# The Philosophical Review/Volume 1/Summary: Guardia - La personnalité dans les reves

Rev. Ph. = Revue Philosophique
Our knowledge of dreams is still unsatisfactory, owing to difficulties of observation; in other words, of recollection. Even did the observer attempt a chronologic register of his dreams, it would necessarily contain lacunæ. In anæsthesia, apoplexy, and intoxication, the most acute sensations are similarly forgotten after the return to the normal state. The question of dreams depends, then, on the trustworthiness of the memory. The purely psychological questions raised by the phenomena of sense, external or internal, in dreams are excluded from this discussion. Dreams illustrate especially the large part played by sensation in the psychological determinism; an individual deprived of his physical senses could not be supposed to dream. Dreams are incompatible with the purely vegetative existence; the nerve-cell is postulated; a dream is a series of reflexes. Dreams can be classified, then, according to the kinds of sensations involved, as external, internal, mixed. The majority of our sensations are of sight; they agree with the condition of the eye, being sometimes impaired by myopia, color-blindness, and the like. In dreams, however, every one sees with perfect distinctness and without fatigue. The illumination of dream pictures is usually moderate, the scene distinct. When crowds or groups of human figures appear, they seem distinct at the time, but leave no definite impression. Objects seem real, but are less in relief than men and animals. These ​objects alter and fade away. Sight plays a free part in dreams, unattended by any pathological sensations. Again, the sleeper is unaware that his eyes are not wide open; hence the impossibility of dreaming that one sleeps or dreams. Hearing plays in the life of sensation a part nearly equal to that taken by sight. The hallucinations, also, of the two senses are similar; but here, too, sights predominate over sounds. In the waking state the two senses cannot each receive perfect attention at the same time. Of two distinct and simultaneous sensations, the stronger eclipses the weaker. This is especially true in dreams: eye and ear are in most cases not simultaneously entertained. The sounds of dreams are of every describable variety; the inquiry is simplified by considering only human speech. More coherence is observed in the discourse than in the images of dreams. In dreams where sight predominates, the vision, unless interrupted by external accident, terminates in confusion or effacement. In 'monologue dreams,' the speaker wakes at the supposed sound of his own voice, when in reality he may be known never to talk in his sleep. This rousing is caused by the leaving off of the imaginary sound, as in the analogous cases where one wakes at the cessation of some actual sound, as that of a clock. Taste and smell are closely connected, but can be both exercised and examined separately. Their intensity in dreams is not the same; taste, as the more actively employed sense, and the more generally serviceable of the two, occupies the chief, frequently the only, place. The reason for their subordinate position is that they are the most nearly isolated, and, as a rule, the least trained, of the senses. The impressions furnished by dreams vary according to the education of the senses, and consequently are different for each subject. One would discover by research that dreams have suffered a change also from century to century, just as the illusions of lunacy have done. The general sense of contact or feeling is more frequent in dreams than is the special sense of touch, though somewhat uncommon, owing to the habitual coverings of the body. Imaginary sensations of temperature occur at times; more frequently such feelings are not illusory but real. But as in the waking state, the sensations of contact in general are obscure, confused, and comparatively few. Movement in dreams is very rare compared with what occurs in the waking state. The will becomes passive, — a strong point against the dualistic position. The dreamer seems to perform the impossible; he flies like a bird, and in old age moves with the swiftness or with the firm tread of youth. All this without dreaming of fatigue. Yet there are dreams from which one awakes exhausted and alarmed, nightmares. These result generally from indigestion, impeded circulation, bad ventilation, or the abuse of drugs, interfering with the animal processes. The indications thus furnished can some day be of service to ​medicine. The common and habitual elements of dreams depend much on the combination of organic and dynamic elements which form the personality. Three things are to be considered: the organization, the age, and the sex. The rule of the last is absolute. Dreams and hallucinations have much in common, and have undoubtedly been often confounded. The narratives of St. John, Saint-Hilaire, and Swedenborg read like dreams. In certain forms of lunacy and delirium, the impression left is indelible, but apperception is wanting. These inexactitudes of memory render suspicious certain otherwise remarkable accounts, notably those of dreams induced by narcotics. Movements requiring complicated co-ordination, such as reading, writing, attentive and volitional sight, hearing, etc., are rarest in dreams, and as attention and apperception are correlative, we see the impossibility of any considerable logical sequence in dreams. To dream that one dreams seems equally impossible. Though an organic consciousness exists in dreams, consciousness, strictly so-called, slumbers. The dreams of Scipio and Lucian, or of Athalie, are without counterpart in nature. It is after waking that reason and conscience lend their imprint. It seems thus that the study of dreams can contribute nothing to the theory of the moral senses, or to aesthetics. They contain nothing but an image of a life made up entirely of sensations, such as might have been that of primitive humanity. The scenes have more surface than depth, and succeed each other rapidly and irrelevantly. The history of dreams, to conclude, has not yet been written, and cannot be, save by an exhaustive examination of the records of long observation, such as has not yet been attempted. Should this ever be accomplished, our knowledge of the senses, which are the source of the mental vitality, would be enriched by an entirely new chapter.