Connecticut western news., 1872-09-06
Nightmare and Dreams.

There is one curious and difficult in- quiry to which no satisfactory reply has yet been given. It is in regard to the horrible phenomena of nightmare. Why is it that our dreams, when we sleep in an easy position and the organism is in healthy action, are beautiful and agree able but when we sleep in 8 cramped, oppressive attitude, or are suffering from indigestion, they are invariably of frightful character, full of deformity or danger, causing pain and terror Of this abstruse and interesting problem the following solution is suggested -a solu- tion which, it is believed, will be accep. table and conclusive to those familiar with the ultimate principles of physiolo- gical and psychological science. Ugly and terribly outward phenomena, report ed in the brain, and these interpreted in relation to what the exigency requires of the organism, produce disturbing and violent reactions in various nerve centres. These reactions, reporting themselves in the brain, are there, by the inverse action of the law of association, taken to imply the presence, as outward causes, of the ugly and terrible phenomena of which they had before been consequent ces. If piece of tough beef in the stomach causes from within just such 8 ganglionic perturbation as would be caused from without by a murderous deed or tall from a precipice, IS it not quite natural that the mind, deprived of it's usual verifying tests, should think it's subjective interpretation of the former an objective experience of the latter
 The commonest mistake in regard to dreams is the belief that they enter the mind from abroad. With fine fancy, but fictitious thought, poet says
 "Sleep is traitor,
 Who fills the poor defenceless eyes with black ness,
 That he may let in dreams."
 They are evoked, not introduced. When the inner play becomes, as it sometimes does, so exciting and power and thus move the muscles, as we have someambulisna, which is dream put into action. Are not some men sleep-walkers all their days, putting their dreams into action The essence of a 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 Pascal impressively asks in one of those pregnant paragraphs which often fell from his pen, elf we were solitary when awake, but dreamed ill company, and OUT dreams accorded with each other, who doubts that we should believe matters reversed? In fine, as we frequently dreamed that we dream, piling one dream upon another, it IS quite possible that this life is only 6 dream, on which others are grafted from winch we awake at death, and during which we have the principles of the true and the good as little as during natura sleep" How many things, which fol the time sway and shape us. are limited to our own souls, pure idealities destined never to be any part of the veritablt world It is one of the deep utterances of old Heraclitus that "they who art awake have world in common among them but they who sleep are retired each to his own private worlds Never theless, literal and large as the truth il this maxim - still with reference to ou moral experience an inverse statement for the former cause of it would expres a graver truth, and one with mor comprehensive inference. Consider i thus. Our common waking life is like dream, because in it each man lives special experience within world speci ally shared and colored by his dominan idiosynerasies. Dublin University Maga zine