Connecticut western news., 1890-09-24
 PHENOMENA OF DREAMS.
Inc strAaxe. Impressions and Sensations
 Experienced During Sleep.

Inc Str0.Eo. Impressions and Sensations
 Experienced During Sleep.
 It is told of the tyrant Dionysius that one morning one of his intimate friends and boon companions told him that he had dreamed the night before of cutting Dionysius' throat, where upon Dionysius caused him to be put to death, justifying his act by the as sertion that unless the dreamer thought of such a thineSin his waking mo- ments he could not have dreamed it when asleep.
 But Is that theory of dreams tenable or logical2 Does dream, no matter how fantastic or unreal, presuppose 8 voluntary act of the mind in the same direction2 History, observation and experience would seem to show the contrary. There is no one who has not had such dreams as he could not devise in his waking moments, or if he could, would not; for under cer- tain conditions of body and mind we dream of such horrors as would af fright us could we conceive of them.
 Modern philosophy accepts the theo- ry that the mind is never wholly inac- tive, and that we always dream whens asleep, though we usually forget our dreams The argument is, that as it is impossible to discharge the mind when awake of all consciousness, or to prevent it from acting, so the mental process goes on while we are sleeping, though the knowledge of it's action is not perceptible.. The question is one that never can be answered, but in ductive reasoning seems to support the position of Sir William Hamilton and others that the only dreamless sleep is the sleep of death.
 The phenomena of dreams have been studied in variety of ways and with as much care and exactness as the subject permits. A French philos- opher who took great interest in the subject of dreams made numerous ex- periments upon himself to test how far be could determine his dreams at will by operating upon the mind through the senses. With this view he left his kness uncovered, and dreamed that he was travelling at night in diligence, with strong impression of cold knees produced by the rigor of the weather. Darwin relates the case of deaf man who in his dreams seemed to converse by means of his fingers. He never had the impression of hearing speech, for he had never heard it. We must dream of objects with which we are acquainted, but it is the combination or use of such objects, of which we may never have thought, though we may dream of them, as a man may dream of shooting another with gun or pistol, though nothing could be further from his thoughts when awake.
 Tartini, who was distinguished his Devils Sonata" under the inspira- ton of a dream; and Coleridge always professed to nave composed his poem, stances of difficult problems being solved during sleep are too well at. tested to be questioned, and cases of l in dreams are familiar.
 And yet, with all the study and ob- servation of dreams, no one has ever l yet been able to say what dreams may come. There are so many conditions of mind and body to be taken into ac- count, so many unconsidered trlt1es which the eager memory has seized l and stored away, so many impressions and sensations which have left trace l behind, fleeting though it may have seemed, that it is impossible to say
 what the action of the mind will be during our sleeping hours. We may go to bed engrosscd with a matter of paramount importance, and dream of the most trivial matter imaginable; or | we may go to sleep with Q light heart and in high spirits and then be crushed and overpowered by dreams of some impending calamity. San l Francisco Chronicle.