The Charleston daily news. [volume] (Charleston, S.C.) 1865-1873, 1869-12-25
ABOUT DREAMS.
The Border Land Of Dreams-A Curious
Analysis-How to Sleep.

What Professor Balm calls "the volumlnOus
pleasure of falling asleep" Is so very rarely
analyzed by men of science, that some very
odd notions arc abroad upon the subject. One
of these is. that you cannot fall asleep until
you cease thinking. The common recipe for
for the securing of sleep-to so on counting
hundred after hundred until you become In
sensible-is said to be invaluable, because it is
supposed to exercise thought. In fact, it docs
nothing of the kind. 1t is possible to go on
counting mechanically while the mind Is busy
in quite other directions, drawing imaginary
pictures, recalling the events Of the day. and
SO forth. The monotony Of counting certainly
tends to induce sleep, and so far lessons the
chances of the obtrusi0n OF conscious thought
But tie notion that one must cease TO think
before one can sleep Is only vulgar error
Certain operations of the mind-of memory,
reason, Judgment, and, above all, Of imagina-
tion-do not cease even after actual sleep has
set in.
In sleep we remember and call up before
us persons long dead; we reason with them,
and some times, by an ineXpllcable mental
freak, we allow them to puzzle and perpcx us
with an argument or conundrum which
they have to explain to us, and Judge of their
appearance and conduct; and We Imagine an
incesSant panorama Of action III which they
are engaged Frequently the mental products
of sleep are next day available to us. We are
possessed ut the epigram which one or other
of the characters in the sleep-drama uttered
We can remember the eXtravagant vagarics
and gorgeous spectacular effects OF the sleep
scenery0the castles of milk-white cloud, the
seas of liquid fire, the gardens In which every
flower has heart OF diamonds. And as all
these intellectual processes must have their
correlative physical effects, 1t is just probable
that the brain-maerial gets no rest at all; that
| the constant tranSmutatiOn OF substance In the
cerebral cells, which Psychologists p0stulate,
gocs On 10y night as by day. Some great and
radical differences there undoubtedly are be-
tween the thinking of wakehllncss and the
thinking of sleep; in the latter, for example,
we are never conscious that we are thinking,
and our thoughts are entirely Ley0nd the Ill
rection Of The will.
| But there Is 4 remarkably curious period
| lust on this side of actual sleep, in which there
| is only half consciousness OF thought, and in
which our thinking is, to q certain extent,
subject TO volition. The men and women,
and the scenes we behold during this period.
have none of the fine independence and OH
pletencss of the creations Of dreams. The
dream figures are like the impossible figures
which the magic lantern shows US; the figures
that haunt this transitional state are like real
men and women seen through piece OF
bottle-glass. During this period we still pre-
serve some notions of consistency and agree
ment; in the land Of dreams impossbility has
become natural. Take the very case of count
ing numbers. In dream you feel confident
that you cal count u hundred backwards and
forwards the same time, and you may have
vague phi ;Sical impression that your organ
of cacLla ion is pieco Of India rubber
which has been painfully stretched to the ex-
trcmcs OF the hundred, and that its two points
will somehow cross each other when you (who
are outside of the process) arrive at fifty. This
nonsense is impossible in that confused and
still c0,iscious period Of which We speak. Then
we still have the resolution to 90 on counting
one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight.
nine, ten, In constant succession. III 4 short
time we become vaguely aware that nine has
dropped out. Then eight drops out. Each
time we come to seven we make u sudden
grasp at ten, as ii the filling up OF The hiatus
were an unnecessary mental effort. Every
decade is now represented by one, two, three.
four, FIVE, six, seven, ten.