The evening telegraph. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1864-1918, 1869-04-20

| dreams ia the belief that they enter tue
| mind from abroad with hhe Hlncy, ~N HUI
| tious thought a poet says,
/ "Sleep is traitor ., 60
u,no eIs the poor defenseless eyes with backness,
| That he may let in dreams.
| They are evoked, not introduced When the
| inner nlay becomes, as 1t ometmes does, so ex-
citing and powerful as to strike the springs of
volition, and thus move the muscles, we have
so,nnanabutisnl, which is q dream put into action.
Are not some men sleep-walkers all their days,
puttng their dreams into actions? The essence
OF q dream, then, is that objects and events
which are only ideally perceived within the mind
are credited as having outward existence And
In this innermost essence of the thing in this
outermost color of the phenomenon, is not our
whole life full of dream 2 Pascal impressively
asks in one of those pregnant paragraphs which
often fell from his pen, "If we we're solitary
when awake but dreamed in company and our
dreams accorded with each other, who doubts
that we should believe matters reversed? In
fine, as we frequently dream that we dream.
piling one dream upon another, it is quite DOS
sible that this life itself is only dream, on
which others are grated, from which we
awake at death, and during which we
have the principles of the true and the
good as little as during natural sleep" How
many things which for the time sway and shape
us, are limited to our own souls, pure localities
destined never TO be any part of the yeritable
world 1t is one of the deep uttcrances of old
Heraclitus that ''they who awake have n
world in common among them; but they who
sleep are retired each TO his own private world.
Nevertheless, literal and large as the truth in
this maxim is-still with reference to our moral
experience an inverse statement; for the former
cause of it would express a graver truth, and
one with more comprehensive Inference. Our
common waking life is like q dream because in
1t each man lives a special experience within a
world specially shaped and colored by bis dOmi-
nant idiOsyncrasies.
Well may sleep present us fctons
with such fancifai cOnyotions IS"
As make life itself a dream"
Since God is infinite, nothing can occur be-
yond Him. All things are embraced within His
intelligence. The universe, then, is His dream.
How wondrously has glided through the Divine
thought the solemn and many-colOred Dream
of History since the birth OF the earliest
unto this hour Silent, swift, with kalei-
doscopic changes, the weird, embroiled pro-
cession of nations. peoples revolutions,
trophies, has swept on, from the painted sayages,
half-clad in skins of BEASTS with their war-clubs,
their watch-fres, their frantic dances and
ldolatrous rites, by nOnadic hordes with swarm
ing tlocks, by slaVe-crOWded cities by Brahmin-
ism, Buddhism, Mohammedanism, to the peers
of France and the lords of England in the centre
of the nineteenth century The somnolent
troops of actors and events file past and fade
upon our contemplation, shadowy vision all
a dream.
Dreams, literally spealing are unhealthy pro-
ducts, symptoms of morbid states They are
not the right working, but the impngement and
jar of the fine machinery of the brain, not part
dream is a passing delirium; delrium is n fixed
dream over-powering reason If every faculty
We're in wholly normal condition, and all were
harmoniously balanced and every function were
entirely fulfilled, we sil0UM neUeT dream. The
activities of the day Wodld suffice; and no sur
plusage defect, or irritation would remain to
create the disturbance OF dreams within our
dark-covered slumbcrs. The application of this
fact to our waking life is immediate, and is
not without pathos. For what are our
choicest day-dreams, those dear reveries,. i'm
aglnary schemlngs, inward scenic trumphs
what are they but the refuge and
resource of the disappointed heart? Its
holy anticipations and wild longings thwarted in
a world gone wrong and too harsh and narrow,
the hungry but creative soul builds its own
palace, peoples IL from affection, and adorns 1t
with glories no strangers eye can see. As we
are, and as the world is, how many persons lead
two lives, one Of public duty in the routine of
business, the other of Withdrawn romance in the
hearts secret home SO we read in the tale
artfuly elaborated by Bulwer, of an enthusiast,
who, learning TO connect and follow through his
dreams from sleep to sleep, led one life of pro-
sale and labor in the dusty hustle of The
days, another life of magical splendor and sweet
ness in the star-hung silence of the nights.
While we wear this heavy veil of flesh, here
where every essence of truth is hid behind the
mask of the material creation all things are fun
of dreaming, from the giant ocean murmuring in
his sleep, to the stars winking slumbrously on
their thrones. Occasionally, for a little time we
arouse from our dreams, and aware of the
eyanescent delusions, and of the everlasting
verities cOntrasted with them; but earthly tenn
perament and fate have drugged us too deeply,
and we soon subside into the papaverous and
visionary realm again.
Death is the last and cOmpetest breaker of
the spells that bind us, the chief arouser of
browsing souls. MOhammed wrote in the Koran,
while men live they sleep; when they die, they
wake" But Shakespeare makes the deep
thOughted Hamlet say-and, oh how many
man in hours of lonely struggl ling with the pro-
blem OF his destiny has trembled before kin
dred surmise =
'But in that sleep of death what dreams may comet"
The melancholy and skeptical, but gifted and
noble musician, Neukoom, once said mquiringly
TO the learned and pious Bunsen:-"Into what
dreams may we pass at death?" And when
Bunsen answered, I'VE shall then, l think,
awake from all Dreams" he shook
his head and made no response. How
as we live it is hardly possible for any deep soul
to shake off a haunting sense of dreaminess.
Above every charming landscape of earth floats
q haze of mystery which seems TO say to the
heart, 1T is but dream. ii will melt away" In
all the entrancements of music, mystic overtones
are heard breathing sadly through each strain,
''lt is but dream it will melt away" In the
gayest moments of sensual abandonment, when
the thyrsus is bound with roses, and the goblet
sparlles to the edge, and the song rings merrily,
and all paradise lies uncovered in pair of eyes,
ever and anon sombrely walls the ominous
refrain, 1T is but dream, it will melt away"
Amid this play of illusOry shows two things are
solid and abdng the will of God, and the soul
which seizes that will
A German thinker who died very young has
recorded this maxim:--"When we dream that
we dream, we are nigh waking" 1t is true i'm
every sense. In dreaming we are usually I'M
conscious that we are dreaming; but sometimes