
 
 they could remember; which actually proves 
 nothing in the case. 
 
 Dr. Isaac Watts, in one of his philosophical 
 essays, commenting on Mr. Locke's opinion, 
 writes, " Often have I awoke from a dream 
 wherein a multitude of scenes has been im- 
 pressed on the mind — yet with utmost labour 
 I could not recollect enough to fill up one 
 minute, but only short broken hints of the 
 dreaming scene, which also in a little time 
 vanished."^ He adds, "It is plain that we 
 may be conscious of sleeping thoughts at that 
 moment when they arise, and not retain them 
 the next moment ; so that the forgetfulness 
 of our dreams never so soon, is no proof that 
 we did not dream, or had no consciousness of 
 thinking in sleep." ^ 
 
 The same, I apprehend, might often be 
 truly alleged even of our recent waking 
 thoughts. Let any one try to remember, in 
 circumstances where the mind has been unbent 
 or languid, what were the thoughts of the 
 last five minutes, or to verify that there were 
 any by producing one. Andrew Baxter, in 
 
 ^ Essay V. § 2. Works, vol. v, p. 556, fol. ed. 
 2 Ibid. p. 557.
 
 10 R. BAXTER. ABERCROMBIE. 
 
 his " Inquiry on tlie Soul," says truly, " It is 
 a mark of our imperfect natures, that we 
 cannot become conscious of all our past con- 
 sciousness at pleasure ; " adding, " no man at 
 night would infer that he was not in a state 
 of consciousness and thinking at a certain 
 time of the day, because he has no memory what 
 thoughts he had at that time. And it is no 
 better argument that a man was not conscious 
 in his sleep, because next morning he hath 
 no memory of what ideas were in his mind." * 
 
 Richard Baxter, a very different author, 
 has these words : " I suppose the soul is never 
 totally inactive. I never awaked, since I had 
 the use of my memory, but I found myself 
 coming out of a dream. And I suppose they 
 that think they dream not, think so because 
 they forget their dreams."^ 
 
 The late honoured Dr. Abercrorabie has a 
 remark of much weight in favour of this 
 opinion. " We have reason to believe," he 
 writes, " that dreams which are remembered 
 occur only in imperfect sleep, and that we do 
 not remember any mental impressions which 
 
 ' Inquiry on the Soul, p. 149, iibridged. 
 
 ^ Reasons of Christian Religion, p. 543, Appendix.
 
 UNREMEMBERED DREAMS. 11 
 
 occur in very profound sleep, though we have 
 satisfactory proof that they exist. Thus, a 
 person will talk in his sleep so as to be dis- 
 tinctly understood by another, but without 
 having the least recollection afterwards of the 
 mental impression which led to what he said." * 
 A much-respected clergyman, the Rev. 
 J. B. B. Clarke, (son of the eminent linguist 
 and commentator, Dr. Adam Clarke,) has 
 favoured me with the account of a dream 
 which clearly and curiously testifies of this. 
 Mr. Clarke writes thus : " When I was a boy, 
 it was my father's custom to hear me, over- 
 night, repeat to him the lesson which I was 
 expected to say the next morning in school. 
 At the time I refer to I was learning my 
 Greek grammar, and the part which I had to 
 repeat was the active voice of the verb tvtttio. 
 When I went up to him just before bed time 
 as usual, I could not say it, and was sent away 
 in disgrace. Immediately I went to bed, as 
 was the rule, after having left his study. 
 
 * Intellectual Powers, p. 154 ; see also p. 305 ; and the 
 account of an officer in the expedition to Louishurg, who 
 after dreams in which he had both spoken and acted, had not 
 any remembrance ot them. — P. 283. Ibid.
 
 12 ADAM CLARKE. 
 
 Before he himself retired for the night, my 
 father invariably went his rounds to the 
 children's bed-rooms to see that all was right. 
 Coming as usual to my room, he heard me 
 speaking, and coming near saw that I was 
 talking in my sleep. I was conjugating the 
 verb TVTTTb), and he waited till I had gone 
 through it all without a mistake. When I 
 left the room next morning he summoned me 
 to say my lesson. I was as ignorant of it as 
 I had been the night before ; and though for 
 my encouragement he told me at the time 
 that he had heard me say it perfectly in my 
 sleep, I still could not repeat it. The above 
 fact he not only told me at the period when 
 it occurred, but more than once in after life. 
 I make no comments, but state the bare fact." 
 
 The evident inference is, that a dream 
 completely distinct and intelligent, may yet 
 have been quite effaced by or before waking, 
 from the dreamer's memory. 
 
 This may be the fit occasion to express 
 dissent from the opinion of an ingenious 
 author, that " the dream never occurs in sound 
 or perfect sleep, for then all the senses are 
 quiescent or uninfluenced, at least by slight
 
 DREAMS IN DEEP SLEEP AND TRANCE. 13 
 
 Stimuli." ^ Indeed some evidence tending to 
 the opposite conclusion seems to present itself 
 in another part of his essay, when, describing 
 " trance or catalepsy," the author remarks that 
 "consciousness in that state is sometimes 
 perfect," and relates the case of a lady, who in 
 a profound trance actually heard and felt the 
 preparations for her own burial, and could 
 only rouse herself at the moment when " the 
 coffin -lid was about to be nailed on."^ Such 
 a case also goes far to make questionable the 
 strong assertion of the excellent Dr. John 
 Mason Good, that in "complete apoplexy" — 
 " in sleepy coma from fever " — and " in all 
 cases of suspended animation from drowning 
 or catalepsy," — " no man has been ever con- 
 scious of a single thought or idea."^ The 
 only fact possible to be proved (and that would 
 require an immense induction) would be that 
 no one has ever remembered any. 
 
 ^ W. C. Dendy on Dreams, p. 19. We shall find Lavater 
 (p. 34, below) stating that " problems have been solved in deep 
 sleep" (" tiefen sclilaf,") — and Euler (Section V. below) affirm- 
 ing that " in joro/owwc? sleep the more regular and connected are 
 our dreams." See also La Mothe le Vayer, p. 36, below. 
 
 2 Dendy on Dreams, pp.139, 140. 
 
 ^ Good's Book of Nature, vol. ii. Lect. vii. p. 202. 
 C
 
 14 FEVER. APOPLEXY. 
 
 But Sir Humphry Davy, relating what 
 occurred to himself in typhus fever, writes : 
 " I remained, when the weakness consequent 
 to exhaustion came on, in an apparently sense- 
 less or lethargic state ; yet, in fact, my mind 
 was peculiarly active. There was always 
 before me the form of a beautiful woman, 
 with whom I was engaged in the most inte- 
 resting and intellectual conversation. — Her 
 figure, for many days, was so distinct in my 
 mind as to form almost a visual image: as 
 I gained strength, the visits of my good 
 angel (for so I called it) became less frequent, 
 and when I was restored to health they were 
 altogether discontinued,"' 
 
 Dr. Abercrombie relates: "A gentleman 
 whom I saw lately in a state of profound 
 apoplexy, but from which he recovered, had 
 a perfect recollection of what took place 
 during the attack, and mentioned many things 
 which had been said in his hearing, when he 
 was supposed to be in a state of perfect 
 unconsciousness. A lady, on recovering from 
 a similar state, said she had been asleep and 
 dreaming, and mentioned what she had dreamt 
 
 » Last Days of a riiilosoplici', pp. 04, Gfj.
 
 UNCONSCIOUSNESS NOT REAL. 15 
 
 about."' So little are we entitled to affirm 
 that apparent unconsciousness, apparent cessa- 
 tion of thought, is real. Even if no one had 
 thus remembered the active exercise of 
 thought, occurring in a state when it was 
 judged to be wholly suspended, that want of 
 remembrance (as was observed before) could 
 never demonstrate that consciousness and 
 thought had been in reality quite interrupted. 
 These preliminary facts and observations, 
 as controverting the views of materialists, are 
 obviously important to my principal design. 
 
 ^ Intellectual Powers, p. 153.
 
 16 KAPIDITY OF THOUGHT. 
 
 SECTION II. 
 
 Having thus adverted to theories which 
 materialists have raised, or of which they 
 have availed themselves, on this subject, but 
 which appear to be without any solid founda- 
 tion of fact, — I proceed to offer some illus- 
 trations of the rapidity of thought as evinced 
 in dreams. 
 
 A signal one, drawn necessarily from his 
 personal experience, is given by Lord 
 Brougham in his " Discourse of Natural 
 Theology." He adduces it to show, " the 
 prodigiously long succession of images that 
 pass through the mind " (in sleep) " with 
 perfect distinctness and liveliness, in an 
 instant of time." " Let any one," he writes, 
 " who is extremely overpowered with drow- 
 siness — as after sitting up all night, and 
 sleeping none the next day — lie down, and 
 begin to dictate : he will find himself falling 
 asleep after uttering a few words, and he will
 
 LORD BROUGHAM. 17 
 
 be awakened by the person who writes re- 
 peating the last word, to shew that he has 
 written the whole ; not above five or six 
 seconds may elapse, and the speaker will find 
 it at first quite impossible to believe that he 
 has not been asleep for hours, and will chide 
 the amanuensis for having fallen asleep over 
 his work, so great apparently will be the 
 length of the dream which he has dreamt, 
 extending through half a life-time. This 
 experiment is easily tried : again and again 
 the sleeper will find his endless dream re- 
 newed : and he will be always able to tell 
 in how short a time he must have performed 
 it. For suppose eight or ten seconds required 
 to write the four or five words dictated, sleep 
 could hardly begin in less than four or five 
 seconds after the effort of pronouncing the 
 sentence ; so that at the utmost, not more 
 than four or five can have been spent in 
 sleep. But indeed the greater probability is, 
 that not above a single second can have been 
 so passed ; for a writer will easily finish two 
 words in a second; and suppose he has to 
 write four, and half the time is consumed in 
 falling asleep, one second only is the duration 
 c 3
 
 18 CROSSING THE ATLANTIC. 
 
 of the dream, which yet seems to last for 
 years, so numerous are the images that com- 
 pose it."^ 
 
 We may allow something here for a cer- 
 tain largeness and vagueness in the phrase 
 of " years," and " half a life-time ;" and not 
 a little for the extraordinary quality of the 
 noble and learned writer's intellectual action, 
 which in sleep probably, as certainly when 
 awake, has been more rapid, intense, and 
 versatile, than that of any other mind among 
 myriads. 
 
 But if we substitute, in more ordinary cases, 
 days or hours for years, as having their inci- 
 dents and images comprised in a dreaming 
 instant, these examples will afford ground 
 enough for surprise and speculation ; and of 
 these we have a variety. 
 
 Dr. Abercrombie tells us, " A friend of 
 mine dreamt that he crossed the Atlantic and 
 spent a fortnight in America. In embarking 
 on his return he fell into the sea, and having 
 awoke with the fright, discovered that he had 
 not been asleep above ten minutes."^ He also 
 cites the following case from Dr. Gregory : 
 1 Discourse, pp. 113—115. 2 lutcllfctual Powers, p. SSi.
 
 THE SKELETON. LAVATER. 19 
 
 " A gentleman, after sleeping in a damp place, 
 was for a long time liable to a feeling of suffo- 
 cation when he slept in a lying posture ; and 
 this was always accompanied by a dream of 
 a skeleton which grasped him by the throat. 
 He could sleep in a sitting posture without 
 any uneasy feeling ; and after trying various 
 expedients, he at last had a sentinel placed 
 beside him, with orders to awake him when- 
 ever he sank down. On one occasion he was 
 attacked by the skeleton, and a severe and long 
 struggle ensued before he awoke. On finding 
 fault with his attendant for allowing him to lie so 
 long in such a state of suffering, he was assured 
 that he had not lain an instant, but had been 
 awakened the moment he began to sink."^ 
 
 Lavater states, in a work which I think is 
 not translated, " Many examples are known 
 to me from personal observation, where sick 
 persons who had waked after slumbering a 
 few moments only, could hardly be persuaded 
 that they had not slept for successive hours ; 
 because, they said, they had had dreams of 
 surprising length, had been in this and that 
 place, gone through this and that transaction, 
 ^ Intellectual Powers, pp. i383-4>
 
 20 ARCHBISHOP WHATELY. 
 
 heard such and such things, answered in such 
 and such a manner.'" 
 
 Archbishop Whately, in his lectures to the 
 parishioners of Halesworth, observes : " It 
 must have occurred to most of you, that now 
 and then a long series of events, such as would 
 occupy several weeks or months, and such as 
 could not even be described in a day's time, will 
 be presented to the mind, and will appear to 
 pass, in a sleep of perhaps less than an hour."- 
 
 Professor Stewart adverts to this very dif- 
 ferent " estimate " of time in dreaming ; " an 
 inaccuracy " (such is his phrase) " which 
 sometimes extends so far, as to give to a single 
 instant the appearance of hours or perhaps of 
 days." But he does not judge it necessary 
 to suppose " the rapidity of thought greater 
 than while we are awake." " For " (he 
 affirms) " the rapidity of thought is, at all 
 times, such, that in the twinkling of an eye, a 
 crowd of ideas may pass before us, to which it 
 would require a long discourse to give utter- 
 
 ^ Aussichten in die Ewigkeit, t. i. p. 311. 
 
 ^ Scripture Revelations of a Tuture State, 5tli Edit, 
 pp. 163, 151'. — Published without a name, but ranked in tho 
 catalogues umong the Archbishop's works.
 
 STEWAKT ON INSTANTANEOUS THOUGHT. 21 
 
 ance ; and transactions may be conceived, 
 which it would require days to realize."* 
 
 I know not how to accede to this statement ; 
 although here again very sensible how much 
 more rapid may have been the processes of 
 waking thought in such an intellect, than in 
 my own or other ordinary minds. 
 
 Most true it is, that waking thought can 
 make an instantaneous transition from one 
 object to another the most remote and dis- 
 similar, passing " in the twinkling of an eye " 
 from the sun to a mushroom, or from the 
 depth of a coal-mine to the cluster of the 
 Pleiades ; but I cannot believe that our natu- 
 ral waking condition admits of an instantane- 
 ous series and connexion of very multiplied 
 thoughts ; for instance, that even Johnson or 
 Person, having committed (as our young stu- 
 dents do) a Greek tragedy to memory, could 
 have recited it throughout, mentally, in the 
 twinkling of an eye. 
 
 It is indeed surprising, how greatly the 
 
 succession of ideas can be accelerated by a 
 
 peculiar stimulant. An Indian drug (not 
 
 opium) was once prescribed for myself, by 
 
 ^ Elements, vol. i. p. 345.
 
 22 INDIAN DRUG. 
 
 way of experiment whether it might prove 
 useful as a soporific. But it excited a train 
 of suggestions and inferences the swiftness 
 of which I could not have deemed possible. 
 Although these very quickly vanished from 
 memory, there was gained from them an en- 
 tirely new notion of the rate at which some 
 philosophers and orators may think. On the 
 other hand, while pain of the head which 
 followed, warned me against a second use of 
 so stimulating a medicine, I had procured 
 perhaps the farther evil of some increased 
 discontent with my own wonted foot-pace of 
 cogitation : — as railways make us impatient of 
 old-fashioned vehicles and pedestrian tours. 
 
 Yet this acceleration of thought was no 
 more to be compared to what takes place, 
 without any stimulus, in dreams, than the 
 speed of an " express train " to that of an 
 electric telegraph. 
 
 What may be the future and ultimate 
 rapidity of thought, as acting in its most 
 refined and perfect vehicle, we can have no 
 present knowledge : but by the exterior and 
 mortal organs of our present bodily system 
 it appears to be retarded. Length of time, in
 
 SOCRATES. ST. PAUL. 23 
 
 our ordinary waking state, is requisite to the 
 formation or recollection of a number of ideas ; 
 and the more, in proportion to the defects of 
 the individual's organization, or health. 
 
 If it be objected, this is to represent the 
 body as an impediment to the mind, it must 
 be replied that in such a view of it the best 
 philosophy and the Christian scriptures agree. 
 Let any one examine what is said of the body 
 by Socrates in the 1 1th chapter of the Phaedo, 
 and its accordance with the apocrj^phal Book 
 ofWisdom (ascribed by some to PhiloJudaeus), 
 which says, "the corruptible body weighs down 
 the soul, and the earthy tabernacle burdens the 
 meditative mind ;"^ and vriih St. Paul's desire 
 and promise of being " clothed upon " or 
 indued with " a spiritual body." 
 
 The only probable way, as I conceive, of 
 accounting for the extreme rapidity of thought 
 in dreams, is to suppose some partial discon- 
 nexion or liberation of the mind in sleep, from 
 those grosser organs which are the media of 
 its action while we wake. 
 
 This opinion seems to have been ap- 
 proached (though not definitely expressed) by 
 
 * Chap. is. ver. 15; loTv Tro\v(i)(>ov7ida.
 
 24 ADDISON ON DREAMS. 
 
 the distinguished Addison, when he remarks 
 that " Dreams may give us some idea of the 
 great excellency of a human soul, and some 
 intimation of its independency of matter." 
 
 He adds, " when the organs of sense want 
 their due repose and necessary reparations, 
 and the body is no longer able to keep pace 
 with that spiritual substance to which it is 
 united, the soul exalts herself in her several 
 faculties, and continues in action till her part- 
 ner is again qualified to bear her company. — 
 Dreams look like the relaxations and amuse- 
 ments of the soul when she is disencumbered 
 of her machine ; her sports and recreations 
 when she has laid her charge asleep. — Dreams 
 are an instance of that agility and perfection 
 which is natural to the faculties of the mind 
 when they are disengaged from the body. 
 The soul is clogged and retarded in her 
 operations when she acts in conjunction with 
 a companion that is so heavy and unwieldy 
 in its motions ; but in dreams it is wonderful 
 to observe with what sprightliness and alacrity 
 she exerts herself" ' 
 
 Lord Brougham well observes, " The mind's 
 ' Spectator, vol. vii. No. 487.
 
 BROUGHAM ON MIND. 25 
 
 independence of matter, and capacity of 
 existence -without it, appears to be strongly 
 illustrated by whatever shews the entire dis- 
 similarity of its constitution. The incon- 
 ceivable rapidity of its operations is perhaps 
 the most striking feature of the diversity ; and 
 there is no doubt that this rapidity increases 
 in proportion as the interference of the senses 
 — that is, the influence of the body — is with- 
 drawn. Facts, chiefly drawn from the phe- 
 nomena of dreams, throw a strong light upon 
 this subject, and seem to demonstrate the 
 possible disconnexion of mind and matter."^ 
 And in another place, " Nothing can be con- 
 ceived better adapted than these facts to 
 satisfy us, that the nature of the mind is con- 
 sistent with its existence apart from the body." ^ 
 We may readily allow the judgment of 
 Professor Stewart to be correct, that while 
 " certain general laws of association," which 
 regulate the train of our waking thoughts, 
 also operate during sleep, the will has then no 
 power of " stopping the train," or " diverting 
 the current of thought into a new channel."^ 
 
 » Discourse of Nat. Theol. p. 111. 2 n^ij, p, nS. 
 
 3 Elements, vol. i. pp. 334, 335. 
 D
 
 26 DREAM OF ETNA. 
 
 We fully admit also that these laws of asso- 
 ciation include material as well as spiritual 
 influences. That dreams are very frequently 
 suggested by bodily sensations, there is 
 abundant proof. 
 
 Thus a manuscript of the eminent Dr. Gre- 
 gory of Edinburgh, " mentions of himself, that 
 having gone to bed with a vessel of hot water 
 at his feet, he dreamt of walking up the crater 
 of Mount Etna, and of feeling the ground warm 
 under him. He had early in life visited Vesu- 
 vius, and actually felt a strong sensation of 
 warmth in his feet, when walking up the side 
 of the crater ; but the dream was of Etna, of 
 which he had only read Brydone's description."* 
 
 Cases of this kind, which are frequent and 
 familiar, would suffice to refute the very 
 singular theory of Andrew Baxter, who en- 
 deavoured philosophically to show that all 
 dreams must arise from the influence of se/?«ra^6 
 spirits on the mind. 
 
 But none of the foregoing facts or con- 
 siderations is adapted to exjilain the immense 
 celerity of thought in dreams. This must 
 remain, I apprehend, wholly unaccounted for, 
 
 ' Abcrcrombie, Intellectual Powers, p. 279, abridged.
 
 BYRON ON DREAMS. 27 
 
 except by the supposition already glanced at, — 
 that the mind then acts not by its exterior or- 
 ganization, but either apart from all organs, or 
 (which to me seems far more probable) by that 
 highly refined interior organization, to which, 
 during sleep, the torpor of the visible and 
 tangible organs permits a freer agency, some- 
 what like what may take place when the 
 mortal frame is dissolved. 
 
 To the whole mystery of this subject, 
 Lord Byron's well-known lines, with his 
 accustomed elevation and energy of diction, 
 powerfully direct our thoughts^ 
 
 " Our life is two-fold : sleep hath its own world, 
 A houndary between the things misnamed 
 Death and existence : sleep hath its own world, 
 And a wide realm of wild reality : 
 And dreams in their development have breath. 
 And tears, and tortures, and the touch of joy : 
 They leave a weight upon our waking thoughts; 
 They take a weight from off our waking toils : 
 They do divide our being ; they become 
 A portion of ourselves as of our time. 
 And look like heralds of eternity. 
 They pass Kke spirits of the past ; they speak, 
 Like Sibyls, of the future ; they have power ; 
 The t}-rauny of pleasure and of pain ; 
 They make us what we were not — what they will — 
 And shake us with the vision that's gone by, 
 The dread of vanished shadows."
 
 28 INVENTIVENESS AND POWER. 
 
 SECTION III. 
 
 I WOULD now invite attention to the second 
 point proposed, namely, the intellectual inven- 
 tiveness and power frequently exerted in 
 dreams. That original and eccentric writer, 
 Sir Thomas Browne, in his Religio Medici, 
 thus describes his own experience : " I thank 
 God for my happy dreams, as I do for my 
 good rest. We are somewhat more than 
 ourselves in our sleeps, and the slumber of 
 the body seems to be but the waking of our 
 souls. It is the ligation of our sense, but the 
 liberty of reason ; our awaking conceptions do 
 not match the fancies of our sleeps. At my 
 nativity, my ascendant was the earthly sign 
 of Scorpio, I was born in the planetary hour 
 of Saturn, and I think I have a piece of that 
 leaden planet in me. I am no way facetious, 
 nor disposed for the mirth and galliardize of 
 company ; yet in one dream I can compose a
 
 SIR T. BROWNE. COLERIDGE. 29 
 
 whole comedy, behold the action in one dream, 
 apprehend the jests, and laugh myself awake 
 at the conceits thereof. Were my memory as 
 faithful as my reason is then fruitful, I would 
 never study but in my dreams, and this time 
 also would I choose for my devotions ; but 
 our grosser memories have then so little hold 
 of our abstracted understandings, that they 
 forget the story, and can only relate to our 
 awakened souls a confused and broken tale 
 of that that has passed." 
 
 He afterwards writes in reference to what 
 he had said of the elevation of the faculties in 
 sleep, " Thus I observe that men oftentimes 
 upon the hour of their departure do speak 
 and reason above themselves. For then the 
 soul begins to be freed from the ligaments of 
 the body, begins to reason like herself, and to 
 discourse in a strain above mortality."^ Let 
 it be noticed that all these are the remarks of 
 an acute and practised ijhysician. 
 
 The poet Coleridge published a fragment 
 of a poem, composed by him in sleep ; or what 
 he terms " a vision in a dream." His prefatory 
 account of the circumstances I thus abridge. 
 
 1 Rclig. Med. Edit. 161;:, pp. 178—181. 
 D 3
 
 30 Coleridge's " vision 
 
 " In the summer of 1797, the author, then 
 in ill health, had retired to a farm-house, 
 between Porlock and Linton. In consequence 
 of slight indisposition, an anodyne had been 
 prescribed, from the effect of which he fell 
 asleep in his chair, at the moment that he was 
 reading these or similar words in Purchas's 
 Pilgrimage, ' Here the Khan Kubla com- 
 manded a palace to be built, and a stately garden 
 thereunto ; and thus ten miles of fertile ground 
 were enclosed with a wall.' — The author con- 
 tinued for about three hours in a profound 
 sleep, at least of the external senses, during 
 which time he has the most vivid confidence 
 that he could not have composed less than 
 from two to three hundred lines ; if that 
 indeed can be called composition, in which all 
 the images rose up before him as things, 
 with a parallel production of the correspondent 
 expressions, without any sensation or con- 
 sciousness of effort. On awaking he appeared 
 to himself to have a distinct recollection of 
 the whole, and instantly and eagerly wrote 
 down the Urns that are here preserved. At 
 this moment he was unfortunately called out 
 by a person on business, and detained above
 
 IN A DREAJI." 31 
 
 an hour, and on his return to his room found, 
 to his no small surprise and mortification, that 
 though he still retained some vague and dim 
 recollection of the general purport of the 
 vision, yet with the exception of some eight 
 or ten scattered lines and images, all the rest 
 had passed away." 
 
 Of what the poet had previously written 
 down, I present the chief portion, to the 
 reader's curiosity rather than his criticism ; for 
 perhaps, according to Sir Thomas Browne, 
 it should be both recited and heard in sleepy 
 in order to be fully appreciated. 
 
 " In Xanadu did Kubla Khan 
 A stately pleasure dome decree : 
 Where Alph, the sacred river, ran 
 Through caverns measureless to man 
 Down to a sunless sea. 
 So twice five miles of fertile ground 
 With walls and towers were girdled round : 
 And there were gardens bright with sinuous riUs, 
 Where blossomed many an incense-bearing tree ; 
 And here were forests ancient as the hiUs, 
 Enfolding sunny spots of greenery. 
 
 " But oh, that deep romantic chasm which slanted 
 Down the green hill athwart a cedam cover ! 
 A savage place, as holy and enchanted 
 As e'er beneath a waning moon was baunted 
 By woman wailing for her demon lover !
 
 32 KUBLA KHAN. C^DMON. 
 
 And from this chasm, with ceaseless turmoil seething 
 As if this earth in fast thick pants were breathing, 
 A mighty fountain momently was forced : 
 Amid whose swift half-intermitted hurst, 
 Huge fragments vaulted Like rebounding hail, 
 Or chaffy grain beneath the thresher's flail : 
 And 'mid these dancing rocks, at once and ever. 
 It flung up momently the sacred river. 
 " Pive miles meandering with a mazy motion. 
 Through wood and dale the sacred river ran. 
 Then reached tlie caverns measureless to man. 
 And sank in tumult to a lifeless ocean : 
 And 'mid this tumult Kubla heard from far 
 Ancestral voices prophesying war. 
 
 " The shadow of the dome of pleasure 
 floated midway on the waves ; 
 ^Vliere was heard the mingled measure 
 Prom the fountain and the caves. 
 It was a miracle of rare device, 
 A sunny pleasure dome, with caves of ice." * 
 
 Dr. Moore, in a recent work "On the Power 
 of the Soul over the Body," mentions, " It is 
 related of Ceedmon, the Anglo-Saxon bard, 
 that he composed his first and probably his 
 best poem, that on Creation, in a dream. 
 Previous to this, he was unable to repeat a 
 single stave, but afterwards he became remark- 
 able for the facility of his verses." 
 
 1 Coleridge's Poetical Works, vol. i. pp. 266— 269.— Sec 
 ~^o{e A. at the end of this volume.
 
 ADDISON. REASONING IN SLEEP. 33 
 
 Addison notices this extraordinary power. 
 " In dreams the slow of speech make unpre- 
 meditated harangues. Invention works with 
 such ease and activity, that we are not sensible 
 when the faculty is employed. Thus I believe 
 every one, some time or other, dreams that he 
 is reading papers, books, or letters ; in which 
 case the invention prompts so readily, that 
 the mind is imposed upon, and mistakes 
 its own suggestions for the compositions of 
 another."^ 
 
 But, it may be said, — the best ascertained 
 of those compositions or rhapsodies, — even 
 those dreaming pindarics of the poet, and 
 that dreaming comedy of the physician, 
 (whatever were our trust in the merit of scenes 
 which he did not note down,) — are still but 
 efforts of the imaginative faculties. They may 
 prove, to use a phrase of the latter, the 
 " unmatched /awci^s of our sleeps ; " but they 
 make no approach to the higher more exact 
 and severe operations of reason, or intellectual 
 power. 
 
 We shall find, however, no lack of testi- 
 mony for those exercises of the mind in sleep. 
 ' Spectator, No. 4-87, abridged.
 
 34 LAVATER. GKEGOKY. CONDOKCET. 
 
 Lavater states, " many a mathematician has in 
 deep sleep solved the most difficult problems, 
 and performed complex calculations with 
 inexpressible quickness."' 
 
 Dr. Abercrombie adduces most striking 
 facts, to show mental operations in dreams 
 of a highly intellectual character. "Dr. 
 Gregory, (he states,) mentions, that thoughts 
 which sometimes occurred to him in dreams, 
 and even the particular expressions in which 
 they were conveyed, appeared to him after- 
 wards, when awake, so just in point of reason- 
 ing and illustration, and so good in point of 
 language, that he has used them in his college 
 lectures, and in his written lucubrations. 
 
 " Condorcet related of himself, that when 
 engaged in some profound and obscure calcu- 
 lations, he was often obliged to leave them in 
 an incomplete state and retire to rest ; and 
 that the remaining steps, and the conclusion 
 of his calculations, had more than once pre- 
 sented themselves in his dreams. 
 
 " Dr. Franklin also informed Cabanis, that 
 the bearings and issues of political events, 
 
 ^ Aussichten, t. i. p. 310. lie gives as his authorities 
 treatises of Kant and Kruger, and Ilallcr's Elements of 
 Physiology.
 
 IRANKLIN. SCOTTISH LAWYER. 35 
 
 which had puzzled him when awake, were not 
 unfrequently unfolded to him in his dreams." ' 
 "The following anecdote," Dr. Abercrombie 
 adds, " has been preserved in a family of 
 rank in Scotland, the descendants of a dis- 
 tinguished lawyer of the last age. This 
 eminent person had been consulted respecting 
 a case of great importance and much diffi- 
 culty ; and he had been studying it with 
 intense anxiety and attention. After seve- 
 ral days had been occupied in this manner, 
 he was observed by his wife to rise from 
 his bed in the night, and go to a writing desk 
 which stood in the bed-room. He then sat 
 down, and wrote a long paper, which he put 
 carefully by in the desk, and returned to bed. 
 The following morning he told his wife that 
 he had had a most interesting dream ; — that 
 he had dreamt of delivering a clear and lumi- 
 nous opinion respecting a case which had 
 exceedingly perplexed him ; and that he 
 would give anything to recover the train of 
 thought which had passed before him in his 
 dream. She then directed him to the writing 
 desk, where he found the opinion clearly and 
 
 1 Intelleohxal Powers, p. 303.
 
 36 BAXTER. LA MOTHE LE VAYER. 
 
 fully written out ; and it was afterwards found 
 to be perfectly correct." ^ 
 
 I may add, that Richard Baxter, no poet, but 
 a grave divine and controversialist, declares of 
 himself, " Many a time (in dreams) my reason 
 hath acted for a time as regularly and much 
 more forcibly than it doth when I am awake." ^ 
 
 An author of entirely different character 
 and pursuits — La Mothe le Vayer' — writes 
 thus : " Cardan affirms in his Treatise on the 
 Immortality of the Soul, that he owes many 
 geometrical demonstrations to the reasonings 
 of his mind while he slept; for that whenhewas 
 composing the books of his new geometry, he 
 accomplished when sleeping what he could not 
 have dared promise from himself when awake. 
 And I can assure you that it has happened 
 to me, as well as to many others, to have had 
 thoughts in the most profound sleep, which 
 I reviewed with astonishment on awaking, 
 and that when I have been able to remember 
 the terms in which I had put them, whether in 
 verse or in prose, I have admired the advan- 
 
 1 Intellectual Powers, pp. 303—305. 
 
 2 Reasons of Christian Religion, (Appendix,) p. 543. 
 
 3 He is styled by Hallam, "universally a sceptic." — 
 Literature of Europe, v. ii. p. 510. — See Note B, at the end of 
 this volume.
 
 TARTINI. LOCKE. 37 
 
 tage which the superior part (the spirit) had 
 taken during the torpor of the other. "^ 
 
 A case of a different kind from all these is 
 thus referred to by Dr. Moore. *' Tartini, a 
 celebrated violin player, composed his famous 
 ' Sonata del Diavolo/ while he dreamed that 
 the devil challenged him to a trial of skill on 
 his own violin." ^ 
 
 This sonata is extant ; and an ingenious 
 writer, already quoted, refers to it as the 
 " exquisite product" of " the dream, as it is 
 termed, of Tartini." ^ 
 
 His supposition that Tartini's and some 
 other dreams might be not strictly such, but 
 rather waking reveries, appears to me unsus- 
 tained by any proof. 
 
 These facts may at least sufficiently refute 
 the indirect assertion of Mr. Locke, when he 
 says, " 'Tis a wonder that the soul should 
 retain none of its more rational soliloquies 
 and meditations ;"* (i. e. which occurred in 
 sleep.) He evidently means to intimate, by 
 an irony, that such did not occur. But the 
 
 ^ CEiivres, fol. ed. torn. ii. (bound as torn, iii.) p. 662. 
 ^ Power of the Soul over the Body, p. 121. 
 3 Dendy on Dreaming, p. 108. * Essay, book ii. c. i. p. 47. 
 E
 
 38 VARIETY OF DREAMING THOUGHT. 
 
 facts show, both that they have occurred, 
 and that some of them have been retained. 
 And if none had been so, this would have 
 afforded no proof of their non-occurrence: 
 for, as Dr. Abercrombie again observes, (in a 
 different part of his work from the passage 
 before cited,) " there can be no doubt that 
 many dreams take place which are not remem- 
 bered, as appears from the fact of a person 
 talking in his sleep so as to be distinctly 
 understood, without remembering anything 
 of the impression that gave rise to it." ' 
 
 It is very observable, that the subjects of 
 mental exertion in dreams, which have been 
 thus recorded, are most unlike each other : 
 imaginative invention, musical composition, 
 mathematical calculations and problems, poli- 
 tics, law ; — and the witnesses as unlike in 
 opinions, pursuits, and habits : the sceptic, the 
 Christian, — the physician, the poet, the vio- 
 linist, the advocate, the diplomatist, the divine. 
 
 The testimony fully warrants, in my 
 
 judgment, the conclusion of Bishop Newton ; 
 
 who grounded it, not on these facts, but on 
 
 others of the same kind. " It is very evi- 
 
 ^ Intellectual Powers, p. 305.
 
 BISHOP NEWTON. 39 
 
 dent," he writes, " that the soul is in great 
 measure independent of the body, even while 
 she is within the body; since the deepest 
 sleep that possesseth the one cannot affect 
 the other ; and while the avenues of the body 
 are closed, the soul is still indued with sense 
 and perception, and the impressions are often 
 stronger, and the images more lively, when 
 we are asleep than when awake. They must 
 necessarily be two distinct and different sub- 
 stances, whose natures and properties are so 
 very different, that while the one shall sink 
 under the burden and fatigue of the day, the 
 other shall still be fresh and active as the 
 flame; while the one shall be dead to the 
 world, the other shall be ranging in thought 
 through the universe. Why then should the 
 death of the one be any more the death of 
 the other, than the sleep of the one is the 
 sleep of the other ? Since the soul can think 
 and act in this manner without the body, 
 even while united to it, why should she not 
 be able to think and act in a more enlarged 
 and more exalted manner, when separated 
 from the body, or united to a spiritual body 
 that shall no longer hinder her operations ?
 
 40 BISHOP NEWTON. 
 
 Since the soul hath her distinct joys and 
 sorrows, pleasures and pains, while the body 
 is senseless and asleep, why should she not 
 be capable of the same, when the body shall 
 be no more ?"* 
 
 ' Dissert, xxvi. Works, vol. iii. pp. 193-4, abridged.
 
 ' SEPARATE SPIRIT.' 41 
 
 SECTION IV. 
 
 This brings us to the abstruse question, 
 in what manner the soul may be best con- 
 ceived capable of thought and emotion when 
 our external bodily frame is dissolved. The 
 difficulty of apprehending " unextended sub- 
 stance," and of conceiving the locality of a 
 being which is quite apart from matter, has 
 supplied materialists with one chief objection 
 against the existence of spirit at all : although 
 Locke, from whom they have tried to derive 
 support, has said most truly, "if the notion of 
 spirit have great difficulties in it, we have 
 thereby no more reason to deny or doubt the 
 existence of spirits than of bodies ; for the 
 notion of body is hard and perhaps impossible 
 to be explained." ^ He adds, " it is no more 
 a contradiction that thinking should exist 
 separate from solidity, than that solidity 
 should exist separate from thinking." - 
 
 1 Essay, book ii. c. xxiii. § 31, p. 168, abridged. 
 * Essay, book ii. c. xsiii. § 32, p. 168, abridged; and see 
 pp. 159, 166. 
 
 E 3
 
 42 ETHEREAL VEHICLE. 
 
 The objection, however, is in fact built on 
 a supposition not capable of proof, and I think 
 very improbable, — namely, that the soul is 
 separated from all matter at death. Many 
 good and wise men have believed, on the 
 contrary, that " perfect spirituality, utterly 
 separate from matter in any possible state, is 
 the exclusive attribute of Deity," ^ — " the 
 prerogative of the Divine Being alone."* 
 Bishop Newton deems it most probable that 
 even spirits superior to man are " clothed 
 with some fine aerial or ethereal vehicle, and 
 that the only perfectly pure" (meaning unem- 
 bodied) " spirit in the universe is God." ^ So 
 Augustine, and others of the Christian Fathers, 
 fully held. * The learned Broughton thinks 
 that "with exquisitely fine ethereal bodies 
 all created spirit is naturally clothed." ^ 
 
 It is well known to have been a tenet 
 of the Pythagorean philosophy, entertained 
 
 > Robert Hall. Works, vol. v. p. 59. 
 
 2 Doddridge. Lectures, vol. ii. p, 420. 
 
 3 Dissert. 1. Works, vol. vi, p. 70. 
 
 * Burnet, de Stat. Mort. p. 169 ; and Cudwortli, Intell. Syst. 
 vol. iv. pp. 8, 37—42. 
 
 ' Bronghton on Puturity, pp. 405-6, and p. 120.
 
 PYTHAGOREAXS. PLATO. GALEN, 43 
 
 afterwards by Plato and his followers, that 
 the human soul has an interior luciform ethe- 
 real body, which remains united to it after 
 death/ "Plato," (Bishop Berkeley writes,) 
 " compares the soul to a charioteer that guides 
 and governs a chariot, not unfitly styled 
 avyoeLdeg oxrifxa, a luciform sethereal vehicle ; 
 terms expressive of the purity, lightness, 
 subtilty and mobility of that fine celestial 
 nature in w^hich the soul immediately resides 
 and operates." ^ Galen, the greatest physio- 
 logist of antiquity, writes of this as " the 
 primary vehicle of the soul," and as " ex- 
 tended throughout the brain." ^ AndHierocles 
 observes, " to our lucid or splendid (interior) 
 body this mortal body is but an accession." * 
 Several Christian Fathers held this opinion. 
 Irenaeus and Origen were of the same per- 
 
 1 Cudworth, Intell. System, vol. iii. pp. 523—529. 
 
 2 Chuiii of Philosophical Reflections, &c. pp. 78-9. Quoted 
 in Broughton on Futurity, p. 120. 
 
 3 In his work on Hippocrates, cited in Cudw. Intell. Syst. 
 iii. pp. 523-5. 
 
 4 Ibid. p. 524. 
 
 The Eabbis also wrote much of this refined or subtile 
 body, from which the soul is not to be separated. See quota- 
 tions from their Hebrew in Wollaston's Religion of Nature, 
 p. 197, note.
 
 44 CHRISTIAN FATHERS ON THP: ' VEHICLE.' 
 
 suasion, that the soul after death had a certain 
 subtile body still united to it, having the 
 same characterising form (eicoc ■)(apaKTr)pLi^or).^ 
 Dr. Cudworth remarks, that they and other 
 ancients who adopted this tenet did not regard 
 it as in the least inconsistent with that of 
 a future resurrection ; and also that " although 
 it agrees with the Pythagoric, they were led 
 into it by scripture itself :" ■ as by the " his- 
 toric phenomena of angels in the scripture," 
 by the account of the E,ich Man and Lazarus in 
 Hades, and by St. Paul's expression, "the 
 earthly house of this tabernacle," where Ori- 
 gen and Methodius distinguish the " earthly 
 house," (or dwelling,) the mortal body, from the 
 tabernacle (7-0 aKrjvog), vehicle, or subtile body 
 which, with the soul, is " burdened " by that 
 mortal earthly dwelling.^ And in fact, the "co- 
 verings" of the Hebrew " tent" or tabernacle in 
 the wilderness may possibly have suggested this 
 peculiar figure. The outer covering, " covering 
 above," * was of coarse and heavy skins; while the 
 
 » Cudw. InteD. Syst. vol. iv. pp. 17, 18, 50,51. 
 
 2 Ibid. p. 45, el scqq. 
 
 3 Ibid. pp. 51, 52. 
 
 ■* Exod. xxvi. 14; xxxvi, 19.
 
 HARTLEY. PALEV. 45 
 
 inner curtains, forming properly the tent itself, 
 were of fine twined linen, and the veil within 
 these was probably of more subtile and curious 
 device. The " covering above " might not 
 unfitly be named " the house of this taber- 
 nacle." If that were taken down or fell, the 
 fine curtains or finer veil might still be 
 a vehicle for that pure and luminous glory 
 which was symbolic of a spiritual and living 
 Presence. 
 
 Dr. Hartley observes, that " an infinitesi- 
 mal elementary body, intermediate between 
 the soul and gross body, appears to be 
 no improbable supposition." ^ Dr. Paley in- 
 directly favours the notion of a material and 
 inseparable vehicle of the spirit, when he 
 writes, — " If any one find it too great a strain 
 upon his thoughts, to admit the notion of 
 a substance strictly immaterial, that is, from 
 which extension and solidity are excluded, he 
 can find no difliculty in allowing, that a 
 particle as small as a particle of light, minuter 
 than all conceivable dimensions, may just as 
 easily be the depositary^ the organ, and the 
 vehicle of consciousness, as the congeries of 
 
 1 Observations on Man, vol. i. p. 34%
 
 46 VEHICLE, MICKOSCOPIC RESEARCH. 
 
 animal substance which forms a human body, 
 or the human brain ; that, being so, it may- 
 transfer a proper identity to whatever shall 
 hereafter be united to it ; may be safe amidst 
 the destruction of its integuments ; may 
 connect the natural with the spiritual, the 
 corruptible with the glorified body." ^ 
 
 This may be thought by some scientific 
 readers an unsuitable digression into con- 
 jectural and antiquated philosophy and theo- 
 logy : but if the theory of an inseparable 
 vehicle of the soul — favoured as I think it is 
 by the phenomena of dreaming — facilitate our 
 conception of consciousness and emotion in 
 our proximate and intermediate state, it were 
 strange if it should fail to interest us. It 
 appears also to acquire, from the microscopic 
 researches of our day, a constantly increasing 
 probability. Knowing as we do, on good 
 testimony, that "animalcules exist so minute 
 that myriads can swim in a drop of water, 
 and yet each one possesses organs of digestion, 
 circulation, &c. made uj^, necessarily, of an 
 immense number of atoms," ^ — we have such 
 
 1 Evidences, vol. ii. p. 393. 
 
 2 Bird's Natural J'liilosophy, p. 5,
 
 PLATONISTS. TENUITY. 47 
 
 practical proof of the tenuity which may 
 characterise an organized vehicle of the hu- 
 man mind as the ancients could not possess. 
 Although the later Platonists supposed this 
 vehicle physically indivisible,^ — so that it 
 might well warrant the poetical description 
 of La Fontaine — 
 
 " An atom's qnintessence, an extract of the light," - 
 
 still they were quite ignorant of the fact that or- 
 ganized life actually so approaches this exility, 
 that to one class of infusory animalcules the 
 name monas seems, in a figure, suitably enough 
 applied. If this assist us to conceive of the 
 spirit's retaining an inexpressibly subtile or- 
 ganism when it lays down this exterior frame, 
 by which it may still have and express thought 
 and emotion, till it " superindue "^ that form 
 which shall be " spiritual " and immortal, — 
 the microscopic facts have for me a deeper 
 interest as illustrations of this probability, 
 than as mere facts. While valuino^ all scien- 
 
 1 See Proclus, quoted in Barclay, on Life and Organization, 
 p. 437. 
 
 2 "Quintessence d'atorae,extrait delalumiere,"--Pab.liv.x. 1. 
 2 A word used by Cudworth.
 
 48 BROUGHTON. MATERIAL VEHICLE. 
 
 tific investigation of the works of God, I 
 prize it and its results incomparably most, as 
 they throw light on His highest attributes 
 and on our own noblest prospects. 
 
 An author already quoted has a passage to 
 this effect. — " The soul, we know by experi- 
 ence, retains ideas during sleep. For of what 
 else do dream^s consist ? And we know that 
 the bodily senses are at that time as it were 
 locked up, and the tie or connexion between 
 soul and body considerably loosened or re- 
 laxed. Why then may not the soul retain its 
 ideas when the connexion is quite dissolved, 
 and the body lies asleep in death ? We shall 
 the more readily believe this, if we admit the 
 hypothesis of the soul's material vehicle, com- 
 posed of most exquisitely fine particles of 
 matter. For if the so^l receive now its ideas 
 by means of impressions made on this vehicle 
 or clothing, which is inseparable from it and 
 departs with it from the body, we can the 
 more easily conceive how ideas accompany it 
 into the world of spirits." ' 
 
 It was stated in the lines prefatory to these 
 
 ' Broughton (preh. of Sarum, and vicar of St. Mary Red- 
 cliif, Bristol) on Futurity, pp. 121, 122, abridged and altered. 
 
 I
 
 author's experience. 49 
 
 Essays, that little or nothing can be advanced 
 from my personal experience which would 
 illustrate our subject. What will be now 
 briefly mentioned may perhaps be excepted, if 
 it shall appear, as it does to myself, to favour 
 the opinion of some such interior organism, 
 not essentially affected by the state of the body, 
 and probably not separable from the spirit. 
 
 During painful returns of chronic indisposi- 
 tion, characterised by much mental languor 
 and depression, when unable to bear a part in 
 intercourse even with near friends, it has 
 happened to me, while asleep, to be engaged 
 in very animated and pleasing conversation, 
 sustaining, of course, the parts both of myself 
 and of one or more companions in the dreaming 
 interview ; and great has been the disappoint- 
 ment, on waking, to find the fetter and the 
 burden still fixed, from which in sleep the 
 mind had been transiently released. 
 
 I would, indeed, that those dreams had 
 been far more like what an American poetess 
 describes, when she writes — 
 
 " Is it not sweet 
 To 'scape from stern reality, and glide 
 Where'er wild fancy marks her fairy way 
 Unlimited? If adverse fortune make
 
 50 SIGOURNEY. MEDICINAL DREAMS. 
 
 Our pillow stony, like tlie patriarch's bed 
 
 At lonety Bethel, do uot pitying dreams 
 
 Plant a bright ladder for the angels' feet, 
 
 And change our hard couch to the gate of heaven ? " 
 
 And again — 
 
 " If thou wilt seek the fellowship of dreams, 
 And make them friends, they e'en may bear thee up 
 From star to star, and let thee hear the rush 
 Of angel-wings upon God's errands speeding ; 
 And while they make some silver cloud thy car, 
 Will wliispering tell thee that the unslumbering soul 
 Wears immortality upon its crest, 
 And by its very power to soar with them 
 Proves that it cannot die." ^ 
 
 I regret that my own dreams, whether in 
 sickness or health, have been exceedingly 
 below this most exalted character ; still, such 
 as they were, they have at times proved some- 
 what medicinal : for although to awake from 
 them into the sense of great lassitude and 
 anxiety has been indeed gloomy, yet has 
 reflection on that very contrast tended to 
 nourish hope that the mind, thus emancipated 
 in sleep, might again be one day permitted to 
 act pleasurably and with alacrity when the 
 frame was awake ; that some residue of latent 
 energy was thus evinced, which God's provi- 
 
 ' Mrs. Sigourney, a Christian authoress of niucli talent. 
 Pocahontas and other Poems, pp. 302-3.
 
 DREAMING CONTRAST. 51 
 
 dence could yet suddenly or gradually call 
 forth to animate the duties and intercourses 
 of waking life. This kind of fact therefore 
 deserves to be ranked, at least in my esteem, 
 as among the more special providential ends 
 to which dreams may conduce ; a topic which 
 will be entered on subsequently. But it is 
 adduced here as appearing to favour the 
 opinion under discussion. It is an instance 
 where the bodily frame performs its functions 
 languidly, — where the cerebral organs and 
 nerves, in sympathy with the rest, are spe- 
 cially affected, — and yet where the mind, 
 which in waking hours, at such periods, 
 shrinks with conscious incompetence from 
 social converse and engagements, enters into 
 these in sleep with vivacity and earnestness. 
 Does it then so enter into them, by a total self- 
 abstraction and isolation, attained by sleep, 
 from organs, nerves, and matter altogether ? 
 That seems quite improbable, if only from 
 the very nature of the social scenes which 
 those dreams have presented : not to speak at 
 present of the prior question whether such 
 entire abstraction from matter be ever or- 
 dained or permitted for created minds. But
 
 52 ETHEREAL VEHICLE. 
 
 if it be not by such entire abstraction, or total 
 separateness of action from the body, that the 
 mind so acts in sleep, then, it may be justly 
 asked, — lioiv does it act at that season ? By 
 what conceivable way, in such a state of the 
 body, and of the brain in particular, does the 
 mind exert itself with such contrasted anima- 
 tion, vigour, and promptitude, — except by 
 acting during sleep, in some conjunction with, 
 or through the medium of, an interior vehicle ? 
 What third supposition or solution can be 
 i'ramed ? 
 
 On the whole, my impression is, that the 
 theory of the mind's operating, after its sepa- 
 ration from the mortal body, by means of an 
 ethereal vehicle, separable with it from our 
 external frame, at any rate greatly aids the 
 imagination with respect to the then continued 
 action of the spirit, and that the phenomeiia 
 of dreaming, especially when so explained, 
 further help to facilitate our conception of 
 this.
 
 SLEEP OF THE SOUL. 53 
 
 SECTION V. 
 
 It may be here asked — Do you then adopt 
 and advocate the doctrine of the " sleep of 
 the soul " ? The answer to that query must 
 depend altogether on what sense is attached 
 to the phrase. If it be taken or meant to 
 describe such a " profound sleep " as is sup- 
 posed to amount to " total insensibility " ^ or 
 suspension of consciousness, which seems to 
 be what has been most usually understood by 
 the phrase " sleep of the soul ; " for tliat, it is 
 manifest, no plea is offered, but for the very 
 contrary. 
 
 There is, however, another sense of the 
 word sleep, much more analogous to its real 
 ordinary meaning, in which I conceive it may 
 very fitly describe (though of course very 
 imperfectly) the state of the separated spirit. 
 
 ' Whately. Scripture Revelations of a Eiiture State, pp. 93, 9"2. 
 F 3
 
 54 DR. WATTS. DR. T. BURNET. 
 
 It is in this sense that Watts would have 
 the word employed, when he puts the fol- 
 lowing objection, — "How comes death to 
 be called so often in scripture a sleep, if the 
 soul wakes all the while ? " — and answers it by 
 this second query, — " Why is the repose of 
 the man every night called sleep, since the 
 soul wakes, as appears by a thousand dreams ? 
 But, as a sleeping man ceases to act in the 
 affairs of this world, though the soul be not 
 dead or unthinking, so death is called sleep, 
 because during that time men are cut off 
 from the businesses of this world, though the 
 soul think and act in another." ^ 
 
 Dr. Thomas Burnet of the Charterhouse, in 
 his Latin treatise " on the state of the dead, 
 &c." remarks, that " in scripture they are said 
 to sleep ; which intimates a state of rest, 
 silence, and cessation of work, that is, as to 
 the outward world ; so that we have no more 
 communication with it in the state of death 
 than in the state of sleep;" ^ and he afterwards 
 adds, " It is however to be noted, that when a 
 
 1 Watts's Works, vol. i. p 544, 4'to cd. ; .vud as quoted in 
 JIuTitingford's Testinnonies, pp. 38-34. 
 ^' De Statu Mortuovum, &c. p. 98.
 
 IXWARD ACTIVITY. EULER. 55 
 
 cessation of work is attributed to tlie souls of 
 the dead, we are not to understand this as 
 universal and of every kind, inward as well as 
 outward, but outward only ; so that they ope- 
 rate or affect nothing in the corporeal world, 
 nor are any way affected by it. Yet they 
 have, meantime, life, and indwelling or imma- 
 nent thoughts (cogitationesimmanentes). As 
 Christ said of the deceased patriarchs, they 
 " all live " unto God ; i. e. in relation to Him 
 and the invisible world, and in regard to their 
 intellectual powers, they live and act with 
 vigour (viviint vifjentque)." ^ 
 
 The distinguished Swiss mathematician, 
 Leonard Euler, (in a passage part of which 
 has been already cited,) writing of the state of 
 the soul after death, observes, " Sleep likewise 
 furnishes something like an example (pre- 
 figuration) of this : as the union of soul and 
 body is then in a great measure interrupted, 
 yet the soal ceases not from activity, being 
 employed in the production of dreams. These 
 are usually disturbed by the remaining influ- 
 ence which the senses exercise; and we know 
 
 ^ Burnet- Dc Statu Mortuoiuni, &c. pp. 99, 100.
 
 56 EULER. HARTLEY. BONNET. 
 
 by experience, that the more this influence is 
 suspended, which is the case in profound 
 sleep, the more regular and connected are 
 our dreams. Thus after death we shall find 
 ourselves in a more perfect state of dreaming, 
 which nothing shall be able to discompose. 
 It will consist of representations and reasonings 
 perfectly well kept up" (sustained).^ 
 
 Dr. Hartley remarks, " Upon the whole we 
 may guess, that though the soul (after death) 
 may not be in an insensible state, yet it will 
 be in a passive one, somewhat resembling a 
 dream, and not exert any great activity till 
 the resurrection." - 
 
 The Genevese naturalist, Charles Bonnet, 
 throws out, in his remarks on sleep, this 
 passing inquiry — " Is the state of the soul, 
 when separated from this mortal body, (corps 
 grossier,) that of a perpetual dream — pleasing 
 for the good, painful for the wicked ? " ^^ — 
 a suggestion that may recal to English me- 
 mories the well-known soliloquy which, one 
 
 ' Letters of Euler to a German Princess, vol, i. p. 359, 
 abridged. This passage is given from an English translation, 
 which is wanting in elegance, I would hope not in faithfulness. 
 
 2 Observations on Man, vol. ii. p. 41 fi. 
 
 3 Contrmpl. de la IN'atnre, (oin. i. p. 103.
 
 INTEK-MEDIATE STATE. 57 
 
 would hope, has checked some meditated 
 suicides : — 
 
 " la that sleep of death what dreams may come, 
 Must give us pause ! " 
 
 Many have seen in the catacombs of Paris 
 (which are now closed) the infidel's chosen 
 inscription, " Death is an eternal sleep:" but 
 what is gained for their object of repose, by 
 those whose wish was " father to that thought," 
 if the "eternal sleep" they coveted should 
 prove also a perpetual and an evil dream ? 
 
 After all — it may be said — that " sleep of 
 the soul," although it should be a vividly 
 conscious and ever-^/'eam?"/?^ sleep, can scarcely 
 be called real and substantial life. Its vision- 
 ary and " phantastic " character cannot equal 
 or emulate the clearness and assurance of 
 a waking state. 
 
 But I rather believe, that while as to ex- 
 terior action and communication it confessedly 
 cannot, it yet as to interior cogitation and 
 emotion may ; and, in this sense of life, maybe 
 fairly called quite real and substantial. A the- 
 orem, or problem, or calculation, evolved in a 
 dream, is as real and true as if it had been 
 completed in the state of waking ; and the
 
 58 THE CHRYSALIS. 
 
 feeling of lively joy or deep sadness in our 
 sleep is as actual and acute while it lasts as if 
 we experienced it in a waking hour. 
 
 Bonnet, writing of the state of the chry- 
 salis, observes, (as some will think, fancifully, 
 or even absurdly,) "In this state the activity 
 of the (insect's) mind does not exert or de- 
 velop itself outwardly. The state may be 
 compared to that of sleep. I will not, there- 
 fore, decide that the activity of the insect's 
 mind does not operate inwardly. It (the 
 chrysalis) may have dreams, by the remem- 
 brance of sensations which it experienced in 
 the caterpillar state."* This may appear 
 childish or preposterous to some. Yet few 
 people doubt that beagles and lapdogs have 
 dreams : and, if so, why should not the poor 
 chrysalis have its soothing reveries, and the ^ 
 butterfly enjoy some brilliant trance in her 
 siesta on a roseleaf ? 
 
 Although there be, doubtless, between sleep 
 and waking a broad and manifest distinction, 
 still how equivocal in some sense, and evanes- 
 cent, is the reality (so called) of our present 
 waking life ! Is not that true concerning 
 
 EsStai Analytifjup, torn. ii. p. 226.
 
 SCENES AND THOUGHTS FLEETING. 59 
 
 most of our daily imaginings and hopes and 
 fears, which the great poet last quoted has 
 said of our " palaces " and " temples," and of 
 this " great globe itself," that with respect to 
 earthly 'remembrance they vanish and " dis- 
 solve," and like an 
 
 " insubstantial pageant faded, 
 Leave not a wreck beliind ? " 
 
 So that he not unfitly adds, as it regards 
 our mortal condition, 
 
 " We are such stuff 
 As dreams are made of, and our L'ttle life 
 Is rounded with a sleep." ^ 
 
 The contrast, to be stated even in sober 
 prose, between dreams in sleep and the scenes 
 and thoughts of our waking mortality is not 
 so strong and absolute as may be at first con- 
 ceived. There are deep meanings in a later 
 poet's query, — 
 
 " Is not the past all shadow ? — What are these ? — 
 Creations of the mind ! — The mind can make 
 Substance ; and people planets of its own 
 With beings brighter than have been, and give 
 A breath to forms that shall outlive all flesh." 
 
 ^ Tempest. Act iv.
 
 60 THE VEHICLE. LEIBNITZ. 
 
 SECTION YL 
 
 Returning, for a short time, to our hypo- 
 thesis of the innermost body — the probably 
 inseparable vesture of the soul, I may cite 
 the belief of the philosopher Leibnitz, " that 
 all souls, all simple created substances, are 
 always joined with a body, and that none are 
 ever entirely separated from it." ^ 
 
 He also says, " I judge this the only tenable 
 conclusion, the conservation, namely, not only 
 of the soul but of the organic machine, al- 
 though the dissolution of thegross or ponderous 
 parts has reduced it to a minuteness which 
 escapes our senses." ^ 
 
 He elsewhere contends that " no derange- 
 ment of visible organs" (meaning not even 
 death itself) "is capable of producing entire 
 
 1 Nouvcaux Essais, p.l3; quoted in Bonnet, Palingenesie, 
 torn. i. p. 291. 
 
 2 0pp. torn, ii. p. 51 ; quotpclin Dissert, i. prefixed to Encyc. 
 Brit. ed. vii. p. 259.
 
 ARCHBISHOP WHATELV. 61 
 
 confusion, and depriving the soul of all its 
 organic body." ' 
 
 Now it is to me very apparent, as has been 
 already argued, that this notion of a latent 
 and refined organic vehicle renders our con- 
 ception of the unbroken consciousness and 
 inward activity of a spirit, when separated 
 from the gross mortal body, much the more 
 distinct and credible ; and also that the phe- 
 nomena of dreaming materially conduce to 
 support it : nor can I cease to believe the 
 consciousness of the spirit so separated, 
 whether viewed on Christian or philosophic 
 grounds, to be a tenet of great weight and 
 interest. 
 
 It is true, we must needs agree with 
 Archbishop Whately, that " on the supposi- 
 tion of utter unconsciousness of the separate 
 spirit " the time of this " total insensibility " 
 is to the spirit itself " no time at all." — " To 
 the party concerned there is " (as he adds) '* no 
 interval whatever."^ But when this very 
 
 * Nouveaiix Essais ; quoted in Bonnet, Palingenesie, torn. i. 
 p. 298. 
 
 2 Script. Revelations of a Future State, pp. 9-2M, edit. 5, 
 1842. 
 
 G
 
 62 WHATELY ON ETERNITY. 
 
 eminent logician goes on to affirra, that there 
 would not be in that " any loss of happiness 
 that might otherwise have been enjoyed during 
 the interval," ^ from this, although it may be 
 rash in one not trained in the academic use of 
 logical weapons, I am constrained to differ. 
 
 The learned writer says, "that Avhich is 
 taken from eternity does not shorten it." ^ 
 Does not this proposition, as here applied, 
 involve the paradox that eternity which had 
 a heginning, (and such must be the constant 
 meaning of the word when applied, as above, 
 to creatures,) is as long, as great, as eternity 
 which had no beginning, — or that an endless 
 line to be drawn from any point is as long as 
 the same line protracted infinitely from the 
 same point in two opposite directions ? 
 
 The archbishop adds, " if we are all destined, 
 as we are, to live /or eve?^ he that is born, for 
 example, a thousand years earlier, cannot be 
 said to have a longer life than he who is born 
 a thousand years later." ^ Now to object to 
 that position because it would seem to involve 
 this indefensible consequence, that even He 
 
 ^ Script. Revelations of a Future State, p. 99. 
 2 Ibid. p. 100. 3 ii5i(i. p. 100.
 
 ETERNAL LIFE POTENTL\.L. 63 
 
 who was " from everlasting " could not then 
 be said to have a longer life than the angel or 
 the infant formed to-day, who is " to live for 
 ever," — might be fallacious, as well as pre- 
 sumptuous : inasmuch as the Divine Existence 
 being regarded as simultaneous and insucces- 
 sive, the term " long," and similar terms, may 
 in no way be applicable to it. 
 
 But the phrase, " to live for ever," when 
 spoken of human beings, describes only a 
 potential life, a life future or which is to he, 
 but of which it never can be affirmed, now or 
 hereafter, that it is, or is complete. The actual 
 life of a creature — according, at least, to all 
 our conceptions — is only the past and present, 
 and will be still so millions of ages hence. 
 Although it be, at all periods, potentially, and 
 in God's purpose, infinite, it is, at all periods, 
 actually, finite. That which will he for ever 
 endless, is and must be for ever actually a 
 finite sum ; and whatever is taken out of that 
 actually finite amount, namely, out of the 
 past, has by so much shortened it. 
 
 It is admitted that any even finite period, 
 be it a thousand or a million of years, will at 
 length be a fraction vanishingly small of even
 
 64 CENTURIES OF THE DECEASED. 
 
 another finite period which will have past : 
 but this does not prove, to my apprehension, 
 that the many centuries since the death of 
 Noah or of Abraham are as nothing, and that 
 to have been totally unconscious during all 
 those ages, instead of living unto God, would 
 have been no loss ; or, which is tantamount, 
 that those patriarchs' centuries of conscious 
 repose and hope have been and are no gain. 
 
 On the contrary, I reckon there has been a 
 gain, even in the later instance, of more than 
 three millennia and a half; no small gain, 
 surely, in itself, however minute in proportion 
 to the vast future. 
 
 Then, further, the archbishop has been 
 already quoted, remarking (as others have 
 done) that " a series of events such as 
 would occupy several weeks or months will 
 appear to pass in a sleep of perhaps less than 
 an hour."^ 
 
 The "Spectator"^ refers to Malebranche 
 as telling us that it is possible some creatures 
 may think half an hour as long as we do 
 a thousand years. I have not found these 
 
 1 Scripture Revelations, pp. 153, T54. 
 ' No. 94, vol. ii. p. 54.
 
 THEIR IDEAL PERIOD. MALEBRANCHE. 65 
 
 words inMalebranche; and if he were speaking 
 of lower creatures, he could not have used 
 them consistently, since he held the astounding 
 Cartesian dogma of their being mere machines. 
 But it is perhaps to the following passage that 
 Addison refers. " I doubt not " (writes Male- 
 branche) " but God can so apply our minds to 
 the parts of duration, by producing in us 
 a great number of sensations in a very little 
 time, as that an hour may appear as long as 
 many ages."^ To this Lord Brougham's 
 computation of dreaming time would most 
 approach, who thinks a dream lasting one 
 second may seem to last for years. But let us 
 keep far within these reckonings, and even 
 within Archbishop Whately's own. He sup- 
 poses the events of " weeks or months " to be 
 comprised in the dream of " an hour." Let 
 only those of the waking hours of 2i fortnight 
 be so, and then must the millennia which have 
 elapsed be more than two-hundredfold multi- 
 plied, in order to represent the ideal period of 
 thoughts and feelings which has been lived 
 through by the spirits of those patriarchs : 
 
 1 Recherche, (Search after Truth.) Translation, book i. 
 c.viii. vol. i. p. 51. 
 
 g3
 
 66 SIMULTANEOUS IDEAS. 
 
 supposing, only, that the thoughts and emo- 
 tions of their separate state have equalled in 
 rapidity and multiplicity those which occur, 
 on a low computation, in the dreaming state. 
 
 Such I conceive to be allowable and proba- 
 ble inferences from the ascertained rapidity of 
 thought in this latter condition, and from that 
 resemblance of the former to it which some 
 philosophic minds anticipate.^ 
 
 An acute inquirer on our subject, after 
 noticing this " incalculable rapidity," observes, 
 " in regard to the prospect of futurity, who of 
 us can decide that this is not one evidence of 
 the divine nature of mind — a remote resem- 
 blance, if I may presume so to write, of one 
 of His attributes to whom a thousand years 
 are as one day ?"^ 
 
 The speculation here glanced at seems to 
 be, the possibility — when the mind is dis- 
 engaged from its mortal body — of the virtual 
 or real simuitaneousness of a plurality of 
 ideas. It would be an augmentation of the 
 human powers which we cannot appreciate, 
 
 1 See Watts, p. St; Burnet, p. 55 ; Eiilcr, p. 56 ; Hartley, 
 and Bonnet, ibid.; above. 
 
 ^ Dondy on Dreams, pp. 37, -iO.
 
 STUDY OF THE MIND. 67 
 
 if the mind should become capable to think 
 clearly even of two objects at one time.^ 
 
 On all this the comment may be made by 
 some, — these are mere hypotheses, not scien- 
 tific facts : they refer also to what is in itself 
 ideal and intangible, and are without practical 
 utility. Hoping, however, not to be deemed 
 insensible to the importance of physical science, 
 I must equally hope that the reader is not so as 
 to the value of that which is above and beyond it. 
 
 It is a truism — and yet needs to be remem- 
 bered, — that the highest results of mathe- 
 matical or astronomical research, the most 
 recondite discoveries in chemistry or fossil 
 remains, or the most ingenious applications of 
 science to arts, agriculture, or manufactures, 
 all derive their existence from the mind itself, 
 which can alone either produce or estimate 
 or enjoy these results. The study, therefore, 
 of our thinking selves cannot (one would 
 judge) be of less interest than that of any 
 
 ^ On the marvellous subject of omniscience, striking illus- 
 trations are offered in a remarkable chapter of Dr. McCulloch's 
 work on the Attributes, — " the coexistence of ideas in the 
 Divine ramd." — Vol. i. ch. xv. p. 380. See also Locke on 
 Pascal and on Angels. Essay, book ii. c. x. § 9, p. 7-3.
 
 68 PHYSICS AND METAPHYSICS. 
 
 external and visible objects. But, it may be 
 said, much less sure and demonstrative. 
 Granting this — which, however, is not in all 
 respects beyond dispute — it may then be 
 rejoined, — whatever concerns and will always 
 concern us intimately and chiefly, cannot, 
 though it be more inscrutable in some respects, 
 deserve curiosity and attention less than what 
 affects us very slightly or indirectly, although 
 the latter should be more easy to investigate, 
 or more apparently practical in its application. 
 To observe the contests of microscopic 
 insects in a water-drop — " myriads of indivi- 
 duals, each of them as perfect in organization 
 as the mighty mammoth of old, or the saga- 
 cious elephant of our days, endowed with 
 distinct habits, propensities, and faculties,"^ — 
 to detect the organs of the infusoria, or pursue 
 with Dalton the ultimate atoms in their latent 
 forms — is doubtless exceedingly interesting, 
 as it unveils the recesses of creative skill ; 
 but it cannot, methinks, be less so to infer — 
 from these facts, which show how prodigiously 
 matter is subtilised while yet regularly or- 
 ganised — how our thinking self may carry 
 
 ' Dr. Millingen. Ciiriositiei'i of Mpdical Exprripnco, p. 359.
 
 POPE. ZIMMERMANN. 69 
 
 with it, and wear upon it, some extremely 
 attenuated organism in the dreaming or medi- 
 tative repose of Hades, and then assume a 
 yet more " spiritual " body for the waking life 
 and active rest of Heaven. 
 
 It seems fair to judge, that they who deem 
 this a less worthy object of study than the 
 pursuits of Faraday or Ehrenberg, betray a 
 distaste for the knowledge of their present 
 and future selves which is not to be admired, 
 even in a merely intellectual point of view. 
 
 Pope's weighty maxim, 
 
 " The proper study of mankind is man," 
 
 must, of course, not be taken in a restrictive 
 or exclusive sense ; but, in its intended and 
 legitimate meaning, it cannot by the truly 
 wise be discarded. 
 
 Before passing from our immediate topic— 
 that of the separated spirit's probable state of 
 reverie, and of the ethereal vehicle in which it 
 may act — to those more general remarks 
 which will conclude the present Essay, it will 
 be appropriate to mention a singular dream, 
 relating to that separate state, which occurred 
 to Zimmermann, (the physician of George II.)
 
 /O DREAM OF ZIMMERMANN. 
 
 and is recorded by Lavater in one of liis 
 letters to him. 
 
 " I add," (he writes,) '' as a phenomenon 
 from which perhaps some idea may be deduced 
 as to the state of the soul after death, that 
 remarkable dream which you yourself had, 
 my dearest Zimmermann, in November, 1765. 
 The true narrative of such an experience, by 
 a man who is the sworn foe of all superstition, 
 and who contemns the remotest approach to 
 fanaticism, is of great value. This dream of 
 yours is worthy of notice on two accounts : 
 first, in so far as it may be considered gene- 
 rally to have arisen from an unusual state of 
 the soul, which perhaps resembles its condition 
 after the death of the body ; and secondly, as 
 it contains and suggests some very probable 
 ideas respecting that condition of the separated 
 spirit. You saw your wife — whose decease 
 had been announced to you — in a beautiful 
 and aerial form and garb, in her modest tran- 
 quil loveliness, yet with an aspect of somewhat 
 strange solemnity. 
 
 " She approached you with an amiable 
 majesty not to be described, and with the 
 disclosure, 'that she had experienced things 
 
 I
 
 COULD NOT BE FULLY TOLD. < 1 
 
 which no man had ever conjectured ; that the 
 powers of her soul had been infinitely exalted 
 and enlarged ; that she had looked through 
 the transient past in all its causes and se- 
 quences ; that each present moment was for 
 her as a sea of ideas, but the future still some- 
 what dark ; that she was inexpressibly happy, 
 and yet not perfectly so ; that her whole past 
 course of life ever floated before her mind ; 
 that every thought, every disposition, not 
 leading decidedly to that towards which all 
 her wishes were now directed, appeared to 
 her a fault, and gave her uneasiness ; that 
 she felt a sort of helplessness when contem- 
 plating the way to heaven ; that in heaven 
 she was not yet ; judgment had not yet 
 occurred ; that brilliant clouds as yet veiled 
 from their view that blissful home, and thither, 
 thither, they were pressing.' You told me, 
 further, that you had asked of your wife a 
 number of weighty questions, which she so 
 answered, that you saw clearly what the 
 greatest mind among mortals could never 
 have attained the remotest glimpse of; but 
 that in the attempt to note these down you 
 awoke, and then, notwithstanding the most
 
 72 ITS ELEVATED IDEAS. 
 
 Strenuous efforts at recollection, were unable 
 to recal the sublime, and new, and prescient 
 ideas, which in the dream you were anxious to 
 record." ' 
 
 On the more special design and use which 
 may be traceable or supposable in dreams of 
 such an order as this, nothing will be said at 
 present. That branch of the subject will 
 occupy us in the subsequent Essay. The 
 general character of this dream, and of some 
 others — namely, that extraordinary affluence 
 and elevation of ideas which the dreamer 
 experienced — appears to be in part explained, 
 though rather vaguely, by Addison, at the 
 close of his paper on sleep, where he writes, 
 "I do not suppose that the soul, in these 
 instances, is entirely loose and unfettered 
 from the body : it suffices if she is not so 
 immersed in matter, nor so entangled and 
 perplexed in her operations, as when she 
 actuates the machine in her waking hours. 
 The corporeal union is slackened enough to 
 give the mind more play."^ 
 
 ' Lavater, Aussichten, torn. i. brief 7, pp. 141, H-i. See 
 Note C, at the end of this volume. 
 '^ Spectator, No. 487.
 
 REFINED VEHICLE. 73 
 
 Some approach to a less indistinct explana- 
 tion of this is made, as it seems to me, by the 
 hypothesis which has been brought before the 
 reader, — that of an exquisitely refined vehicle 
 in close connexion with the spirit, acting 
 when the functions and influences of the 
 exterior body are peculiarly suspended ; a 
 theory which I conceive casts some faint 
 light, at least, both on the present occasional 
 action of the mind in sleep, and on its pro- 
 bable action in that next condition, which, 
 with reference to the exterior body, is fitly 
 called the " separate state."
 
 74 USE OP THIS INQUIRY. 
 
 SECTION VII. 
 
 This inquiry, imperfect as it is, will not be 
 fruitless, if it corroborate for any mind the 
 probabilities which exist, independently of 
 the Christian revelation, of a spiritual sub- 
 stance and a life to come ; and if it assist our 
 conception and belief that the spirit will con^ 
 tinue to experience good or evil immediately 
 after death, and before union to that immortal 
 " indument " with which, if itself renewed, it 
 shall be at length invested and adorned. 
 
 Some, however, while admitting that the 
 design is good, may object that the arguments 
 are for such purposes superfluous, since we 
 have the scriptures to rest upon, and " there 
 is firm footing ; " whereas all else is fanciful 
 or unsure. Why, they may ask, attempt to 
 add frail props or flying buttresses, Avhen the 
 " pillar and ground " of God's truth uphold so 
 strongly the great edifice of our hopes ? But 
 the fact (as I conceive) should be never
 
 COLLATERAL PROOFS VALUABLE. 75 
 
 slighted or forgotten, that while in our age 
 the strength of revealed proof has been evinced 
 and searched and recognised afresh, — in our 
 age likewise insidious modifications of un- 
 belief abound ; while some learned Chris- 
 tians, when insisting on the need of tradition 
 and authority, have, for the sake of en- 
 forcing this, most strangely depreciated the 
 character of evidence derived from nature 
 and from scripture. It is therefore to me 
 very apparent, that no collateral or prior and 
 independent proof — though it may be merely 
 of a presumptive character — concerning a 
 future life, and even concerning an imme- 
 diate life after death, can be rightly abandoned 
 or even overlooked. 
 
 Such arguments should be peculiarly oiFered, 
 to those who refuse serious attention to the 
 claims of revelation ; and ought to impress 
 them, at least, with this persuasion — that there 
 is much probable evidence, wholly apart from 
 God's word, for a state of consciousness fol- 
 lowing death, and following it immediately. 
 K, in any measure, they seriously accede to 
 that conclusion, it is adapted, by its intrinsic 
 importance, to attract or urge them further ;
 
 76 IMPORTANCE OF FUTURITY. 
 
 for I see not how minds, even really suspecting 
 thus much, can with any colour of reason con- 
 temn or treat lightly the proposals of revealed 
 truth. If we are even at all lihelu to exist 
 after death, can it seem a matter of small 
 interest to investigate, as far as may be, what 
 we are to become — how to fare — with whom 
 to meet or sojourn ; — in that approaching state 
 " what dreams may come," — whether " of tor- 
 ture" or " the touch of joy ;" — and, above all, 
 what will be the circumstances and experience 
 of the full and final awaking ? But where 
 shall any light be obtained on these points, 
 except purely from scriptural sources ? 
 
 Yet that very weightiness of the matter 
 seems to be one reason — though perhaps 
 unacknowledged, and sometimes even latent 
 to those who are under its influence — why, by 
 some persons, researches on the mind are 
 depreciated, and physical science exclusively 
 preferred : namely, that the former lead 
 towards the contemplation of thoughts and 
 interests of graver hue or more momentous 
 import than they incline to dwell upon. 
 
 This is somewhat as if an inquisitive mer- 
 chant should cultivate a taste for anatomy or
 
 PHYSICAL SCIENCE SECONDARY. 77 
 
 entomology, but avoid books or conversations 
 on political economy or finance ; half conscious 
 how these might indirectly remind him, that 
 it were well to look more closely into his own 
 ledger, or more frequently scrutinize his scale 
 of domestic expenditure. 
 
 True wisdom will incline us to welcome, 
 first and most, those inquiries which have 
 some bearing on our deepest interests and our 
 chosen aims. 
 
 To direct our researches exclusively to the 
 qualities and phenomena of matter, were to 
 forget all by which we perceive or explore 
 them — our own mind or spirit, and that 
 Infinite Spirit who is its Author. 
 
 If these existed not, what of real or perma- 
 nent in the universe could remain ? And 
 since these exist, what studies or sciences 
 beside can so intimately and intensely con- 
 
 cern us 
 
 If our present mortal condition be, in 
 some figurative sense, a " dream of life," — as 
 poetry has termed it, — or, as a far higher 
 authority avers, " a vapour that appeareth and 
 vanisheth away ; " if the next or intermediate 
 life be (in a different and stricter sense) a 
 H 3
 
 78 THE CHRISTIAN. THE SCEPTIC. 
 
 state of dreaming or of contemplative reverie, 
 inexpressibly vivid and exalted ; if there be, 
 moreover, beyond both these, a waking blessed- 
 ness, which all who by God's help abjure 
 their pride and self-sufficiency may be " made 
 meet" to share, — then what shall be thought 
 even of our curiosity or love of knowledge, 
 unless it have, some way, a reference to that 
 state, where, with the rapid excursiveness of 
 the sublimest dreams, shall be combined the 
 clearness, continuousness, and progression of 
 the highest waking thoughts ? 
 
 Every the most indirect or reflected ray 
 which can be brought from science or ex- 
 perience to illustrate that great prospect, 
 must have some value. The prospect itself 
 is seen but as in an obscure and mystic 
 glass : yet there are in it features and aspects 
 of unearthly brightness : while the sceptic's 
 is altogether desolate and dim ; chill " shadows, 
 clouds, and darkness " resting on it, whatever 
 may be his intellectual power or imaginative 
 range.' 
 
 If inquiries or researches, in rvhatever 
 region, tend to support the highest truths and 
 1 Sec Note D, at tlic cud ol' this volume.
 
 THEIR CONTRASTED PROSPECT. 79 
 
 noblest expectations, they have thus an in- 
 direct and accessory worth which is beyond 
 all computing ; — if not so, they must become, 
 even to the most ardent votaries of science, of 
 piteously small worth ere long. 
 
 The sceptic, by his own confession, is 
 " borne darkly, fearfully afar." If we follow 
 his flight, he leaves us gazing as on some vast 
 and brilliant " firemist," or some immense 
 but formless nebula : — while the believer 
 carries us amidst the warmth and harmony of 
 heavenly orbs, and hails them as the "man- 
 sions of his Father's house." 
 
 If each were but a dream, who would not 
 choose the Christian's ? what right and earnest 
 mind must not long to have it stamped with 
 the signet of reality ? who not prefer those 
 godlike visions which reveal the great First 
 Cause as a reconciled Father, and the divinely 
 opened way to filial union with Him who is 
 the Origin and Giver of all good, and thus to 
 an unfailing tenure of blessedness in full per- 
 petuity ? 
 
 Lideed, were this but a dream, then must 
 happiness, nay existence itself — as is feigned 
 in the hallucinations of a self-blinding philo-
 
 80 HOPES OF TRUE THEISTS. 
 
 sophy — be but a mere dream likewise. Then 
 
 might we fitly deplore, with the author of 
 
 AdonaiSjthe rueful enigma of man's destiny : — 
 
 "Woe is me, 
 Whence are we, and why are we P Of what scene 
 The actors — or spectators ? " 
 
 But it cannot be so. The prospects of the 
 Cliristian rest on the basis of large and com- 
 plex evidence. The Deity is their author, 
 and His perfections their guarantee. Else, 
 weak and depraved man has dreamed or con- 
 ceived of something more great and good than 
 we can know that God has anywhere purposed 
 or devised. To imagine this were to deny a 
 God ; for it were to exclude the Perfect. 
 But if in Him, the Perfect, we really believe, 
 our belief involves the ennobling, inspiriting 
 persuasion, that whoever seek happiness in 
 the way which He prescribes, shall be "satis- 
 fied, when they awake, with His likeness."
 
 ESSAY II.
 
 ESSAY 11. 
 
 SECTION I. 
 
 In attempting to prosecute an inquiry of this 
 kind, one may encounter some discourage- 
 ment even from the casual question sometimes 
 heard in society, — what will be really under- 
 stood of the matter after all? — words in- 
 timating a belief of hopeless obscurity in the 
 subject, which we are constrained to acknow- 
 ledge has some degree of correctness. For, 
 without doubt, these phenomena of dreaming 
 are of a character peculiarly shadowy, vague, 
 and irregular; involving causes and operations 
 which utterly elude research. But this will 
 hardly be deemed a reason for not exploring
 
 84 MYSTERY UNIVERSAL. 
 
 them, unless almost all studies should be re- 
 nounced on account of that impervious dark- 
 ness which soon and surely meets us, in 
 ascending or descending towards their several 
 objects. 
 
 Whether we contemplate — as is our duty 
 and our glory — the Infinite and Self-existent, 
 — or pass by a boundless descent from that 
 sole underived and self-sustaining Majesty 
 to the loftiest of created minds, — and thence, 
 without pausing at any step in the vast gra- 
 dation of lowlier spirit and of organized 
 matter, drop suddenly to a mere ultimate 
 atom, or a particle physically indivisible, — 
 the same unanswerable questions arise, con- 
 cerning the atom as concerning its Creator, 
 — what is it ? how does it subsist ? At the 
 lowest conceivable point of entity, as well as 
 at its glorious primal source, the same secrets 
 baffle us. Whether we bow before the Supreme 
 or trace diagrams in the sand, whether we 
 speak of the cedar or hyssop, of thoughts or 
 of dreams, we touch everywhere the veil and 
 verge of mystery ; and not to discern this, 
 were rather to vegetate than to think. 
 
 A different objection to the line of inquiry
 
 IMPERFECT THOUGHTS IN DREAMS. 85 
 
 here pursued is current in some circles, and 
 is also found in books. It is to this effect, 
 — that dreams, physiologically considered, 
 plainly arise from broken remembrance and 
 diverse sensation acting on the nerves and 
 brain; shaped by the incidents of the past 
 day ; modified by health and diet ; produced 
 often by casual sound, or contact, or position 
 of the limbs ; and accordingly that the action 
 of our mind is then exceedingly imperfect; 
 as the utterly trivial and confused quality 
 of most dreams evinces. All this we may 
 generally admit ; without at all allowing it to 
 follow, either that every dream arises from 
 physical causes because very many do so, or 
 that the action of the mind is necessarily 
 feeble and confused in sleep because such is 
 most commonly the fact. It is much less 
 equitable than it is easy, to assert that some 
 have meant to represent the mind as having 
 in sleep powers equal or superior in all 
 respects to those of its waking state. Even 
 the learned and original, though somewhat 
 paradoxical. Sir Thomas Browne must not 
 be taken in too literal and large a sense. I 
 doubt not he wished, as he affirms, to pursue 
 I
 
 86 GALEN. ANTONINUS. 
 
 sometimes in dreams his studies and devotions, 
 — as having experienced more vivid and 
 exalted thought in dreaming than when awake. 
 But we do not read of his wishing to prescribe 
 in dreams, or recommending his patients to 
 seek remedies in that way : — although Galen 
 and Hippocrates appear to have had faith in 
 such a method,^ and no less a person than the 
 emperor Marcus Antoninus wrote, " I am 
 thankful that remedies were pointed out to 
 me in dreams, for spitting of blood and for a 
 giddiness in my head, as I remember was the 
 case at Caieta and at Chrysa." ^ 
 
 But there have been adduced in the fore- 
 going pages various and striking testimonies^ 
 for the fact of intellectual power and activity 
 exercised in dreams ; which opposite instances, 
 were they ever so numerous, cannot overturn. 
 
 If we wished to prove intellectual power 
 in the negi^o race, (which was once denied,) — 
 and if, in an assembly for debate composed of 
 a hundred negroes, we found the most speak 
 
 ' Millingen's Medical Curiosities, p. 307, and Peter Martyr, 
 loc. com. p. 20. 
 
 2 Graves's Antoninus, book i. p. G'i. 
 
 3 Pp. 28—37, above.
 
 NEGRO MIND. RECAPITULATION. 87 
 
 rather childishly, and some even incoherently, 
 but yet a few who discussed the matter well, 
 and one or two who even spoke acutely on 
 both sides — keenly refuting points which 
 themselves had plausibly raised, (as some- 
 times happens in our dreams,) — we ought not 
 surely to measure the capacity of the negro 
 mind from the instances in which it was 
 undeveloped, but from the few which proved 
 what it could attain. 
 
 It may be advantageous very summarily to 
 review the chief topics and ultimate aim of 
 the preceding Essay. 
 
 After reference to the opinions on dream- 
 ing of some ancients and moderns, proofs were 
 offered, first, of the rapidity of thought in 
 dreams; second, of the mental power and 
 inventiveness evinced. An inquiry followed 
 on the probable manner of the soul's acting, 
 both in sleep and in the intermediate state. 
 After some notice of the objections to these 
 theories, the great application of the facts 
 was urged and vindicated, as reinforcing all 
 other proofs and probabilities both of a con- 
 scious life to come, and of the continuous
 
 88 FURTHER DESIGN. 
 
 sequence of that conscious life through and 
 after the event of our mortal dissolution. 
 
 If these things were, with any fair measure 
 of conclusiveness, shown, we must see that 
 there has been an important design of Pro- 
 vidence in rendering dreams a part of the 
 human constitution and experience: since 
 they have conduced to infuse — in the absence 
 of revealed truth or in aid of traditional and 
 obscure disclosures, and even in support of 
 historical revelation which so many are dis- 
 posed to neglect or repudiate — the sense of a 
 spiritual and prescient power, and of a future 
 life; those great sanctions of moral obliga- 
 tion. 
 
 It will now be one of my further aims to 
 show, tliat this design of dreams, or of the 
 dreaming faculty, in general, has been also 
 pursued and promoted in the special character, 
 circumstances, and issue of some dreams in 
 particular. No doubt such dreams — like 
 divine miracles and prophecies — have given 
 rise, from the weakness and craft of mankind, 
 to many erring fancies, and many corrupt 
 imitations and false pretensions for gain : but 
 just so has the religious principle (or instinct
 
 WHICH ABUSES DO NOT DISPROVE. 89 
 
 of worship) led, in the fallen mind of man, to 
 all the like deluding results. Are we to infer 
 thence, with Lucretius, that the religious 
 principle is deceptive and pernicious ? None 
 but virtual atheists can admit that inference. 
 Neither is a parallel inference admissible in 
 the case before us. 
 
 i3
 
 90 MISUSE OF DREAMS. 
 
 SECTION II. 
 
 The object, however, of this Essay, as was 
 stated in the former, is twofold ; namely, to 
 discourage a fanciful and superstitious misuse 
 of dreams, as well as to vindicate the prevail- 
 ing impression that some have been ordered 
 for important ends by the providence of the 
 Supreme Ruler. 
 
 I would address myself first to the former 
 object ; adverting to those superstitions con- 
 cerning dreams, which in ancient times con- 
 spicuously prevailed, and which, to a certain 
 extent, are still subsisting. It was inevitable, 
 that from the singularity of some dreams, and 
 from what sometimes occurred — to say the 
 least — in seeming fulfilment of them, — there 
 would arise a desire to conjecture and inter- 
 pret, or to have this done by sagacious pro- 
 fessors; and that the covetousness and cunning 
 of men, ever on the watch for lucre, would 
 minister to this desire. 
 
 Accordingly we find, from all history, that
 
 DIVINATION . MAG I. 91 
 
 divination by dreams had become in the 
 earliest ages a sort of profession. It formed 
 one branch of the occult art of soothsaying, 
 much resorted to by royal, noble, and opulent 
 personages. Thus the Egyptian Pharaoh 
 dreamed, " and his spirit was troubled, and he 
 called for all the magicians of Egypt and all 
 the wise men thereof, and told them his 
 dream ; but none could interpret it."^ Thus 
 the royal builder of Babylon "commanded 
 to call the magicians and the astrologers and 
 the sorcerers and the Chaldeans, for to show 
 the king his dreams."^ The same class of 
 sages is mentioned by Herodotus. He relates, 
 that a dream of Astyages, King of Media, con- 
 cerning his daughter Mandane, as explained 
 by the Magi, the interpreters of dreams, gave 
 the monarch great alarm.^ 
 
 Cicero cites, from Dinon's Persian history, 
 the interpretation given by the Magi of a 
 dream of Cyrus, who had seen the sun at his 
 feet and tried to grasp it ; and Quintus Cicero, 
 
 1 Gen. xli. 2. ' Dan. ii. 2. 
 
 3 Herod, lib. i. c. 107, 109, Taylor's translation, pp. 51, 52. 
 He speaks also of the Magi interpreting a dream to Xerxes, 
 ibid. p. 485.
 
 92 ASTYAGES. NEBUCHADNEZZAR. 
 
 telling a dream of his own, when Proconsul 
 of Asia, adds, " it was foretold to me by the 
 skilful in that science in Asia, that the events 
 would follow which did happen." ^ 
 
 While this was likely to be a very gainful 
 profession, when the prognostications and 
 their issues met the wishes of the great, it 
 was, like other offices about despots, perilous 
 also. Astyages, from the revolt of his grand- 
 son Cyrus, learned that he had been misled 
 by the second interpretation of his wise men, 
 who at first had declared his dream to portend 
 that his grandson would usurp the throne, 
 but afterwards pronounced it fulfilled in his 
 having played the king among village boys ; 
 — and then " his first act, on sustaining a 
 defeat from Cyrus, was to empale those 
 Magian interpreters." ^ 
 
 Although the historical accuracy of this nar- 
 rative may be questionable, it doubtless de- 
 scribes what might be expected from such a 
 prince ; which is confirmed by Nebuchadnez- 
 zar's procedure, who, when the Chaldeans failed 
 
 ' De Divinatione, lib. i. cc. 23, 28. 0pp. t. ix. 3759, 3764. 
 3 Herod, lib. i. cc. 120, 122, 130, Taylor's version, pp. 
 62, .59, 63.
 
 PERILS OF DIVLNEKS. JULIAN. 93 
 
 to divine what his dream had been, became 
 " very furious, and commanded to destroy 
 them." 1 Andrew Baxter truly observes, 
 '' though they seemed to be the first favourites, 
 yet their post was not very desirable; for if 
 they happened to mistake in some great 
 matter, it was at the peril of their lives." 
 Still these hazards did not deter men from a 
 profession, which, besides its great gainfulness 
 led, in case of success, to high reputation and 
 reverence.2 
 
 Plutarch tells us that a grandson of the 
 great Aristides (Lysimachus) plied constantly 
 near the temple of Bacchus at Athens, having 
 certain tables by which he interpreted dreams 
 for a livelihood,^ 
 
 The emperor Julian, in a much later age, 
 "chose his favourites among those skilled in 
 occult science ; and those who pretended to 
 
 * Dan. ii. 12 ; verse 13 is rendered by the Septuagint and 
 Vulgate, " they were slain." 
 
 2 Timnrinhis autobiography, in times comparatively modern, 
 writes of the interpreters and learned of his cotirt as expound- 
 ing his dreams ; and the editor of that curious work refers to 
 the dreams of Tippoo Sultan as given in his published letters, 
 by Col. Kirkpatrick, in 1811. 
 
 ^ Plutarch in Aristides. Wrangham, vol. iii. p. 187.
 
 94 DELOS. HEATHEN PRIESTS. 
 
 reveal secrets of futurity were assured of 
 present honour and affluence." ^ 
 
 This gain was often made by the priests. 
 Thus Brizo, who had the care of dreams, was 
 worshipped in Delos, and boatfuls of all sorts 
 of things were offered to her, except fish.^ 
 
 It may be the assistant interpreters reckoned 
 fish in a small island no luxury, but rather 
 suited for fasts than festivals. 
 
 The offices are named together by Achilles. 
 
 " Haste we to consult 
 Priest, prophet, or interpreter of dreams, 
 Por dreams are also of Jove," 3 
 
 Readers of the ^neid will remember that 
 the good king Latinus in perplexity went to 
 the oracle of Faunus, where 
 
 " The priest on skins of offerings takes his ease, 
 And nightly visions in his slumher sees. 
 Hitlier— t' invoke the God — Latinus hies. 
 Offering a hundred sheep for sacrifice ; 
 
 ^ Gibbon's Decline and Fall, vol. ii. p. 377. 
 2 Athenseus, lib, viii,, in Potter's Greek Antiq. vol. i. pp. 
 306,307. 
 
 a Tliad, book i. 1. 83, Cowper ; (1. 03, Greek.)
 
 FEES FOR DIVINATION. 95 
 
 With whose soft fleeces (as the rites required) 
 Spread for his couch, — he lay in rest retired. 
 No sooner were his eyes in slumber bound. 
 Than from above a more than mortal sound 
 Invades his ear," &c. ^ 
 
 So at the oracle of Amphiaraus at Oropus, 
 the inquirer, reposing on the victim's skin, 
 " expected a revelation by dream." ^ Now 
 whether the oveipoTroXog (versed in dreams) 
 meant in Homer — as Mr. Pope thought ^ — " a 
 good dreamer" for himself or others, or 
 whether an interpreter of dreams, there was 
 doubtless gain in view. If the priest in any 
 case filled both offices, the implicit faith thus 
 shown by the inquirer may lead us to suppose 
 a more willing and large oblation. But were 
 the sage a ragged fortune-teller, or a white- 
 robed sacrificer, — and whether the king brought 
 a whole flock, or the peasant slept on his only 
 lamb's skin, — the diviner or the conductor of 
 the rites was not without fee. It is true when 
 Penelope's dream about her geese was ex- 
 pounded by her own Ulysses in disguise, no 
 reward is represented by the poet as given or 
 
 1 jEneid, vii. 1. 86, Dryden's version altered. 
 
 2 Potter's Greek Antiq. vol. i. p. 294. 
 
 3 Pope's Hiad, vol. i. p. 16.
 
 96 DREAM OP PENELOPE. 
 
 promised ; but doubtless the good queen must 
 have felt an ample one to be due, if the 
 stranger's words should be verified. I venture 
 to introduce this curious passage. 
 Penelope says to the unknown : — 
 
 " But I have dreamed. Hear and expound my dream ! 
 — My geese are twenty ; which within my walls 
 I feed with sodden wheat ; — they serve to amuse 
 Sometimes my sorrow. — From the mountains came 
 An eagle, huge, hook-beaked, — brake all their necks 
 And slew them : scattered on the palace floor 
 They lay, and he soared swift into the skies. 
 
 Dream only as it was, I wept aloud ; 
 Till all my maidens, gathered by ray voice, 
 Arriving, found me weeping still, and still 
 Complaining, that an eagle had at once 
 Slain all my geese. But to the palace-roof 
 Stooping again, he sat, and with a voice 
 Of human sound, my tears forbidding, said — 
 
 ' Take courage, daughter of the glorious chief 
 Icarius ; no vain dream hast thou beheld. 
 But, in thy sleep, a truth. Tlie slaughtered geese 
 Denote thy suitors ; and myself who seem 
 An eagle in thy sight, am yet indeed 
 Thy husband, who have now, at last, returned, 
 Death— horrid death— designing for thera all.' 
 
 He said : then, wakuig at the voice, I cast 
 An anxious look around, and saw my geese 
 JJesidc their tray, all feeding as before.
 
 INVENTED DREAMS. 97 
 
 Her then Ulysses answered, ever-wise — 
 * O Queen, interpretation cannot err 
 Unless pen'ersely, since Ulysses' self 
 !So plainly spake the event. Sure death impends 
 O'er every suitor; he shall slay them all.' " ^ 
 
 It is obvious that dreams would be very 
 often invented, by persons having no regard 
 to truth, with a view to influence those whom 
 it was their interest to flatter or to guide. One 
 of the most eminent Romans has been thought 
 capable of this. " Cicero attending Csesar 
 into the capitol, happened to relate to his ac- 
 quaintances a dream of the preceding night — 
 that a boy of noble aspect, sent down from 
 heaven, and with a golden chain, had stood at 
 the doors of the capitol, and Jove had deli- 
 vered to him the ' flagellum' ^ — and then, sud- 
 denly seeing Augustus, who as yet was 
 unknown to most, but whom his uncle Caesar 
 had sent for to assist at a sacrifice, he affirmed 
 that he was the very youth whose image had 
 in his sleep appeared before him." These are 
 the words of Suetonius. ^ Plutarch mentions 
 
 ' Odyssey, book xix. 1. 647, Cowper's version. 
 
 2 A classical friend informs me that the " flagellum," sco\irge, 
 is still found among the insignia of the Egyptian Deities. 
 
 3 Vit. August, c. 94. 
 
 K
 
 98 CICERO. JULIUS CiESAR. 
 
 the dream also, though with circumstances 
 considerably different.^ But Cicero himself, 
 in his work " of divination," when taking the 
 incredulous side and making rather light of 
 his own famous dream about Marius, has these 
 words — " to myself truly, except that 3Iarian 
 dream, nothing remarkable of the kind has 
 occurred."^ Now this treatise was written 
 after Caesar's death. " If therefore," observes 
 Andrew Baxter, " what he has said be true, 
 Suetonius makes him pay court to Julius 
 Cassar by telling a fictitious dream concerning 
 the boy Augustus his adopted heir." ^ But, 
 although Cicero did pay court to Caesar, and 
 even composed (strange to say) an epic poem 
 in honour of him,* I would rather suppose 
 this dream invented after the death of both. 
 The early divination of his subsequent great- 
 ness, by such a man as Cicero, would be a 
 story sure to please Augustus when sovereign; 
 of whom Suetonius writes, that he " neither 
 neglected his own dreams nor those of others 
 
 1 Vit. Ciceron. Wrangham's translation, vol. vi. p. 331. 
 
 2 De Divinat. lib. ii. c. 68. Opp. t. ix. p. 3835. 
 
 3 Baxter on the Soul, p. 221. 
 
 * Lif(! by Middleton, vol. i. p. 4-35.
 
 AUGUSTUS. SOOTHSAYER. 99 
 
 concerning him :" nay, that this renowned 
 prince and warrior "regarded it as a dire 
 omen, if his shoe in the morning was put on 
 amiss, the left for the right." ^ When super- 
 stition could so possess a powerful and culti- 
 vated mind, we shall not wonder that it 
 pervaded the multitude. 
 
 A dream which Cicero has cited from Chry- 
 sippus seems invented on purpose to satirize 
 the cupidity of interpreters. " A person tells 
 a soothsayer that he has dreamed of an egg 
 hanging from his bed curtain. The diviner 
 answers, that a treasure is under the bed. He 
 digs, and finds some gold, surrounded with 
 silver : on which he sends the diviner a small 
 portion of the silver, who thereon facetiously 
 inquires, — what, nothing of the yolk V 
 
 Nihilne, inquit, de vitello ? - 
 
 But still, as has been already said, neither 
 the potency nor childishness of superstition, 
 nor the trickery and covetousness which foster 
 it, can show the principle of religion to be 
 
 ' Sueton. Vit. August, cc. 91, 92. 
 
 2 De Divinat. lib. ii. c. 65. 0pp. t. ix. p. 3833.
 
 100 FICTIONS NO DISPROOF. 
 
 groundless or hurtful, or indeed less than im- 
 mensely valuable. A thousand juggleries or 
 illusions cannot prove that there have been 
 no real miracles : and thus millions of futile 
 dreams, with thousands of fictitious ones, can- 
 not disprove that there have been dreams 
 indicative of divine prescience, and kindly 
 ordained by God's providence. Rather, as the 
 strength of superstition shows it to be a graft 
 on that real sentiment of religion which is 
 implanted and rooted in our nature, — so do 
 the prevalent impressions of mankind about 
 dreams — while in great part erroneous — afford 
 some presumption that dreams have been at 
 times divinely sent and fulfilled.
 
 FALSE DREAMS CONDEMNED. 101 
 
 SECTION in. 
 
 We have, however, direct scriptural proof 
 of this ; and in proceeding to my second ob- 
 ject — the investigation of such dreams as 
 appear to have been in some special sense pro- 
 videntially ordained — we shall have first to 
 consider the revealed or implied uses of those 
 recorded in the JEEoly JBible. 
 
 I would premise, that we find general decla- 
 rations there as to the divinely directive or 
 warning or prophetic character of some dreams, 
 and as to the illusion and deceit which cha- 
 racterise others. Thus to Aaron and IVIiriam, — 
 " If there be a prophet among you, I Jehovah ^ 
 will make myself known unto him in a vision 
 — will speak unto him in a dream." ^ Thus 
 to Jeremiah, — " I have heard what the pro- 
 phets said that prophesy lies in my name, 
 saying, I have dreamed, I have dreamed.— 
 The prophet that hath a dream, let him tell a 
 
 ^ Numb. xii. 6. 
 k3
 
 102 USES OF THE TRUE. LABAN. 
 
 dream ; and he that hath my word let him 
 speak my word faithfully. What is the chaif 
 to the wheat ?" ' And in a letter to the cap- 
 tives in Babylon they are solemnly enjoined, 
 "Let not your prophets and your diviners 
 deceive you, neither hearken to your dreams 
 which ye cause to be dreamed." ^ Such false 
 dreams and dreamers, it should be observed, 
 were denounced chiefly as aiming to pervert 
 the Hebrews to idol worship. But Moses 
 himself, whose law unsparingly condemns 
 them,^ distinctly records — as other sacred 
 writers also do — various dreams of divine 
 origin. These may be in some sort classed, 
 according to the end or use which appears in 
 them severally to be more specific or pro- 
 minent. 
 
 Some were evidently ordered for the imme- 
 diate protection of the servants of God : as 
 those of the king of Gerar, which procured 
 the rescue of Sarah :* that of the Syrian shep- 
 herd Laban, which deterred him from seve- 
 rities against Jacob : ^ and that which warned 
 
 * Jer. xxiii. 25, 33 ; compare Deut. xiii. 1. 
 ' Ibid. xxix. 8. ' Dcut. xiii. 1,5. 
 
 * Gen. XX. 3, 6. 5 Qcn. xxxi. 24, 29. 
 
 i
 
 JACOB. JOSEPH. THE MIDIANITE. 103 
 
 the Eastern Magi against the perfidy of 
 Herod. ' 
 
 Some were for the special encouragement 
 of good men in the undertakings assigned to 
 them. Thus Jacob, in a lonely perilous jour- 
 ney, was cheered by the dream of the mystic 
 ladder and the promise uttered from its sum- 
 mit ; ^ and again, when, in his later years, he 
 and his were invited into Egypt, the Almighty 
 spoke to him " in the visions of the night," 
 and encouraged him to go.^ Thus the dreams 
 of Pharaoh's household,^ with Joseph's inter- 
 pretation of these, and the subsequent dreams 
 of the monarch, brought the young Hebrew 
 out of durance, and procured him power to 
 benefit both his own kindred and the whole 
 Egyptian people.^ 
 
 The singular dream of the Midianite sol- 
 dier, — that a barley cake had overturned a 
 tent,^ — interpreted by his comrade as fore- 
 showing the victory of Gideon, — was received 
 by that rustic leader as a fresh token of 
 heavenly aid ; and animated him, with his 
 
 1 Matt. ii. 12. 2 Gen. sixviii. 12, 15. 
 
 3 Gen. xlvi. 3, 4. * Gen. xl. 
 
 5 Gen. xli. ^ Judges vii. 13.
 
 104 SOLOMON. ST. PAUL. 
 
 little band, to assail and scatter a mighty- 
 host.' 
 
 The dream of Solomon, in which he ac- 
 knowledged his own insufficiency, entreated 
 wisdom from above, and received a gracious 
 answer,^ was adapted to strengthen him in the 
 difficulties of his opening reign, and in fidelity 
 to the Most High. 
 
 So when, many ages after, St. Paul at Co- 
 rinth was divinely addressed " in the night by 
 a vision," ^ and enjoined fearlessly to proclaim 
 the truth, new energy was doubtless given to 
 his effiDrts in that corrupt city. And a pre- 
 vious "vision in the night"* at Troas, of a 
 Macedonian entreating " help," had so vividly 
 impressed him as a divine call that it prompted 
 his first sailing to the coasts of Europe. 
 
 ^ I might mention here the dream told to his troops by 
 Judas Maccabseus before liis great victory over Nicanor — that 
 on the intercession of the good high-priest Onias, the prophet 
 Jeremiah appeared in great majesty and presented him a sword 
 of gold, saying take this holy sword, a gift of God, (3 Mace. 
 XV. 11, 16) — but the accuracy of the 2d book of Maccabees 
 being impeached by Dean Prideaux, (Connexion, vol. iii. 
 p. 364,) it can hardly rank with sacred histories. 
 
 2 1 Kings iii. 5, 14. ^ Acts xviii. 9, 10. 
 
 * Acts xvi. 9.
 
 PHARAOH. NEBUCHADNEZZAR. 105 
 
 A primary object of some dreams, with their 
 interpretation and fulfilment, appears to have 
 been that of impressing Heathen sovereigns 
 and their subjects with reverence for the true 
 God and respect for his servants. Pharaoh's 
 dreams, as interpreted, (even before they were 
 fulfilled,) had this effect.^ He said, of Joseph, 
 " Can we find as this a man in whom the 
 spirit of God is ? " and made him his first 
 minister. 
 
 Nebuchadnezzar's dream of the terrible 
 image, and Daniel's discovery and exposition 
 of it, forced the proud king to own, " Of a 
 truth your God is a God of gods, and a Lord 
 of kings, and a Revealer of secrets." ^ 
 
 Several dreams were of a scope distinctly 
 prophetic, and were signally verified in after 
 years ; sometimes even in distant ages. 
 
 Thus Joseph's — of the sheaves making 
 obeisance to his sheaf, and of the heavenly 
 luminaries doing him homage,^ — must have 
 strongly indicated to his family, after that 
 strange rise to dignity and power which 
 followed, the divine preordination of his lot 
 and theirs. 
 1 Gen. 3di. 38, 39. 2 ^an, ii. 47, 3 Gen. xxxvii. 5, 11.
 
 106 ABRAM. DANIEL. ELIPHAZ. 
 
 The earlier vision of Abram, when a " deep 
 sleep fell upon " him, and the long bondage 
 and wonderful deliverance of his descendants 
 were in that state foretold to the patriarch/ had 
 the same instructiveness for after generations. 
 
 Daniel's "dream and visions of his head 
 upon his bed," ^ interpreted, during their con- 
 tinuance, by one to whom in vision he applied,^ 
 were prophetic of the great revolutions of 
 empire, the rise and fall of Antichrist, and 
 the final triumph of pure Christianity. The 
 first dream of Nebuchadnezzar embraced the 
 same objects.* 
 
 Some appear to have been designed simply 
 for the forcible and solemn impression of 
 religious truth ; as that which Eliphaz relates 
 to Job : " A thing was secretly brought to me, 
 in thoughts from the visions of the night, 
 when deep sleep falleth on men : — an image 
 was before mine eyes — silence — and I heard 
 a voice, — ShaU mortal man be more just than 
 God? shall a man be more pure than his 
 Maker ?" * With this the language of Elihu to 
 
 I Gen. XV. 12. 2 Dan. vii. 1. "' Dan. vii. 16. 
 
 4 Dan. ii. 28--4-5. •'» Job iv. 13, 10.
 
 ELIHU. JOB. VISIONS. 107 
 
 Job remarkably corresponds : — " In a dream, 
 in a vision of the night, when deep sleep 
 falleth upon men, in slumberings upon the 
 bed, then he openeth the ears of men, and 
 sealeth their instruction, that he may with- 
 draw man from his purpose, and hide pride 
 from man." ^ Job himself also speaks of this, 
 though in an impatient spirit, as among the 
 methods of divine chastisement. " Thou 
 scarest me with dreams, and terrifiest me 
 through visions." ^ I would here remark, 
 that there seems no good ground for the dis- 
 tinction made by the learned Calmet, or his 
 editor, between dreams and visions, as if the 
 latter had been more clear or important than 
 the divinely ordained dreams. That all visions 
 were not dreams is obvious :^ witness that of 
 the burning bush ; and of the angel who rescued 
 Peter ; with others. But all divinely ordained 
 dreams might, I apprehend, be termed visions. 
 
 1 Job xxxiii. 15, 17- 2 Job vii. 14. 
 
 3 For this reason I have not referred to the supposed 
 " trance" of Balaam, (the word is not in the Hebrew,) to the 
 trance or ecstasy of Peter, and to certain visions of Paul and 
 Ananias ; because there is no intimation that these occurred 
 in sleep.
 
 108 DREAMS CALLED 'VISIONS.' 
 
 They had, no doubt, an emphasis and vivid- 
 ness which entitled them to that name ; and 
 accordingly we have found in Job the terms 
 "vision of the night," "visions," "visions of 
 the night," employed in close conjunction 
 with "deep sleep" and "dreams " ; and Daniel, 
 writing in Chaldee, describes his " dream " as, 
 in other words, the " visions of his head upon 
 his bed." ^ So, when he related, many years 
 before, the dream of Nebuchadnezzar, he thus 
 addressed the astonished king : — " Thy dream, 
 and the visions of thy head upon thy bed, are 
 these." ^ The terms, in both cases, appear used, 
 in the original, as synonyms ; or one expresses 
 the state of dreaming, the other the objects pre- 
 sented in a dream. And, let it be remembered, 
 this dream of Daniel consisted of the four great 
 beasts emerging from the sea, representing 
 four great monarchies — the Ancient of days, 
 the flaming throne, the Son of man, and his 
 universal sway. And to the prior dream of 
 the king of Babylon it was a parallel, shadow- 
 ing out the same events.^ Any predictions, 
 
 1 Dan. vii. 1. 2 Dan. ii. 28; compare vii. 1. 
 
 3 Bishop Newton. Dissertations on the Prophecies, vol. i. 
 p. 441.
 
 THEIR PLURALITY OF USES. 109 
 
 therefore, more vast in scope or momentous in 
 import than these dreams conveyed, the scrip- 
 ture hardly offers. I remark, further, that 
 some of the dreams mentioned, while it has 
 been attempted to class them according to 
 what may seem their primary object, have in 
 fact combined sevei^al of the uses enumerated. 
 We may take, as the fullest instance, that of 
 Nebuchadnezzar, last referred to, concerning 
 the " teiTible image," and " the stone that 
 smote" it. That dream, with its discovery 
 to Daniel in a correspondent " night vision," 
 raised the young Hebrew to be a "great man" 
 and " ruler ;" procuring, of course, his power- 
 ful influence for the many thousand captives 
 of his nation. Thus, likewise, he and they 
 were strengthened (as subsequent heroism 
 evinces) in faithfulness to the worship of their 
 Ood. The effect of these same dreams on the 
 heathen monarch has been already pointed 
 out ; and the far reaching comprehension of 
 their predictive scope has just been noticed, 
 in referring to Daniel's parallel dream during 
 the reign of Belshazzar. Each has wonder- 
 fully displayed the divine foreknowledge, and 
 attested the inspiration of the prophet.
 
 110 PROPHETICAL DREAMS. 
 
 Such testimonies must needs assure Chris- 
 tians, that it pleased God in ancient times to 
 make dreams signally instrumental to the 
 designs of His providence. And as for the 
 last-mentioned, (recorded in the book of 
 Daniel,) I invite those who are not Chris- 
 tians — but possess intelligent and inquiring 
 minds — to study and explain the far-extend- 
 ing prescience which they manifest. 
 
 The dreams which ministered to the 
 guardianship of our Saviour's infancy, form a 
 class quite peculiar, to which there will be 
 here no occasion for adverting 5 but with 
 them may be mentioned that which so deeply 
 affected the wife of Pilate, and which we may 
 well believe strengthened that governor's 
 purpose to avouch the innocence of the won- 
 derful person accused before him. 
 
 I
 
 DREAMS OF ANCIENT HEATHENS. Ill 
 
 SECTION IV. 
 
 It will be next endeavoured to consider 
 the probable uses of some dreams recorded 
 in ancient secular history. We have found 
 already, in reviewing those of scripture, that 
 several of them were sent to heathens and 
 idolaters. Such was Abimelech, king of the 
 Philistines. Laban set a high value on his 
 household "gods."^ Pharaoh and his officers, 
 no doubt, worshipped Osiris and the bull Apis. 
 Nebuchadnezzar raised a colossal idol of gold. 
 The wife of Pilate had, in all likelihood, been 
 brought up in the Roman polytheism.^ Now 
 while other specific ends were severally an- 
 swered by the dreams of these heathens, one end 
 was common to them all ; that of impressing the 
 
 1 Gen. xxxi. 19, 30. 
 
 2 Felix, when procurator of Judeea, married Drusilla, a 
 Jewess, daughter of Herod Agrippa, (see Lardner's works 
 vol. i. p. 17,) hut this was prohably a rare occurrence.
 
 112 SOME UKEAMS OF HEATHENS 
 
 parties and those around them with a solemn 
 sense of the power and prescience of Jehovah. 
 This appears to have been always the ultimate 
 object. Where rescue from danger was the 
 primary aim, that rescue might have been 
 wrought or that danger averted by other 
 means, had not the purpose been to convince 
 one or both parties of an interposition imme- 
 diately divine. And in other cases, such as 
 dreams of promise or of prophecy, or premo- 
 nition of death or peril, (whether already 
 named or to be subsequently adduced,) the 
 final object must have been, and must be, to 
 teach emphatically the foreknowledge and 
 controlling providence of God. 
 
 It should be considered, that so far as there 
 was among heathens any real sense of a di- 
 vine government, or of religious sanctions for 
 morality, this arose from a kind of theism, 
 obscurely held, amidst or beneath their pro- 
 fessed y?o/?/-theism. 
 
 We know, from the collections of Cudworth 
 and others, that the ancient Persians, Egyp- 
 tians, Ethiopians, and Greeks, acknowledged 
 one supreme God, though they worshipped 
 many inferior forms of being, viewed some- 
 
 A
 
 PROMOTED THEISM. 113 
 
 times as mere names and personifications of 
 the Supreme or of His attributes, sometimes 
 as created and dependent.^ That worship 
 was a play of the imagination and the passions, 
 unsustained by reason or faith, and often com- 
 bined with a sort of atheism : so far at least 
 as that the First Cause, or real Deity, was 
 conceived to have no regard to the actions of 
 men. 
 
 Yet there was, in many minds, a different 
 and better persuasion. Plato and his fol- 
 lowers, though giving the name of divinities 
 to lower intelligences, were yet real theists.^ 
 
 There was also an impression, more deep 
 and extended than may be commonly supposed, 
 that the Hebrews worshipped the true and 
 supreme Deity. This must have been pro- 
 moted through the East by the decrees of 
 Nebuchadnezzar and of Darius.^ Tacitus dis- 
 tinctly records their pure monotheism." At 
 the same time Philo and Josephus state, that 
 
 ' lutell. Syst. vol. ii. pp. 406, 552, and thronghout that 
 volume. 
 
 2 See B. Constant, du Polytheisme Romain, torn. i. p. 220. 
 
 3 Dan. iii. 29 ; vi. 26. 
 * Hist. lib. V. c. V. 
 
 L 3
 
 114 'worshipping' gentiles. 
 
 " scarce any country of note could be men- 
 tioned in which there were not Jews." ^ 
 
 There were also many proselytes ; and many 
 " worshipping " Gentiles, who openly adopted 
 theism without conforming to the ceremonial 
 law ; and others, no doubt, who did so 
 covertly, as a sort of esoteric creed. 
 
 Now, while it is certain that heathen philo- 
 sophy in great part, and the revulsion of many 
 minds from the vulgar polytheism, combined 
 to lead men towards a virtual atheism, — it 
 appears highly probable, that intimations of a 
 divine prescience and providence by dreams 
 were among the means which the supreme 
 Kuler employed to hold in check the ruinous 
 spread of that godless unbelief which, if un- 
 curbed, would disorganize human society. 
 The confession of Nebuchadnezzar, who ruled 
 a vast empire, has been already mentioned as 
 the eifect of a dream and its discovery.^ We 
 may remember, also, that other means of 
 counteracting the atheistic spirit, except by 
 immediate miracles, were very scanty. Till a 
 century and a half before Christ, the Hebrew 
 
 1 Lardner's Works, vol. i. p. 61 ; 4<to edition. ^ D-m. jj, 4.7,
 
 SOME DREAMS CHECKED ATHEISM. 115 
 
 scriptures were not accessible to the heathen. 
 And when rendered into Greek, they were 
 probably in very few hands except in the 
 synagogues of the Hellenist Jews. But im- 
 pressive dreams, when really fulfilled, formed 
 a sort of private revelation (communicable by 
 the testimony of the party) which was in the 
 nature of prophecy ; and must have had some 
 considerable tendency to make men theists, or 
 to keep them so. If some real belief in God's 
 particular providence were induced by such 
 di'eams, (as we know was the case with 
 Nebuchadnezzar,) this is surely an end of 
 great moment. 
 
 Unless we hold that all human affairs pro- 
 ceed by a mechanical inflexible fate, we cannot 
 doubt that God by His providence has governed 
 all nations ; those where scripture truth was 
 unknown, as well as those where it has been 
 spread. And, in the absence of it, what so 
 adapted to create or deepen the impression 
 of a prescient and governing Power, as the 
 occurrence and fulfilment of some predictive 
 dreams ? Such were related (as instances 
 will be given) of kings, warriors, statesmen, 
 philosophers, and other eminent persons ; and
 
 116 SOME STRENGTHENED PAGANISM, 
 
 would therefore have a proportionably wide 
 publicity and influence. 
 
 It may, however, be objected, that some of 
 the dreams mentioned in secular history gave 
 direct support to idolatry ; attesting the know- 
 ledge and power of some false divinity, or 
 some way indicating the reverence due. For 
 examples, we may name the repair of a tem- 
 ple of Juno Sospita by order of the Roman 
 senate, in consequence of the dream of Csecilia, 
 daughter of Balearicus ; ^ and the detection of 
 a thief who had stolen a golden goblet from 
 the temple of Hercules, by the repeated dreams 
 of Sophocles, to whom the god denounced the 
 criminal.^ It was quite to be expected that 
 the senate, desirous to uphold established 
 rites, should profit by a favourable omen or 
 direction, for repairing a decayed temple. 
 The dream of Sophocles bears strong marks 
 of priestly invention. 
 
 Indeed, that these and other artifices and 
 imaginations and coincidences were sedulously 
 used to fortify idolatry, cannot be doubted. 
 '' Divination by dreams and impulses," Dr. 
 
 ^ CicoTo de Diviuat. lib. i. c. ii. 0pp. torn. ix. p, 3742. 
 2 Ibid. lib. i. c. xxv. 0|»p. torn. ix. p. 3763.
 
 YET COMBATED ATHEISM. 117 
 
 Jortin writes, "or the opinion of it, contributed 
 to keep up paganism in pagan nations : it 
 contributed also to keep out atheism ; and 
 there is a sort of paganism which, such as it 
 is, is far better than atheism." ^ Dr. Parr 
 also remarks, " superstition has often pre- 
 served men from crimes ; atheism from weak- 
 nesses only." "There may, indeed," Dr. 
 Jortin adds, " have been modes of idolatry 
 w^hich were worse than atheism, and which, 
 strictly speaking, were a kind of atheism, as 
 Bayle and others have truly observed." ^ 
 
 Now I think it was this worst kind of 
 paganism, in which idolatry and an atheistic 
 spirit were mingled, that divinely ordained 
 dreams were adapted to amend, by infusing 
 into it a secret reverence for a Power really 
 prescient and divine. The thinking heathen 
 knew that his idols were daemons or genii at 
 the most ; or else, mere powers and produc- 
 tions of nature personified. But, very often, 
 
 ^ It is a memorable fact, that Lucretius, the great teacher 
 of irreligion to the Romans, who proposed to free men from 
 unhappiness by atheism, at the age of forty-four destroyed his 
 ovm life. 
 2 Remarks on Eccles. Hist. vol. i. p. 84.
 
 118 CRCESUS. ATYS. 
 
 he believed in no actually ruling Mind above 
 these, omniscient, and governing human af- 
 fairs. Dreams, therefore, receiving a striking 
 fulfilment, of which he was conscious, or 
 assured by clear and good testimony, were 
 among the best means to persuade him of that 
 ruling, guiding, and controlling Mind. With 
 such, I think, we may rank the following, 
 or some of them ; which, though familiar 
 and even trite to readers of the classics, 
 ought to be adduced if they support our 
 argument. 
 
 " Croesus, king of Lydia," Herodotus re- 
 lates, " dreamed that his favourite and accom- 
 plished son Atys was to perish by the stroke 
 of a dart. He was so terrified by this dream 
 as to withdraw the youth from the army, and 
 to keep out of his way all sorts of weapons. 
 But Atys, after a while, earnestly entreated 
 permission to join in the chase of a destructive 
 wild boar ; alleging that the dream did not 
 portend danger from a tusk or tooth. The 
 king, at length consenting, appointed Adrastus, 
 a Phrygian exile, whom he had greatly be- 
 friended, to be his son's guardian in this en- 
 terprise. But tlie unfortunate Phrygian, in
 
 ALEXANDER. PTOLEMY. 119 
 
 throwing his weapon at the boar, missed 
 his aim, and wounded mortally the son of 
 Croesus."^ 
 
 The historian treats this dream and its 
 fulfilment as a severe rebuke of divine dis- 
 pleasure at the monarch's pride ; who, in 
 converse with Solon, had presumptuously- 
 gloried in his wealth and power.^ 
 
 Cicero and Quintus Curtius mention, that 
 when Ptolemj, the friend of Alexander the 
 Great, who afterwards became a great and 
 good king of Egypt, had been wounded in 
 India by a poisoned weapon, the king had his 
 couch placed by him, and while watching fell 
 into a deep sleep. On waking, Alexander 
 told his attendants that he had seen, in a 
 dream, a dragon with a herb or root in its 
 mouth, which told also the place where it 
 grew, (not far off,) and that it had such virtue 
 as would heal his friend with ease. The 
 herb was procured, and Ptolemy, with many 
 wounded soldiers, was cured by the applica- 
 
 1 Herodot. lib. i. (Clio) c. xxxiv. ; Taylor's translation, 
 pp, 15, 18. 
 
 2 The facts are related likewise in Valerius Maximus, lib. i. 
 c. vii. p. 93.
 
 120 CYRUS. SOCRATES. 
 
 tion.* He lived and reigned afterwards to 
 the age of eighty-four. 
 
 Xenophon writes, that the illustrious Cyrus, 
 in very advanced age, " being asleep in the 
 royal palace, had the following dream. There 
 seemed to advance towards him a person 
 with more than human majesty in his air and 
 countenance, and to say to him — Cyrus, 
 prepare yourself, for you are now going 
 to the gods. After this appearance in his 
 dream he awaked, and seemed assured that 
 his end was near." ^ 
 
 When Socrates was in prison, Crito went 
 to visit him at dawn of day, and found him 
 still sleeping. On his awaking, he told him 
 that he was informed, by persons who had left 
 the ship off Sunium — the arrival of which 
 from Delos was to be the signal for his death, 
 — that it would arrive on that same day, and 
 on the morrow, therefore, he needs must die. 
 Socrates answered, " Be it so, if it please the 
 gods : but I do not think it will arrive to-day." 
 " Why," asked Crito, " do you so judge ? " 
 
 ' De Divinat, lib. i. c. Ixvi. Opp. t. ix. p. 3834 ; and Quint. 
 Curt. lib. ix. (Vaugelas Traduction, p. 646.) 
 2 Cyropsedia, near the end. 
 
 I 
 
 I
 
 CRITO. SIMONIDES. 121 
 
 ^' Because," rejoined Socrates, "I am to die on 
 the day after its arrival. I believe, therefore, it 
 will not come till to-morrow : and I judge from 
 a certain dream which I have had this morn- 
 ing, and it was well that you did not awaken 
 me." " What," said Crito, " was the dream ?" 
 " It appeared to me," replied Socrates, " that a 
 fair and comely woman, clad in white gar- 
 ments, approached me, and accosting me, 
 said — O Socrates, 
 
 " The third day fertile Phthia thou shalt reach." i 
 
 These are words (with a change in the 
 person of the verb) spoken by Achilles in the 
 Iliad when he threatened to return home.^ 
 Socrates took them as a prediction of the day 
 of his death, because he judged that to die was 
 to go home to his own country. And the 
 dream was fulfilled. 
 
 The poet Simonides, when the ship in which 
 he had sailed touched at a certain shore, 
 humanely caused the interment of the corpse 
 of some shipwrecked person which he found 
 
 ' Platonis Crito, c. ii. ; and Cicero de Divinat. lib. i. 
 c. XXV. 0pp. t. ix. 3761. Cited also in Jortin's Remarks, 
 vol. i. p. 78. 
 
 2 Iliad, book ix. v. 363. (Covvper's version, 1. 545.) 
 M
 
 122 SIMONIDES. CICERO. 
 
 there. He was warned in a dream that night 
 by the vision of the mariner, that, if he should 
 embark the next day, he himself would perish. 
 Simonides obeyed this warning : the ship 
 sailed, and all on board perished within his 
 view. Grateful for this deliverance, he con- 
 secrated it to enduring remembrance in a 
 highly elegant poem.' Simonides lived to his 
 ninetieth year ; and is mentioned by Cicero 
 as not only a delightful poet but a learned and 
 wise man.^ 
 
 I am aware that Cicero afterwards states 
 arguments against the prophetic character of 
 dreams, and speaks lightly of his own con- 
 cerning Marius ; ^ but Dr. Jortin observes, 
 " whosoever will examine his reasons on both 
 sides may see, I think, that he has not overset 
 all the proofs which he had offered." ^ Indeed, 
 the philosophy of the " New Academy," which 
 he espoused, tended to scepticism, " disputing 
 for and against every opinion." ^ 
 
 ^ Valerius Maximus, lib, i. c. vii. p. 91 ; and Cicero de 
 Divinat. lib. i. c. xxvii. 0pp. torn. ix. p. 37C3. 
 
 ■■» Cicero de Nat. Deorum, lib. i. c. xxii. 0pp. t. ix. p. 3633. 
 ' De Divinat. lib. ii. cc. Ixvii. Ixviii. 0pp. t. ix. pp. 3834-5. 
 < Remarks on Eccles. Hist. vol. i. p. 76. 
 * Middleton's Life of Cicero, vol. ii. p. 497.— "In Cicero's
 
 THEISM AIDED. ARCADIANS. 123 
 
 On the whole it appears, that occurrences 
 such as have been mentioned, happening to 
 some of the most distinguished ancients, — 
 men whose royal station and success in arms, 
 or whose philosophy or literature, made them 
 known to many lands and successive ages, — 
 must have contributed towards preventing the 
 entire extirpation of theism, — of reverence for 
 a divine Providence ; — assailed as it was, at 
 once by the absurdities and vices of idolatry, 
 and by the subtleties of disputers. 
 
 It is also of course to be supposed, that 
 similar occurrences in the far more numerous 
 ranks beneath, exerted severally a propor- 
 tionate influence in narrower circles ; com- 
 pensating, also, by their much greater number, 
 for a less extensive diffusion of each. Cicero 
 narrates, that two Arcadians travelling toge- 
 ther to Megara, the one lodged in a friend's 
 house, the other at an inn. The former saw 
 in sleep his companion entreating him to come 
 to his help, for that the host was about to 
 
 pliilosopliical works he personates the Stoic, the Epicurean, 
 the Academic, &c. by turns ; and, consequently, delivers 
 their opinions rather than his own." — Broughton on the 
 Soul, p, 40.
 
 124 DETECTION OF CRIME. 
 
 murder him. The sleeper rose, alarmed, but 
 thinking the dream an illusion, lay down and 
 slept again. He was revisited, however, by 
 the appearance of his fellow traveller, im- 
 ploring that as he had not come to succour 
 him while yet living, he would at least avenge 
 his death ; — that he had been killed, cast upon 
 a cart, and covered with soil ; — that he prayed 
 of him to be very early at the town gate, 
 before the cart should leave it. Impelled by 
 this second dream he went thither at dawn, 
 and questioned the peasant what was in his 
 cart ; who fled in terror. The corpse was dis- 
 covered, and the innkeeper capitally punished.^ 
 Now these we may judge to have been quite 
 obscure persons. The narrative does not 
 even give their names ; though it happens to 
 have found place in the works of a great 
 writer, and to have come down to us. But 
 how many may have been such incidents, some 
 never recorded, all now vanished from every 
 mind on earth, which yet had influence, in 
 their day and in their sphere, to impress the 
 thought of foreknowledge, justice, and com- 
 
 ' Dc Diviuat. lib. i. c. xxvii. 0pp. torn. ix. p. 37G4.
 
 CREDIBLE BECAUSE SO USEFUL. 125 
 
 passion exercised by a hidden yet supreme 
 Power ! 
 
 It will be the opinion of some, that too 
 much credibility has been here ascribed to the 
 foregoing passages of Grecian and Roman 
 story, while the criticism of our day discovers 
 or suspects so many fictitious embellishments 
 in the historical works of the ancients. It 
 must not, however, be supposed that the 
 writer yields an absolute and implicit cre- 
 dence to such narratives. On the contrary, 
 he can accord with Cicero's remark, when, 
 taking the sceptical side, he observes of the 
 dream of Alexander, " it may be false, it may 
 be true." So one might perhaps speak of 
 any other relation of the kind, viewed singly, 
 and apart from recollection of the ends which 
 such incidents may have answered. 
 
 But when we remember and appreciate the 
 important utility of such occurrences which 
 has been above suggested, especially as taking 
 place in ages and countries not possessed of 
 revelation, and prone to a species of atheism, 
 — when we look forward, also, to what will 
 be presently adduced, the parallel or similar 
 and strongly authenticated facts which have 
 m3
 
 126 CREDIBLE BECAUSE SO USEFUL. 
 
 occurred in recent times and in our own, — 
 these considerations greatly enhance, in my 
 view, the probability that many, at least, 
 of those ancient narratives were founded in 
 truth. 
 
 I
 
 USES OF DREAMS. 127 
 
 SECTION V. 
 
 We have now to examine the apparent 
 uses of some remarkable dreams mentioned in 
 later biography or in conversation, as having 
 occurred to Christians or to inhabitants of 
 Christendom. And since many of these have 
 been Christians but in name, and not a few, 
 openly or secretly, unbelievers, the application 
 of such dreams, if any have taken place of a 
 specially providential character, would be of 
 the widest range. They would have impor- 
 tant uses for real Christians, and not less so 
 for the nominal and for sceptics. 
 
 To this it may be objected, — the age of 
 miracles is past. A writer whom I have 
 cited, while professing (with great apparent 
 sincerity) to believe the divine character of 
 dreams recorded in scripture, thinks it would 
 be " little less than profaneness to imagine " 
 that such things should be " in our own time." 
 
 But ^ranting, as I do very readily, that the
 
 128 ' MENTAL ]VnRACLES,' 
 
 age of well-attested external miracles has long 
 been past, —it were an immensely different 
 thing to hold that the internal influence and 
 interposition of Deity in the 7nind and thoughts 
 of man has ceased ; or that what may be 
 termed mental miracles occur no longer. On 
 the contrary, every great and sudden change 
 of character is such an instance : and, indeed, 
 every case where by some forcible mental im- 
 pression the course of action is at once and 
 strongly modified. Such events are not to be 
 accounted for by fixed, unswerving, me- 
 chanical laws. If not mif^acles, they are at 
 least secret actings of Providence, quite 
 independent of that settled ordinary track 
 which men are wont to call the course of 
 "nature." Nor does the written revelation 
 granted to us supersede the value or utility of 
 such auxiliary means. Its divine Author 
 employs various instrumental methods for 
 awakening men's minds to the weight and 
 im'port of that revealed truth. Sicknesses, 
 distressful bereavements, sudden deaths, great 
 reverses, signal escapes, strikingly conduce to 
 this. By these the mind is often aroused 
 from its insensibility or alienation. And no
 
 THEIR INFLUENCE. ROCHESTER. 129 
 
 sound reason, I conceive, can be assigned why 
 remarkable dreams should not be still, some- 
 times, among those subsidiary means by which 
 the Almighty " openeth the ears of men and 
 sealeth their instruction." If, too often, this 
 effect fail or be very transient, just so is it, 
 from the stupor or levity of men's minds, with 
 the other providential means to which I have 
 referred. But the very learned and very 
 sceptical Bayle acknowledges, (writing of pre- 
 dictive or premonitory dreams,) " such facts, 
 of which the world is quite full, embarrass 
 the espr its forts (or infidels) more than they 
 avow." ^ 
 
 We have a strong example of this in Bishop 
 Burnet's memoir of Rochester. The earl told 
 him of a " presage that one had of his approach- 
 ing death, in the Lady Warre his mother-in- 
 law's house. The chaplain had dreamt that such 
 a day he should die ; but being by all the family 
 put out of the belief of it, he had almost forgot 
 it ; till the evening before at supper, there 
 being thirteen at table, according to a fond 
 conceit that one of these must soon die, one of 
 
 ' Quoted in the original in Jortin's Remarks, vol. i. p. 79» 
 and used as a motto to tliis volume.
 
 130 LADY WARRE's CHAPLAIN. GROTIUS. 
 
 the young ladies pointed to him, that he was 
 to die. He, remembering his dream, fell into 
 some disorder, and the Lady Warre reproving 
 him for his superstition, he said he was con- 
 fident he was to die before morning : — but he 
 being in perfect health, it was not much 
 minded. It was Saturday night, and he was to 
 preach next day. He went up to his chamber, 
 and sat up late, as appeared by the burning of 
 his candle ; and he had been preparing his 
 notes for his sermon ; but was found dead in 
 his bed the next morning. These things, the 
 infidel earl told the bishop, made him incHned 
 to believe the soul was a substance distinct 
 from the body ; and this often returned into 
 his thoughts."^ Thus a celebrated unbeliever 
 gives the testimony of his own experience for 
 the tendency and actual power of such occur- 
 rences to awaken serious and religious thoughts 
 in a most reluctant mind. This has led me to 
 adduce the fact ; and not exactly in its proper 
 place ; — for I would first offer a few instances 
 where the immediate object of dreams appears 
 to have been the presei^vation of life by the 
 premonition of danger. Grotius, in a Latin 
 ' Burnet's Passages, &c. of John Earl of Eochestcr, p. 20. 
 
 i
 
 WARNINGS. SALMASIUS. 131 
 
 epistle, writes, " A person at Landrecies, en- 
 gaged in works there, and lodging near the 
 town, warned in a dream that he should 
 beware of a mine of the enemy, rose, and had 
 scarce gone out when the roof fell in and 
 destroyed his resting-place. — But if you see 
 Salmasius, he will relate to you a history 
 which he received from his father. A person 
 came to him, entirely ignorant of the Greek 
 language, but who had heard in a dream these 
 Greek words : — airSc ovk oacppaivri Ttjv aijv 
 a\\^v^iav ; " [which mean, literally, — Begone : 
 dost thou not smell (or scent) thy lifelessness ?] 
 " and on waking had written down the sounds 
 of those words in French letters ; not under- 
 standing them at all. On his application, the 
 senator Salmasius interpreted the words to 
 him ; for he is the learned father of a most 
 learned son. The man quitted his house : — 
 on the ensuing night it fell." ^ 
 
 Dr. Abercrombie states the following fact, 
 
 1 Grotius, Epist. 405, (2nd series.) Quoted in Jortin's 
 Remarks, vol. i. p. 79 ; who adds, " Leclerc, in referring to 
 this, mentions that the elder Salmasius was a counsellor of the 
 parliament of Dijon." — The younger was a French Protestant, 
 and distinguished scholar, who wrote a work in defence of our 
 king Charles the First, which was answered by ]\Iilton.
 
 132 CLERGYMAN. BLACK SERVANT. 
 
 of which he says, " there seems no reason to 
 doubt its authenticity." — " A clergyman had 
 come to this city (Edinburgh) from a short 
 distance in the country, and was sleeping at 
 an inn, when he dreamt of seeing a fire, and 
 one of his children in the midst of it. He 
 awoke with the impression, and instantly left 
 town on his return home. When he arrived 
 within sight of his house he found it on fire, 
 and got there in time to assist in saving one of 
 his children, who in the alarm and confusion 
 had been left in a situation of danger."^ 
 
 He adds, "The following anecdotes I am 
 enabled to give as entirely authentic. A lady 
 dreamt that an aged female relative had been 
 murdered by a black servant ; and the dream 
 occurred more than once. She was then so 
 impressed by it, that she went to the house of 
 the lady to whom it related, and prevailed upon 
 a gentleman to watch in an adjoining room 
 during the following night. About three in 
 the morning the gentleman hearing footsteps 
 on the stair, left his place of concealment, and 
 met the servant carrying up a quantity of 
 coals. Being questioned as to where he was 
 ^ Abercronibic, Intell. Powers, p. 292, 
 
 I
 
 FRITH OF FORTH. DETECTION. 133 
 
 going, he replied, in a confused and hurried 
 manner, that he was going to mend his mis- 
 tress's fire ; which at that hour in the middle 
 of summer was evidently impossible ; and on 
 farther investigation, a strong knife was found 
 concealed beneath the coals, — Another lady 
 dreamt that a boy, her nephew, had been 
 drowned along with some young companions 
 with whom he had engaged to go on a sailing 
 excursion in the Frith of Forth. She sent for 
 him in the morning, and with much difiiculty 
 prevailed upon him to give up his engage- 
 ment. His companions went, and were all 
 drowned." ^ 
 
 We may observe, also, that in one of these 
 instances the preservation of life was attended 
 by the prevention of crime. Other signal 
 cases of this kind might be adduced ; together 
 with some in which the detection of crime 
 already perpetrated, and the punishment of 
 the criminal, are attested to have been brought 
 about by the same secret indication. 
 
 In all these instances it should likewise be 
 
 not forgotten, that the great collateral object 
 
 appears to have been always intended, and 
 
 ^ Abercrombie, Intell. Powers, pp. 293, 294. 
 
 N
 
 134 IMPRESSION OF A 
 
 doubtless often fulfilled, of impressing one or 
 several minds with a more intimate and lively 
 conviction of powers and agencies supernatural 
 and divine. Even in dreams which, though 
 they have had a surprising coincidence with 
 events, remain obscure as to any special 
 design, this general object may yet be dis- 
 cernible. 
 
 The following is of that character. A per- 
 son of rank, whom I met at the house of a 
 friend, told me that a visitor then in his own 
 mansion had spent some months lately in 
 America, leaving his family in England ; 
 that one night in sleep he had felt a sort of 
 distressing sensations or forebodings, such as 
 he had never known before, which so affected 
 him that he carefully marked down the night 
 and hour of their occurrence ; and by the next 
 mail received news from England that his 
 little boy had died at the precise time when he 
 had himself been the subject of those peculiar 
 feelings. 
 
 The gentleman who related this to me (as 
 he had received it) was highly intelligent and 
 acute, but evidently of a sceptical habit. His 
 stating the fact without the least question of
 
 DIVINE AGENCY. 135 
 
 its certainty and accuracy, showed how clearly 
 and circumstantially it had been attested to 
 him. He suggested that it might possibly be 
 accounted for as a species of distant sympathy 
 by electricity. One might still ask — who 
 fixed the invisible communication across the 
 Atlantic ? what power worked the signals, 
 and for what purpose ? 
 
 The impression on him who had experienced 
 it was probably much more salutary ; and 
 then an important end was answered : im- 
 portant not merely in cases of previous un- 
 belief, as in that cited of Lord Rochester, but 
 wherever belief is wavering or dormant. How 
 many are conscious of such feebleness or 
 languor of faith in " things not seen," amidst 
 the various impulses and influences of things 
 which are seen ; and would welcome what- 
 ever auxiliary methods might be ordained to 
 fortify or enliven it. In dreams which remain 
 to be adduced, this seems to have been always 
 the principal and sometimes the only apparent 
 purpose ; and we shall now offer a few in- 
 stances of a second class, which appear to have 
 had for their primary object the preparation 
 of the Christian's mind for an affliction, or
 
 136 PREPARATION FOR DISTRESS. 
 
 consolation under it, or encouragement in 
 some special duties. 
 
 The following is the abridged letter of an 
 esteemed relative : — 
 
 " Our dear young friend F — was staying 
 with us. She had left her father in good 
 health at home, and neither his age nor a 
 chronic indisposition to which he was liable 
 gave reason for apprehension. On a Sunday 
 morning she came down to us looking unwell, 
 and to my inquiries answered, ' I have had a 
 restless night, wdth painful dreams.' Nothing 
 more was said, for it passed from my mind. 
 The next morning my husband brought me a 
 letter from our friend's brother, begging us to 
 announce to her, as gently as we could, her 
 father's sudden death from rapid inflammation 
 on the Saturday evening. 
 
 " I went down to lier, and said, ' My dear, 
 we have some anxious tidings to communicate." 
 I said no more, for she laid her head on my 
 shoulder, and exclaimed, ' I know all ; my 
 dream was true ; my father is dead.' 
 
 " When the first anguish was past, she told 
 me that she had dreamt of koine ; and going in 
 unexpectedly, had seen a group in bitter
 
 COMFORT UNDER IT. 137 
 
 sorrow. All were there but her father, and 
 the sons were gathered round the mother as if 
 they were now all that remained to her. That 
 very scene was then passing in the bereaved 
 home, and the dream must be regarded as 
 sent in kindness to prepare the heart of the 
 affectionate child for her bitter and unex- 
 pected loss." 
 
 To this may be added a dream which I 
 notice very briefly, because it has been already 
 recorded by me in print, as taken down from 
 the lips of a valued domestic, who had once 
 lived where I now reside. 
 
 On one day, a year after the loss of two 
 young children, she had prayed much to be 
 relieved from the dejection occasioned by it, 
 which near friends of my own, since deceased, 
 had tried in vain to alleviate. On that night 
 a dream brought both her children vividly 
 before her, as in a state of social blessedness. 
 Her words to me, after describing it, were, 
 *' I had this dream a second time the same 
 night ; and by means of it my trouble was 
 taken away, especially my fear about the elder 
 child." V 
 
 * Autumn Dream ; Note vi. p. 169 ; second edition. 
 n3
 
 138 DODDRIDGE. SPIIUTDAL 
 
 In Doddridge's dream of an interview with 
 the glorified Saviour, (of which the substance 
 is given in the same volume/) he was thus 
 addressed, — " This is not heaven : it is only 
 such a faint and distant representation of the 
 glory to be revealed, as is suited to your mortal 
 nature, and is designed to animate you to a 
 more vigorous and determined zeal in my 
 service on earth." Accordingly, he stated to 
 his friends, " that he never remembered to 
 have felt sentiments of devotion, love, and 
 gratitude, equally strong " with those which 
 this dream awakened. 
 
 The third and last class of dreams to be 
 mentioned are those whose object appears to 
 have been the highest of all : namely, to be 
 instrumental either in the first moral and spi- 
 ritual change or " renewing of the mind," or, 
 in the revival or fixing of prior impressions as 
 to the importance of revealed truth, and ur- 
 gency of spiritual concerns. 
 
 The same friend who related the premoni- 
 tion of a parent's death received by her young 
 visitor, writes thus of herself: — "I was 
 between eight and nine years old when, after 
 
 ' Autuuiu Urcain ; Note xxi. p. 186; second edition.
 
 EXCITEMENT OR MONITION. 139 
 
 an evening spent with a dear and Christian 
 friend of my mother, I attained, in the ' visions 
 of the night,' a remarkable insight into the 
 meaning of scripture. I dreamt that this 
 fi-iend explained to me the chapter concerning 
 the brazen serpent, and opened my eyes to its 
 typical sense ; pointing out the Saviour ' lifted 
 up ' as the Healer of mankind. The chapter 
 became, thenceforth, a favourite one ; and I 
 never open it, even now, without remembering 
 that first exposition. There may have been 
 something in the previous conversation which 
 led my young mind to dream of this scripture 
 narrative in a manner so singularly impres- 
 sive." 
 
 The following has been sent to me by a 
 lady of undoubted accuracy, related to herself 
 by a gentleman in a northern county. " I 
 dreamt that I saw a number of happy beings 
 with wings enabling them to fly far and wide, 
 indeed far beyond my ken. So earnestly did 
 I long for the same, that I tried to make them 
 for myself. Day after day I seemed to labour, 
 but in vain. Wlien repeated failure was 
 leading me to give it up, one of these bright 
 and holy-looking beings suspended her flight
 
 140 INFLUENTIAL DREAM 
 
 to tell me that no one could ever make wings 
 for himself wherewith to soar above ; but, to 
 those who desired them as anxiously as I did, 
 wings should be given." — " He told me, " 
 the lady states, "this dream when we were 
 riding together, and seemed seriously affected 
 by it/' 
 
 The dream of Africaner, the once ferocious 
 Namaqua chief, "at a period when his opinions 
 on religion wavered, and he was about to dis- 
 miss from his thoughts the grave subjects of 
 revelation, death, and immortality," appears to 
 have had a powerful and happy influence on 
 that remarkable convert. It is thus related 
 by Mr. Moffat. " He supposed himself, in his 
 dream, at the base of a rugged mountain, over 
 which he must pass by an almost perpendicular 
 precipice. On the left of the path the fearful 
 declivity presented one furnace of fire and 
 smoke, mingled with lightning. As he looked 
 round to flee from a sight which made his 
 whole frame tremble, one appeared out of 
 those murky regions, whose voice like thunder 
 said, there was no escape but by the narrow 
 path. He attempted to climb it, but felt the 
 reflected heat from the precipice more intense 
 
 !
 
 OF AFRICANER. 141 
 
 than that from the burning abyss. When 
 ready to sink with agony, he cast his eyes 
 upwards beyond the flaming gulf, and saw 
 one standing on a green mount, where the sun 
 shone with peculiar brilliancy. This person 
 drew near the edge of the cliff, and beckoned 
 him to advance. Shielding his face with his 
 hands, he ascended through heat and smoke, 
 such as he would have thought no human 
 frame could endure. He at last reached the 
 long desired spot, which became increasingly 
 bright ; and when about to address the stranger, 
 he awoke. Being asked how he interpreted 
 this dream, he replied that it haunted his mind 
 for a long time like a poisonous thorn in the 
 flesh, and he could bear to reflect on it only 
 when, — as he said with great simplicity, — 
 * I thought the path was the narrow road 
 leading from destruction to safety, from hell 
 to heaven ; the stranger I supposed to be that 
 Saviour of whom I had heard, and long were 
 my thoughts occupied in trying to discover 
 when and how I was to pass along the burning 
 path ;'— adding, with tears in his eyes, * thank 
 God, I have passed ! '" ^ And be it observed, 
 
 1 Moffat's Missionary Travels in South Africa.
 
 142 REMARKABLE DREAM OF 
 
 *' Africaner was a man " (Mr. Moffat testifies) 
 " who never dealt in such commodities " as 
 those superstitious dreams to which some of 
 his weaker and more ignorant countrymen are 
 addicted. 
 
 Major- General Burn, who, after a course 
 marked by very sceptical opinions and very 
 dissipated conduct, became a " bright example 
 of Christian purity, humility, and piety," ^ 
 gives the following statement in his journal, 
 " About a fortnight after my brother's death, 
 I dreamed a very distinct and remarkable 
 dream, which had such a happy effect upon 
 my heart, that I have ever since looked upon 
 it as the principal means the Almighty was 
 pleased to employ in bringing about my con- 
 version. 
 
 "I thought I was sitting, a little before 
 daylight, with my deceased brother, on the 
 wall of the parish churchyard, where we had 
 lived many years together. We remained 
 silent for some time, and then he asked me if 
 I would not go with him into the church. I 
 consented, and walked with him towards the 
 porch ; but when we had passed through it, 
 ' Preface to his Life, by Olinthus Gregory, &c. 
 
 I
 
 MAJOR-GENERAL BURN. 143 
 
 and came to the inner door that led into the 
 body of the church, my brother slipt in before 
 me ; and when I attempted to follow, (which 
 I was all eagerness to do,) the door, which 
 slid from the top to the bottom, like those in 
 some fortified towns, was instantly let down 
 more than half way, so that I had now to 
 bend almost double before I could possibly 
 enter. But as I gtooped to try, the door sink- 
 ing lower and lower, the passage became so 
 narrow that I found it altogether impracticable 
 in that posture. Determined to get in, if pos- 
 sible, I at length kneeled down, crept and 
 pushed more eagerly, but all to no purpose. 
 Grieved and vexed, yet unwilling to be left 
 outside, I resolved to throw off my clothes and 
 crawl ; but being desirous to preserve a silk 
 embroidered waistcoat which I had brought 
 from France, I kept that on, in hopes of being 
 able to carry it in with me. Then laying my- 
 self on my face, I toiled and strove, soiled my 
 embroidered waistcoat, but could not get in 
 after all. At last, driven almost to despair, I 
 stripped myself, and forced my body betw^een 
 the door and the ground, till the rough stones 
 tore all the skin upon my breast, and (as
 
 144 EFFECT OF GENERAL BURN'S DREAM. 
 
 I tliouglit) covered me with blood. Indif- 
 ferent, however, about this, I continued to 
 strive with more violence, till at last I got 
 safely through. As soon as I stood upon my 
 feet on the inside, an invisible hand clothed 
 me in a long white robe, and, as I turned to 
 view the place, I saw a goodly company of 
 saints (among whom was my brother) all 
 dressed in the same manner, partaking of the 
 Lord's Supper. I sat down amidst them, and 
 the bread and wine being administered to me, 
 I felt such seraphic joy as no mortal can 
 express. I heard a voice call me thrice by 
 name, saying I was wanted at home. My joy 
 was so overcoming that it soon broke the 
 bands of sleep, and made me start up, singing 
 the high praises of God." 
 
 " So much was I impressed by this re- 
 markable dream, that irom this day I was 
 enabled to begin an entirely new life, — as 
 different from that I liad led for several years 
 back as it is possible any two opposites can 
 be." ' 
 
 ' Memoirs of General Burn, slightly abridged, but with 
 strict adherence to the original, vol. i. pp. 137, 130.
 
 DUTY AS TO DREAMS. VANITIES. 14o 
 
 SECTION VI. 
 
 It will be justly expected, that after thus 
 leading attention to the specially providential 
 and very important character of certain 
 dreams, I should suggest, as a practical ob- 
 ject of this Essay, what ought to be our habit 
 of mind as to singular dreams of our own or 
 of our friends which may seem to portend 
 something. 
 
 Although the lights of our age have ba- 
 nished many superstitions into obscure corners, 
 there may be yet not a few imaginative or 
 credulous minds on whom this kind of im- 
 pression has too much sway ; who still need 
 to be reminded by the royal preacher, that 
 " in the multitude of dreams there are va- 
 nities ;" ^ and by the son of Sirach, that " as he 
 who seizeth a shadow and pursueth the wind, 
 so is he that leaneth upon dreams ;" — " that 
 
 ^ Ecclesiastes v. 7. 
 (>
 
 146 SYLLA. INDIANS. 
 
 they are vain and have deceived many, and 
 they have failed that hoped in them." ^ We 
 may apprize such persons, also, that it was one 
 of the worst men of antiquity, Sylla, who, in 
 his Commentaries inscribed to Lucullus, (as 
 we learn from Plutarch,) advises him "to de- 
 pend on nothing so much as what Heaven 
 should suggest to him in the visions of the 
 night." ^ Such was the counsel of one, who, 
 after base profligacy and wholesale cruelties, 
 died of the most revolting disease. 
 
 The fanaticism to which a superstitious 
 view of dreams — carried to its extreme — may 
 give rise, appears in Charlevoix's account of 
 some tribes of American Indians. " They 
 look upon dreams as a desire of the soul 
 inspired by some Genius, or an order from 
 him, and hold it a religious duty to obey 
 them. An Indian having dreamt of having a 
 finger cut off, had it really cut off when he 
 awoke, having first prepared himself for this 
 important act by a feast." ^ 
 
 Mr. Mofliit also says of the South Africans, 
 
 ' Ecclesiasticus, xxxiv. 1,7. 
 
 2 riiitaroh in Sylla. Wrangham's translation, vol. iv. p. 110. 
 
 3 Quoted ill Dcndy on Dreams, p. 77.
 
 AFKIOANS. CONSTANTIUS. 1^7 
 
 " they are very prone to superstitious in- 
 terpretations of dreams ; some of which are 
 too monstrous to be permitted an asylum in 
 the mind. The most ignorant feel pleasure in 
 hawking about their nocturnal reveries : more 
 than this, they hear of visiotis, and think they 
 may have their share : I have heard of some 
 who had seen an angel behind a bush, or heard 
 a voice from heaven ; and of others who had 
 gone to Jerusalem like Mahomet, though not 
 on an ass, or ascended to the heaven and re- 
 turned the same night. It has been necessary 
 to bring other things before their minds, im- 
 parting genuine currency instead of that false 
 coin, which, alas ! is sometimes vended in 
 more enlightened countries than Africa." ^ 
 
 It is also well to remember, — with thank- 
 fulness at not being exposed to the caprices of 
 tyranny, — that there have been periods in the 
 history of mankind, when it was a most 
 perilous thing to tell a dream. 
 
 Gordon, in his preliminary discourses on 
 Tacitus, mentions from Ammianus, that even 
 under Constantius, the second Christian em- 
 peror, (so called,) there was a " spy for 
 ^ Moffat's South Africa, p. 185, abridged.
 
 148 SPY FOR DREAMS. PETRA. 
 
 dreams," a Persian named Mercurius, called 
 " som7do7' am comes ;^^ and that some dreams 
 were only to be expiated by the dreamer's 
 blood. People, far from telling their dreams, 
 durst scarce own that they slept ; nay, it was 
 lamented by some that they had not been 
 born upon Mount Atlas, where, according to 
 tradition, people never dream." ^ 
 
 In the reign of an earlier despot, Claudius, 
 Tacitus himself informs us, the illustrious 
 Roman knights surnamed Petra being marked 
 for destruction, "one of them was charged 
 with a dream, as if he had beheld Claudius 
 crowned with ears of corn inverted, thus pre- 
 dicting a grievous dearth. Others have said 
 that he di^eamed of a crown of vine with 
 whitening or fading leaves, which he construed 
 to portend the prince's death in autumn. This 
 is undoubted, that for some dream both he and 
 his brother perished." " 
 
 But it would, be almost affronting intelli- 
 gent readers to suppose that they are likely to 
 pay any serious regard to dreams in ijcneral. 
 Of the most prevailing character of these, all 
 reflective minds are aware. We have learned 
 
 ' Discdiirsps on Tacitiis, p. 80. ^ Tacit. Aiinal. xi.
 
 TRIVIAL DREAMS. ADDISON. 149 
 
 experimentally to estimate them, likeMercutio 
 in the drama, as 
 
 " Children of au iclle brain, 
 Begot of nothing but vain fantasy, 
 Which is as thin of substance as the air, 
 And more inconstant than the mnd, who woos 
 Even now tlie frozen bosom of the North, 
 And, being angered, puffs away from thence. 
 Turning his face to the dew-dropping South." ^ 
 
 All have realised the broken and disjointed 
 yet traceable connexion which they so often 
 have with recent waking engagements, wishes, 
 and anxieties ; so that we can ajDpreciate the 
 poetic fiction of the great dramatist, when, 
 with a sportiveness characteristic of " fancy's 
 child," he describes that principle of associa- 
 tion in dreams under the image of their fairy 
 patroness and prompter, who comes 
 
 " In shape no bigger than an agate stone 
 On the forefinger of an alderman," 
 
 and suggests to different classes their several 
 visions. 
 
 Addison has a humorous letter, signed 
 Titus Trophonius, who says : " Having long 
 considered whether there be any trade want- 
 ing in this great city, I do not find in any 
 quarter an oneirocritic or interpreter of 
 
 1 See Note E, at the end of this volume. 
 
 o 3
 
 150 ONEIKOCKITIC. 
 
 flreain.x. For want of so useful a person 
 several good people are much puzzled, and 
 dream a whole year without being ever the 
 wiser. I hope I am pretty Avell qualified for 
 this office, having studied by candlelight all 
 the rules of the art. My grand-uncle, by my 
 wife's side, was a Scottish Highlander, and 
 second-sighted. I have four fingers and two 
 thumbs upon one hand, and was born on the 
 longest night of the year. My christian and 
 surname begin and end with the same letters. 
 I am lodged in Moorfields in a house that for 
 these fifty years has been always tenanted by 
 a conjurer. There are some who cannot 
 sleep in quiet the next night, till something 
 has happened to expound the visions of the 
 preceding one. In short, sir, there are many 
 whose waking thoughts are wholly employed 
 on their sleeping ones. For the benefit, 
 therefore, of this inquisitive part of my fellow- 
 subjects, I shall, first, tell those what they 
 dreamed of, who fancy they never dream at all. 
 Next, I sliall make out any dream, on hearing 
 a single circumstance of it : and expound the 
 good or bad fortune which such dreams por- 
 tend. I have several apartments fitted up at 
 
 J
 
 DELICIOUS drp:amers. 151 
 
 reasonable rates, for such as have not conve- 
 niences for dreaming at their own houses." ^ 
 
 Another number of the Spectator reports 
 many complaints from "delicious dreamers," 
 desiring him to silence ''those noisy slaves 
 who take their early rounds about the city." 
 " Several monarchs," he writes, " have done 
 me the honour to acquaint me how they have 
 been shaken from their respective thrones by 
 the rumbling of a wheelbarrow. A boisterous 
 peripatetic hardly goes through a street with- 
 out waking half a dozen princes to open their 
 shops or clean shoes, transforming sceptres 
 into shovels, and proclamations into bills. — 
 On the other hand, I have testimonies of gra- 
 titude from many who owe to this clamorous 
 tribe frequent deliverances. A small-coal man, 
 by waking one of these distressed gentlemen, 
 saved him from ten years' imprisonment. 
 A certain valetudinarian confesses he has 
 been cured of a sore throat by the hoarseness 
 of a carman, and relieved from a fit of the 
 gout by the sound of old shoes." 
 
 Much of this is well understood and often 
 felt; — yet not all this can set aside the proofs 
 
 * Spectator, No. 505, vol. vii. p. 119, abridged.
 
 152 now DISCRIMINATE. 
 
 and instances adduced, that there are dreams 
 of a verj different quality. The same differ- 
 ence may be observed in men's waking 
 thoughts. What a host of them are vain, 
 incoherent, and fruitless ! How certain it is, 
 nevertheless, and how haj^py, that some bear 
 marks of a higher origin ; that some, in many 
 minds, have been so influential and effective, 
 as to leave no doubt of their source; that 
 some have prompted earnest prayer ; some a 
 decisive change of purpose ; some the most 
 arduous and beneficent labours. With respect 
 to dreams, the author of Ecclesiasticus, in the 
 very passage before quoted, where he censures 
 their vanity, makes a remarkable exception : 
 " If they he not sent from the Most High in 
 (or for) thy visitation, set not thy heart upon 
 them." ' 
 
 There remains, however, the serious prac- 
 tical difficulty — how shall Ave rightly discri- 
 minate that which is important from that 
 which is fallacious ? 
 
 Augustin relates, in his " Confessions," 
 that his mother had a dream which greatly 
 consoled her, when he as a youth was in- 
 
 ^ Ecdcsia.sticus xxxiv. G.
 
 AUGUSTIN. MONICA. 153 
 
 volved in licentious vice and absurd IMani- 
 chaean errors. " She saw herself standing on 
 a rule or narrow strip of wood, (in 7'e(/iila 
 lignea,) and a youth of brilliant and joyous 
 aspect approaching her with smiles, while she 
 stood mournful and worn out with grief. 
 He inquired the causes of her sadness and 
 those daily tears, (as if for the sake of teach- 
 ing, not of learning,) and was answered that 
 her lament was over my perdition. He di- 
 rected her where she might stand (on the 
 strip of wood) most safely, and admonished 
 her to watch and look, for that where she was 
 there also was I. And on watching for this, 
 she saw me standing close by her on the same 
 rule or narrow board." He adds : " When she 
 told me that vision, and I tried to turn it 
 thus, — that she should not despair of becoming 
 what I was, she at once said, without the 
 least hesitation, ^ Not so ; for it was not said 
 to me. Where he is there also fhoii, but. Where 
 thou there also he.^ I own that I was more 
 moved by the divine intimation as given 
 through the lips of my waking mother, who, 
 unperturbed by my false interpretation, so 
 promptly saw the truth, than even by the
 
 154 Monica's distinction. 
 
 dream itself, in which that pious woman's joy 
 — to be fulfilled at length — was so long before 
 predicted as a solace of her actual pain." ^ 
 
 AYlien, subsequently, Augustin and his 
 mother were both solicitous for a particular 
 temporal object, prayers were offered by her, 
 at his desire, that something as to this might 
 be revealed in a dream. But he states, " She 
 then had only certain tain and fantastic 
 dreams, induced by the earnestness of her 
 mind on this subject, which she mentioned, 
 not with reliance on them as divine, but as 
 contemning them. For she said that she 
 could discern, by I know not what mental 
 taste or perception, {iiescio quo sapore,) the 
 difference between revelations and mere ima- 
 ginations in dreams." - It seems highly pro- 
 bable that, to a humble and devout Christian, 
 there might be afforded, on some occasions, 
 such a discriminating power. 
 
 For myself, as was intimated, I speak as 
 one ^^?^taught by experience : never having 
 had — though often desirous of it — a dream to 
 which I could attach peculiar weight or signi- 
 ficance. 
 
 ' Confess, lib. iii. c. xi. pp. 73, 75. - Ibid. lib. vi. c. xiii.
 
 rKACTICAL DISCRIMINATIOX. 155 
 
 One would say, generally, to all who are 
 likely to be in this manner impressible, — Be 
 very slow in permitting any dream to prompt 
 or guide your conduct. And yet we cannot 
 contend that this rule admits of 7\o exception. 
 For a dream may be so striking and monitory, 
 by its peculiar distinctness, and still more by 
 its reiteration, — and the act or precaution to 
 which it prompts may be of so lawful and 
 blameless a kind, as to make the adoption of 
 it more than justifiable. We cannot censure 
 the traveller at Megara, (unless it were for 
 treating the first summons lightly ;) still less 
 the lady at Edinburgh who procured a friendly 
 sentinel for her aged relative. We cannot 
 blame the acquaintance of Salmasius for quit- 
 ting his abode, nor the poet Simonides for 
 declining to embark : we commend the Scot- 
 tish lady who prevailed with her nephew to 
 put off his boating, and yet more the clergyman 
 who hastened home in the night to save his 
 child from flames. 
 
 But we should of course say, most deci- 
 sively, — wherever the dream enjoins or coun- 
 sels what is contrary to the supreme rule of 
 scripture, or what is at variance with sound
 
 156 HANNIBAL. TIMUR. 
 
 reason and prudence, and favours the dictates 
 of passion or fancy, — discard it utterly, as a 
 vain and dangerous illusion. Indeed, there 
 is all reason to conclude, that the dreams 
 of some ardent minds were first prompted 
 and created by the ruling passion, and then 
 stirred and impelled that passion itself into 
 strenuous and confident action. So we 
 may regard the dream of Hannibal, men- 
 tioned by several Roman writers,^ that he 
 saw Jove, or a celestial envoy from Jove, 
 who commanded him to invade Italy, and 
 was followed by a vast serpent and a terrific 
 thunder, which the envoy declared to mean 
 his devastation of that realm. " Gladdened 
 by that vision," says Livy, " he advanced to- 
 wards the Pyrenees." 
 
 Timur mentions several such dreams of his 
 own, in one of which he saw the prophet 
 Mahomet, who gave him a club, which be- 
 came very long in his hand ; and to this 
 exhilarating di*eam he attributes his victory 
 over Bajazet. - On other occasions, he 
 dreamed that lie heard the voice of an angel 
 
 1 Livy, lib. xxi. c. xxii. ; Ciccio ; Valerius Maximixs. 
 ^ Aiitobiog. p. 17.
 
 GENERAL RULE. .157 
 
 animating him to war and triumph. These 
 men, both when awake and in their slumbers, 
 were under the urgent impulses of a restless 
 ambition ; it produced their visions, and then 
 seized on them to stimulate and justify its 
 own acts.^ 
 
 Thus, examples give great weight to the 
 general rule, that it is, usuaUj, most unsafe 
 and unwarrantable to act on such suggestions. 
 When dreams are so extraordinary, and so 
 linked with events ensuing, as to be distin- 
 guished from the throng of those which are 
 " vanities," and to claim, therefore, a measure 
 of serious regard, — it is mainly (as has been 
 all along pointed out) in the light of corro- 
 borative enforcements to the great doctrine of 
 God's ruling providence and the dictates of 
 his word. Like miracles and prophecies, such 
 dreams are not primarily meant to induce 
 outward acts, but that one inward act or sen- 
 timent, — that livelier persuasion of the Divine 
 government, which gives increased force to all 
 the monitions of conscience and of scripture. 
 
 ^ The dream (perhaps reverie) of Cromwell, in which a 
 spectre predicted his greatness, may be classed with these. — 
 See Noble's Memoirs of the Prof ecf oral House. 
 P
 
 158 REGULATION OF MIND 
 
 And it was argued above to be not less cre- 
 dible, that the Great Disposer of all minds 
 should occasionally employ these, than any 
 other impressive means, — as a powerful 
 appeal in public, a touching interview in 
 private, the sudden loss of beloved friends, 
 our personal escape, or theirs, from immi- 
 nent peril, — in order to rivet the attention, 
 or unseal the heart, to his own words and 
 acts of grace. 
 
 It may be inquired — how then would you 
 have us regulate our thoughts and feelings 
 with regard to such very impressive dreams, 
 as, if they occur to us, we cannot but suspect 
 to be divinely ordered ? 
 
 I would answer — if a dream really appear 
 to be of that class which the excellent mother 
 of Augustin thought she could distinguish, as 
 sent with some special design of Providence, — 
 it will be right, I judge, to note down the cir- 
 cumstances, accurately and simply, without the 
 least embellishment, — and then dismiss it from 
 the mind, as one of those " secret things" which 
 " belong unto God" to solve, or leave un- 
 solved. 
 
 If nothing follow in which a sober judg- 
 
 i
 
 AND CONDUCT AS TO DREAMS. 159 
 
 ment is constrained to recognise connexion 
 and correspondence with that dream, (and this 
 is the more probable issue,) jou will be taugiit 
 that it had not the significant character which 
 your fancy or your emotion ascribed to it. 
 
 If, on the contrary, there he a sequence 
 whose undeniable accordance compels you to 
 assign to your dream a predictive or premoni- 
 tory character, — then take, thoughtfully and 
 thankfully, the privilege of this added con- 
 firmatory indication, that a hidden but om- 
 niscient Power governs our faculties and the 
 events around us ; suggests ideas and imagery 
 to the mind ; foresees and guides in wisdom 
 the intricate and countless diversities of human 
 affairs. 
 
 But, it may be further asked — suppose such 
 a remarkable and striking dream — perhaps 
 reiterated — should urge to an immediate act 
 or proceeding, (as some did which have been 
 here related,) would it be right to obey that 
 practical direction or impulse ? 
 
 On this point it is important to observe, 
 that the few dreams of such a kind which have 
 been here mentioned as apparently divine ad- 
 monitions, have been of a cautionary, warning.
 
 160 AFRICANER. BURN. GARDINER. 
 
 repressive character, calculated to check or 
 prevent some evil in prospect. Such were 
 those lately adverted to as exceptions to the 
 general rule J We may remark also, that 
 where the dreams of persons possessing Chris- 
 tian knowledge have been adapted strongly to 
 modify the whole subsequent course of life 
 and action, and have sometimes, as in the 
 instances of Africaner and of General Burn, 
 actually done this,^ they have acted only as 
 reinforcing and enhancing theimpressivenessof 
 obligations which should have been previously 
 derived and felt from the import of revealed 
 truth, and in no way as varying from or con- 
 travening it. Let it be supposed, — though 
 a thing not at all to be reckoned on in ordi- 
 nary experience, — that a very striking and 
 
 ^ See p. 155. 
 
 '-* The well-known case of Colonel Gardiner, which is most 
 fully attested, and was most extraordinary in its decisive and 
 permanent effects, has not been referred to, simply because he 
 regarded it as a vmhng vision. There is reason to suppose 
 that it was in reality a very vivid dream. In the instance of 
 General Burn also, the testimony for the incident and its 
 effects is clear and unimpeachable. The sceptic may term the 
 occurrences in each case visionary : and so, in some sense, 
 they were: but can he deny that the vision of a few minutes 
 was a chief means to the reformation of a whole life ?
 
 KULE OF REJECTION. 161 
 
 even reiterated dream prompt you to avoid by 
 some immediate step a threatened evil to 
 yourself, or prevent some evil imminent on 
 another, — if the mode of avoidance or pre- 
 vention be in no respect adverse to prior rules 
 of Christian duty, it would be wrong, as I 
 judge, to neglect an intimation, the compliance 
 with which can involve no moral fault. 
 
 But if your dream flatter and excite a 
 ruling passion or inordinate propensity, or 
 wild and injudicious project, its tendency 
 betrays its source, and marks it for rebuke 
 and rejection. If it prompt even to a course 
 which, without being obviously culpable, still 
 on other grounds appears questionable, it 
 would be most fanatical to substitute for the 
 dictates of waking reason, for the counsels of 
 wise friendship, and the directions of holy 
 scripture, a sort of guidance so unsound and 
 illusory. 
 
 p 3
 
 162 THANKS FOR REVELATION. 
 
 SECTION VII. 
 
 While it has been attempted in these 
 Essays to evince, both in the general pheno- 
 mena of dreaming and in the ordination of 
 some particular dreams, uses of no small 
 moment ; it cannot, I trust, be overlooked 
 how much we are bound to exercise a deep 
 and habitual gratitude for living in the day- 
 light of recorded communications from the 
 source of truth, and not in that twilight of 
 antemosaic ages, when isolated visions, and 
 oral traditions of those, were the chief intima- 
 tions of God's will and grace to man. 
 
 It is true, that in our days we have many 
 rejecters of this "revealed light; and among 
 them some who by subtle reasonings would 
 " attenuate all things into inanity ; " disputing 
 on mind and matter, time and space, till they 
 reduce, in their " vain imaginations," the 
 universe to a vision, and life to a mere som-
 
 IDEALISM. HUME. HEGEL. 163 
 
 nambulism, or something less.^ I refer, 
 chiefly, to that " transcendental " philosophy 
 of the Germans which has acquired an ex- 
 tending influence, of late years, in other 
 countries and in our own.^ 
 
 Amidst such delirious reveries of self- 
 bewildering thinkers, " mad with logic," ^ 
 truly we may learn yet more and more to 
 cleave to that steadfast record, which assures 
 of God's holy Providence, of a divine Re- 
 demption, of heavenly succours, of a real and 
 blessed future. 
 
 Be it also not forgotten, but a matter of 
 devout and admiring observation, that the 
 starry night, ever the season of dreams, and of 
 old the scene of prophetic visions, unfolds in 
 all centuries and all regions immense revela- 
 tions of Omnipotence ; giving glimpses of the 
 
 ^ See " Hegel's method " — of " absolute idealism," which is 
 " nothing but Hume's scepticism in • a dogmatical form ; " 
 denying both " mind and matter." — Biograph. Hist, of Philos. 
 2nd series, vol. iv. p. 210. 
 
 - Theories approaching to these were entertained by some 
 of the Greeks. See Note F, at the end of this volume. 
 3 Even their modern biographer applies to them the line — 
 " Gens ratione feros, et mentem pasta chimaeris." 
 — Lev)es's B'log. Hist, ubi
 
 164 STARRY NIGHT. PLAYFAIR. 
 
 visible yet latent wonders of innumerable 
 worlds ; so that a host of celestial realities is 
 ever partially brought into our view, yet with 
 a boundless sphere of dream and mystery 
 beyond, in what their remoteness conceals. 
 It has been said, probably from more than one 
 astronomer's chair, that the powerful and 
 exploring intellect of the great discoverers in 
 science has taken a sublimer flight than the 
 most daring fancy of the poets.^ Most true : 
 but still, it is the believer alone — as was ob- 
 served in the former Essay — who carries 
 with him the warmth of heavenly hope into 
 the loftiest regions and disclosures of ever- 
 widening science. 
 
 Let us hear our own Christian poet of "the 
 night," as he exclaims — 
 
 " O death divine, that giv'st us to the skies ! — 
 From nature's continent, immensely wide, 
 Immensely hlest, this little isle of life, 
 
 ' That remark was pointedly expressed hy the very able 
 Professor Playfair, from his Edinburgh chair of Natural 
 riiilosophy, in 1813 ; when he compared the achievements of 
 Galileo's and Nevrton's reason, with those of Ariosto's and 
 Milton's fancy. It was cited (from my MS. notes of liis 
 lecture) in a former volume — Christian Encouragement, § iii. 
 p. G6, 3d edition.
 
 YOUNG. LESSONS FROM NIGHT. 165 
 
 This dark incarcerating colony, 
 
 Divides us. Happy day that breaks our chain, 
 
 That manumits ; that calls from exile home ; 
 
 That leads to nature's great metropolis, 
 
 And readmits us, through the guardian hand 
 
 Of elder brothers, to our Father's throne ; 
 
 Who hears our Advocate, and through his wounds 
 
 Beholding man, aUows that tender name." 
 
 And again — 
 
 " O what a confluence of ethereal fires 
 IFrom urns unnumbered, down the steep of heaven. 
 Streams to a point, and centres in my sight ! 
 Nor tarries there ; I feel it at my heart ; 
 My heart at once it humbles and exalts ; 
 Lays it in dust, and calls it to the skies." 
 
 TVe should deeply ponder, also, the great 
 lesson which he deduces. 
 
 " Why such magnificence in aU thou seest ? 
 — Of matter's grandeur, know, one end is this ; 
 To teU the Rational who gazes on it 
 — Guard thou the important yet depending fate 
 Of heing, brighter than a thousand suns ! 
 One single ray of thought outshines them all ! 
 And, if man hears obedient, soon he'U soar 
 Superior heights, and on his purple wing 
 Rising where thouc/ht is now denied to rise. 
 Look down triumphant on these dazzling spheres ! " 
 
 I return, for a moment, to that comparison 
 by the Scottish philosopher, which may be
 
 166 REALITIES 
 
 summed up in the brief sentence — Realities 
 transcend all dreams. 
 
 His remark, uttered the third part of a 
 century ago, has since received new and em- 
 phatic confirmations from the new explorings 
 of science. Dreams the most celestial or 
 eccentric, imaginings the most exalted or ex- 
 treme, are abundantly outgone by the ascer- 
 tained and visible facts of creation : how much 
 more, it is inevitable to conclude, by the 
 realities which are " not seen." 
 
 What are the visions, the reveries, or the 
 fictions of men, — the most oriental stretch of 
 mythic hyperbole, — the most ultramundane 
 dream of the astrologer Cardan, — or the boldest 
 flights of a Dante, — when compared with 
 the telescopic distinction of confused nebular 
 light into constellations or clusters of starry 
 globes ; or with that recent fact, the new 
 planet of Leverrier, whose distance, — not in- 
 calculable, but the astonishing subject of 
 successful calculation, — gives us a new stan- 
 dard for estimating the immensities of God's 
 Avorks, and tlie exceeding broadness of His 
 one law and sovereignty, by the amazing 
 vastness of our one solar system, — one amidst
 
 SURPASS ALL DREAMS. 167 
 
 systems whose multitude must baffle human 
 research. 
 
 Since then even visible realities thus tran- 
 scend our most excursive dreams, how much 
 more, I repeat, the i/zvisible ! and how should 
 hallowed ambition, tempered by profound 
 humility, aspire to rise from man's frail ima- 
 ginations towards his Maker's real and eternal 
 grandeur, and from all visionary and evanes- 
 cent good towards the permanent " certainty 
 of waking bliss !"
 
 I
 
 NOTES. 
 
 NOTE A, p. 32. 
 
 KUBLA KHAN. 
 
 The reader may wish for the remaining lines pre- 
 served by the poet ; which are these : — 
 
 " A damsel with a dulcimer 
 In a vision once I saw : 
 It was an Abyssinian maid, 
 And on her dulcimer she played, 
 Singing of Mount Abora. 
 
 Could I revive within me 
 
 Her sjTuphony and song, 
 
 To such a deep dehght 'twould win me, 
 
 That, with music loud and long, 
 
 I would build that dome in air, 
 
 That sunny dome ! those caves of ice ! 
 
 And aU who heard should see them there, 
 
 And aU should cry, Beware ! Beware ! 
 
 His flashing eyes,' his floating hair ! 
 
 Weave a circle round him thrice. 
 
 And close your eyes with holy dread. 
 
 For he on honey-dew hath fed, 
 
 And drunk the milk of paradise." 
 
 All who loved the poet, or who honoured his genius, 
 must have earnestly wished that in those early days 
 he had restricted himself to genuine and harmless
 
 170 OPIUM. KENIL WORTH. 
 
 " milk " or ''honey," instead of indulging in pernicious 
 stimulants. Most devoutly did he himself wish this 
 when he felt their fatal eliects ; and after he was at 
 last so happily rescued from that baneful snare of 
 opium, which had once attracted him as if it were 
 " the milk of paradise ; " but proved, as we learn from 
 what he confessed and recorded, a wine of demons, a 
 very " cup of trembling." ^ 
 
 It is probable, since he writes of having taken an 
 *' anodyne," that the " vision in a dream " arose under 
 some excitement of that same narcotic : but this does 
 not destroy, even as to his particular case, the evi- 
 dence for a wonderfully inventive action of the mind 
 in sleep ; for, whatever were the exciting cause, 
 the fact remains the same : although, doubtless, 
 where there has been no stimulus of the sort, the 
 instances are still more to our purpose. Such a one is 
 the following : a piece kindly supplied me by a lady, 
 — " composed by herself in sleep, after reading Sir 
 Walter Scott's ' Kenilworth.'" 
 
 KENILWORTH CASTLE. 
 
 (Composed in sleep.) 
 
 ■ In the tower I stood, and looked out on the lea, 
 Which slept in tlie moonlight peacefidly. 
 Ah ! many a moon lias passed away, 
 And many a head been strewed with gray, 
 Since these walls, which now echo the owlet's cry, 
 First reared their strength in the azure sky. 
 
 The bat now dwells where the dancers shone. 
 And the passing wind sighs for music gone ; 
 And in place of the torch's glaring blaze. 
 The quivering moonbeam gently strays. 
 
 I 
 
 ^ See his most afTecting letters of A\m\, May, and June, 
 1814, in "Cottle's early recollections" of him. — Vol. ii. iip. 
 156, l(;i, 100,180.
 
 LA MOTHE LE VAYER. 171 
 
 The Queen who once looked from these casements higli, 
 
 Where the long grass now waves rank and drj-, 
 
 Has passed away as a passing moan : 
 
 E'en her name is worn from the fretted stone. 
 
 And Surrey and Leicester, where are they ? 
 
 Oh ! tell me their tale, thou castle gray : 
 
 For they clnng to their Queen as the ivy round thee, 
 
 But they propped her not so faithfully. 
 
 I hear you speak in the night wind's sigh, 
 In the hat's leathern wing flitting quickly by, 
 In the thrilling sound of the night bird's cry, 
 Startling the silence fearfully. 
 
 They say that Time has been mowing here. 
 
 And that Death has been hurling his fatal spear." 
 
 I can conceive that the very connectedness and 
 sobriety of these pleasing lines, may induce suspicion 
 or misgiving in some readers as to the certainty of 
 their having been really the product of a dream, and 
 merely noted down (like Coleridge's) from memory 
 on awaking. With myself, who possess full attesta- 
 tion for the veracity and accuracy of the poetess, such 
 doubts can have no admission : and had that lady 
 consented to let her name be attached to the piece, the 
 same confidence would be felt by the whole circle of 
 her friends. 
 
 NOTE B, p. 36. 
 
 LA MOTHE LE A'AYER. 
 
 *' He was supposed to have a strong disposition to 
 scepticism, and bore with calmness the imputations to 
 which his opinions exposed him : once, when walking 
 in the gallery of the Louvre, he overheard a person 
 whisper to his friend, ' There goes a man without 
 religion : ' to which he replied, ' I have religion 
 enough, friend, to pardon your insult.' He was a
 
 172 LA MOTHE. ZIMMERMANN. 
 
 great writer ; one of his works was a ' Treatise on the 
 Virtue of Pagans/ which was answered by Arnauld. 
 La Mothe's bookseller complaining tliat his book did 
 not sell, ' I know a secret,' said the author, ' to quicken 
 the sale ;' — he procured an order from government for 
 its suppression ; which was the means of selling the 
 whole edition." — llees's Cyclopaedia, art, Mothe le 
 Vayer (from Moreri), 
 
 This latter anecdote, while it shows his ready wit 
 and resource, and suggests a lesson on the bad policy 
 of trying to repress opinion by coercion, betrays at the 
 same time his lax \iews in morals : but, in the former, 
 he may be really considered as affording a pattern for 
 all believers, and, to some, a tacit but keen reproof. 
 
 NOTE C, p. 72. 
 
 zimmermann's dream. 
 
 It appears from Tissot's Life of Zimmermann, that 
 his wife was not really deceased when the above dream 
 occurred to him. We are to interpret the announce- 
 ment of her death merely as an incident of the 
 dream: which, in my judgment, renders that itself 
 the more remarkable ; since it was not occasioned 
 by emotions or promptings of the imagination 
 arising from an actual bereavement, but arose 
 independently of any such event. The first wife of 
 Dr. Zimmermann died in 1770, five years after this 
 dream happened, according to the statement of 
 Lavater. 
 
 NOTE D, p. 78. 
 
 THE SCEPTIC AND THE CHRISTIAN 
 
 We may take, as the type or exemplification of 
 sceptical prospects — and it cannot be deemed an unfair 
 
 I
 
 THE SCEPTIC. ADONAIS. 173 
 
 or unfavourable one— Shelley's beautiful monody on 
 Keats, entitled ''Adonais;" a painfully instructive 
 poem from a hapless teacher, evincing, in him, the 
 insuppressible though hopeless sighs and yearnings of 
 humanity for a future life and tender recognition. 
 One might even think, if his wretched reveries 
 of pantheism and absorption were not known and 
 unconcealed, that some phrases strongly indicate the 
 hope of life and reunion to come ; as when he exclaims — 
 
 " — Peace ; peace ; he is not dead, he doth not sleep- 
 He hath awakened from the dream of life." 
 
 " — Mourn not for Adonais : — thou young dawn 
 Turn all thy dew to splendour ; for from thee 
 The spirit thou lamentest is not gone." 
 
 " — The soft sky smUes, the low wind whispers near ; 
 'Tis Adonais calls ! O hasten thither, 
 No more let hfe divide what death can join together." 
 
 And then — 
 
 " The massy earth and sphered skies are riven ; 
 I am borne darkly, fearfully afar ; 
 Whilst, burning through the inmost veil of heaven, 
 The soul of Adonais, like a star, 
 Beacons from the abode where the eternal are." 
 
 But what this "star " and this "abode" are meant 
 —though most unfaithfully even as figures — to de- 
 signate, must be gathered from these other lines which 
 precede : — 
 
 " He is made one with Nature : there is heard 
 His voice in aU her music, from the moan 
 Of thunder to the song of night's sweet bird : 
 He is a presence to be felt and known 
 In darkness and in hght, from herb and stone, 
 Spreading itself where'er that Power may move 
 "Which has withdrawn his being to its own." 
 
 q3
 
 174 THE CHRISTIAN. LYCIDAS. 
 
 This, doubtless, is as exquisite poetry as can be had 
 without the element of real hope in it. It breathes 
 the essential spirit of wild and half-smiling melan- 
 choly. One might almost call it the nitrous oxide of 
 literature. Or if we liken it to a stream, it is a spark- 
 ling fascinating current, which flo'ws smoothly to the 
 whirlpool of despair. 
 
 Compare with this the spirit of Milton's monody 
 on Edward King, the son of Sir John King, secretary 
 for Ireland. It is remarkable that in this case the 
 subject of the elegy had been drowned at sea, and in 
 the former case the X)oet soon underwent a like 
 calamity. 
 
 " Weep no more, woful shepherds, weep no more j 
 Tor Lycidas your sorrow is not dead, 
 Sunk tliougli he be beneath the wat'ry floor; 
 So sinks the day-star in the ocean bed, 
 And yet anon repairs his drooping head, 
 And tricks liis beams, and with uew-spangled ore 
 Plames in the forehead of the morning sky. 
 So Lycidas sank low, but mounted high, 
 Through the dear might of him that walked the waves. 
 Where, other groves and other streams along. 
 With nectar pure his oozy locks he laves, 
 And hears the unexpressive nuptial song, 
 In the blest kingdoms meek of joy and love. 
 There entertain liim all the saints above 
 In solemn troops and sweet societies. 
 That sing, and singing in tlicir glory move. 
 And wipe tlie tears for ever froiiitItiS',^6^.'' - 
 
 Even should it be critically adjudged that these 
 lines of our elder bard have less of grandeur or cxqui- 
 siteness in them as mere poetry, one pities those who 
 do not prize in them the majesty of truth and hope ; 
 that spiritual sunlight which alone can really "turn 
 all dew " of grief " to splendour ; " while the sceptic's 
 most aspiring and far-reaching beams are but as cold 
 undulations of ether in the wilderness of space.
 
 DREAMS MISTAKEN FOR FACTS. 175 
 
 NOTE E, p. 149. 
 
 ''CHILDREN OF AN IDLE BRAIN." 
 
 It may be added, that in the minds of some young 
 children, and in others which, for want of strength or 
 discipline, remain in adult years still childish, the 
 impression of a dream on the memory appears to be 
 sometimes confounded with a remembrance of real 
 occurrences; and thus comes to be related as such. It 
 is the inversion of what Pascal has observed sometimes 
 happens to travellers in new scenes, who are apt to 
 feel and say, "Methinks I am dreaming." ^ And it 
 must be suspected as a possible illusion by some who 
 have not undergone it ; since the remark is not uncom- 
 mon after telling what seems both to the hearer and 
 narrator difficult of belief, — surely I cannot have 
 dreamed it. — Lamentable, however, as well . as lu- 
 dicrous is the case, when such confusedness as 
 leads to mistaking impressions in sleep for realities, 
 at once deludes the party himself, and creates for 
 him an ill reputation with others for incredible 
 stories; that is, in fact, for lying. Probably some 
 portion of what is judged as falsehood or rhodomon- 
 tade, takes rise from this transmutation of dreams, by 
 some vague and perplexed actings of memory and 
 fancy, into supposed and believed facts. .^ly acute and 
 observant friend, Mr. Bullar of Southampton, writes 
 to me thus : — " I have lately had with me one''of'my 
 lively little grandchildren, of three years old, who 
 sometimes made out such narratives of what she had 
 been doing or seeing as I could only account for on the 
 supposition that her memory had mixed up her dreams 
 with her waking thoughts. I think I can sometimes 
 trace that this may have been, occasionally, my own 
 case in childhood. I forget who it was, (though I 
 
 ' Thoughts, p. 75. Glasg. cd. 1838.
 
 176 BLACK SAM. 
 
 suspect it may have been Lavater,) that kept what he 
 called, in antithesis to " Diary," a " Nocturnal," regis- 
 tering his dreams, and then analysing the " stuff they 
 were made of," from detecting fragments of one train 
 of thought " tacked to another, as in a patchwork quilt." 
 This hint of thoughts or incidents " tacked " together, 
 — (which curiously accords with the Greek term 
 "rhapsodies," applied even to Homer's poems,) — well 
 describes the most frequent character of dreams. It 
 helps us, also, to understand how, in unsteady and ill- 
 regulated minds, (not to say in some superior to those,) 
 things real may have had the unreal so tacked to 
 them, that they have come to be thought all of a piece, 
 and the voyager or soldier has told " of hairbreadth 
 'scapes and moving accidents," founded on and con- 
 nected with some which really did occur, but which 
 themselves cawnot have occurred. 
 
 A gallant naval officer, the late Captain Sir T. 
 Byard, (maternal ancestor to some esteemed con- 
 nexions of mine,) who commanded the Bedford at the 
 battle of Camperdown, related, in a company where I 
 as a schoolboy Avas an eager and attentive listener, that 
 he had had on board his ship a negro servant called 
 Black Sam, Avho was used to assert, and persist in the 
 assertion, that he had once jumped off the Peak of 
 Teneriffe into the ship. Captain Byard added, — 
 " I think he had told this story till he really believed 
 it himself." 
 
 Now this Black Sam, though of Othello's hue, we 
 may well believe had nothing of the Moor's talent or 
 fascination; but was noted only as a professed and 
 resolved liar, which, too probably, he might be: still 
 it seems not 2»iprobable, that in this instance he had 
 unawares " tacked " (rhapsodized) the remembrance of 
 a dream to a real occurrence ; and so " believed " his 
 own "lie." It is not unlikely that he had made, with 
 some of his ship's officers, a mountain excursion 
 towards the peak, nor that he had afterwards vividly 
 dreamed of jumping from that height into the ship, 
 
 i
 
 DELUSION. IDEALISM. 177 
 
 which he had really looked at thence, anchored in 
 the roads below. One may readily conceive how, in 
 an untaught, fanciful, and superstitious mind, the real 
 excursion and the dreaming extravagance had become 
 one and inseparable; his vanity flattered by the ima- 
 gined feat, and his credence made obstinate by his 
 hearers' raillery. Such a delusion, supposing that it 
 happened or that it may happen, would be a useful 
 lesson as to the importance of " keeping " the mind 
 " with diligence," lest its dreams or fancies mingling 
 with fact and imposing on itself, should niin its claim 
 to soundness and truthfulness, and lead many to judge 
 us "deceivers," when we may be, in great part, 
 " deceived, ' 
 
 XOTE F, p. 163. 
 
 transce:tdental philosophy, 
 idealism. 
 
 The imagined annihilation both of mind and matter 
 by a self-bewildering philosophy,- advocated in the 
 sceptical writings of Hume, and since more laboriously 
 in the speculations of Fichte, Hegel, &c. — was, how- 
 ever, familiar to the subtle genius of the ancient Greeks. 
 
 It is very remarkable, that not merely the Eleatics, 
 the Pyrrhonists, &c. disputed in this manner, but that 
 even Plato, the most religious of the philosophers, 
 " has given them some countenance, by hinting it as 
 a thing not quite impossible, that human life is a con- 
 tinued sleep, and that all our thoughts are only 
 dreams. [Trorepov Kad^vSofxev, Kal irdvra a hiavosfx^Qa 
 oveipcoTTouev.^ This scepticism (which I am inclined 
 to think most persons have occasionally experienced 
 in their early years) proceeds on principles totally 
 different from the doctrine of Bishop Berkeley, who 
 asserts, with the most dogmatical contidence, that the 
 " existence of matter is iiiipossihle, and that the very
 
 178 IDEALISM. 
 
 supposition of it is absurd." ' The good bishop firmly 
 held the existence of mind, and of the supreme mind. 
 He had, as Pope says, " every virtue under heaven ; " 
 and a modern writer remarks, "it is still a moot point 
 whether he was greater in head or heart." — Yet the 
 same pen tells us, " he paved the way to scepticism :"2 
 on which the reflection arises, how unhappy would 
 that excellent Christian and divine have heen, had he 
 foreseen that his theory might minister to such a 
 result ; and how important is it to limit speculation 
 within the boundaries of common sense. 
 
 NOTE, (supplemental,) p. 91. 
 
 " A DREAM OF CYRUS, WHO HAT) SEEN THE SUN AT HIS FEET 
 AND TRIED TO GRASP IT." 
 
 The contents of this note, (or part of it,) if I had 
 seen earlier the interesting facts and statements which 
 it offers, would not have been inserted as a note, but 
 in Section V. of the second Essay.* Coming as the}^ do 
 from the pen of a venerable person, of whose piety and 
 chaiity I have had most pleasing and edifying proofs, 
 in his own parish, both from personal intercourse and 
 from Striking testimony, I feel that none can be more 
 highly attested. 
 
 The Kev. Henry Woodward, Rector of Fethard, in a 
 recent brief autobiography, entitled " Some passages of 
 my former life,"^ after narrating his own experience 
 (in 1804) of a mighty spiritual change, writes — "I 
 think that the conviction which above all others 
 cheered my heart was, that the grand transition had 
 already taken place; that I had passed the Kubicou ; 
 
 ' DiifTiild Slownrt. Vliilosopliical Essays, (Essay ii.) p. 11 H. 
 2 ];0\v('s's Biojiijipli. Hist, of riiilos. vol. iv. pp. 4, 32. 
 
 •■' At p 1 1.0.
 
 KEV. HENRY AVOODWAKD. 179 
 
 that I was not to wait till death for the commencement 
 of the eternal day, but that I had already seen the 
 outgoings of the morning; that the sun that now 
 arose would never go down ; that I had awoke from 
 sleep, and would never close my eyes again." He 
 afterwards adds, " I would mention the following fact, 
 as illustrative of the manner in which the whole 
 current of my mind was changed. Some time, I 
 forget how long, before that — to me — all-important 
 period, I dreamt that I saw the sun arise, and then, 
 after it, another sun ; and I awoke in a state of inex- 
 pressible horror. A few days after the transition 
 which I am now describing, I had a repetition of 
 precisely the same dream ; and I started from my 
 sleep in almost an ecstasy of joy. I shall make no 
 further comment upon it than this, that it seemed to 
 me as if an all-gracious God had said, ' You see by the 
 different effects of this dream what a change has passed 
 upon your mind. You now have nothing to fear, 
 though the hills were removed, and the mountains 
 were cast into the depths of the sea.' " ^ 
 
 It will be obvious to discerning and Christian 
 readers, that this might well have been classed with 
 some dreams adduced in the preceding pages, as 
 instrumental to the " renewing of the mind," or " in 
 the revival or fixing of prior impressions of revealed 
 truth." But, being obliged to offer it as a note, 
 I connect it with the dream of Cyrus, as exhibiting 
 the contrast between the " visions " of a heathen 
 prince, — prompted by the ruling passion, — and those 
 suggested by heavenly influence to a spiritually 
 awakened mind, as it began to seek " healing " 
 warmth and lustre in the "wings" of "the Sun of 
 Righteousness." 
 
 1 Orr & Co. and Seeley, Londou, 1847- - Pp. 8—10.
 
 LONDON : 
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