Elmore bulletin. [volume] (Rocky Bar, Idaho) 1889-1906, 1893-03-04
THE SLEEPING MIND.
WHILE THE JUDGMENT SLEEPS ONES
FANCY RUNS RIOT.

0rotesqus JuxtepOsition of Inocmpati-
Bile Things During Our Numbering
Hours-strAnge Sensations That oesur
when the Body L. senseIssa-
As for the power Of dreams to resusci-
tate apparently obliterated impressions.
various instances are on record; the pres
snt writer once recovered In dream and
retained after waking tune which he Ind
for months past made numerous vain Mt
tempts to recall. The locale of his dream
WAS concert room In which the tune had
actually been heard. Forgotten scenes,
disused habits, past deeds, old thoughts
some duplicate OF all these, the negative"
80 to speak, OF each photograph, exists
somewhere In the all capacious storage
room OF the mind; and Il seems TO be the
special function OF the dream faculty to
shuttle this pack a. experiences, the for |
gotten and the unforgotten alike, and to l
rearrange the disconnected units with I
arbitrary anarchy of caprice, and with
more than kaleidoscope variety OF recon-
bination.
Hence Of course the grotesque juxtaposi-
: ton Of Incompatible things, which is the
most familiar though not the invariable
| feature Of dream composition. and by which
l any head may be fitted upon any shoulders.
, You happen to know bishop whom In
real life you have never seen or even imag-
ined In any other attire than the austerest
broadcloth and episcopal black hose. and
whose whole appearance embodies your
; Ideal Of decorous gravity. and you dream
Of seeing him driving "A stagecoach and
u wearing drab greatcoat and white hat;
4 but the hat and coat themselves, no less
n than the BISHOP. are doubtless transcripts
:. from your experience, and the actual Jehu
to whom they properly belong and OF
whom In waking hours geo re-h.;s= retain
y no recollection, may reappear In some
" other dream. habited In full prelatic garb,
Usually the dreamer acqniesce- without
= murmur In these ludicrous incongruities,
il whence IL would appear that as rule our
IN minds are In fact temporarily insane while
! In the dream state. and as the converse OF
this thesis Mr.. Greenwood hazards the
proposition that madness itself II but per
u petual dreaming. On the other hand. some
dreams do appear intellectually coherent,
d, assuming what Is perhaps open TO some
70 doubt that we are ever really capable Of
To accurately reviewing them In all their de-
tail after awaking. and this Is why IL Is
- apparently so impossible to find any theory
~ that will embrace the whole field OF dream
phenomena and reduce them to Ineligible
pu unity Of cause.
Mr.. Greenwood In one passage falls back
~ upon the tutA OF meutAl y, anu THIS
We seems to derive some conjectural support
from the familiar experience OF dreaming
he and knowing what We dream, as though
10 one-half OF the mind watched the other
half from a more or less external and
separate standing ground. But this Is one
IL Of the by phenomena which do not advance
us far toward a general theory.
You dream Of the occurrence Of q Ger
Its tain incident which strikes you a. singu'
IN lar and inexplcable, but which IL pres
emily explained In the course OF the same
ba dream by q sequence Of other incidents
al following each other like the successive
''' stages Of the unravelment Of mystery
plot in a story OF wilkie Collins or Edgar
on Poe's, the astounding and incomprehensi
ass bile thing about II being this--that, assum
ing you 20 he the inventor OF your owl
ar dream, you must before the occurrence o
of incident No. have already conceived and
arranged the whole sequence OF incidents
n.y. OF which You have nevertheless no con
- scicus premonition Bewildering as 4
IS seems, there is no resisting this conclusion
from Mr.. Greenwood's facts. and the pres
,ut ent writer remembers to have had one ex
perience essentially analogous to Mr. Green
the woods, and which was briefly as follows:
In lie dreamed that he put a question TO an
ara other person In the form of request 70
certain Information, and received differ
=, ent reply from what he could have antici
On pated. the reply taking the form OF an in
na' telligent correction OF his own error as i'm
as piled in his query, the mysterious thin
ef- being that he was enlightened by This owl
creature" to borrow a phrase OF Mr.. Green
TO woods, his creature" giving him infoT
IN nation which he received as an acquisition
rsa Of new knowledge, but OF which appaT
- emily he must nevertheless have been pos
10y sessed at that antecedent point Of tim
i, when he framed his own question, for hi
gin power Of conceiving the question itself i'm
ON piled his unconscious forecast of the reply
ry which yet came upon him as q surprise.
ted II IL another case of duplex mind-on
half OF the mind conveying to the othe
NJ half information with which the latte
~. was previously unsupplied. But the pres
lp' ent writer has had another private exper
q" ence, II possible, still more extraordinary
ihR lie was staying in a small country hnus'
IDS bis bedroom was Immediately above
the drawing room In which was a piano, an
ted another inmate OF the house was a lad
sh. who WAS nm amateur pianist. About
'ew o'clock one morning he dreamed he wa
In the garden. where he WAS present.
Joined by this lady. and together they a
once entered the house, when the LADY
me. proceeding To the piano, sat down and b
a.; gan playing Webers well known polacc
:. In T., which commences with trill c
q" shnke. He thereupon awoke 20 find tina
axe the lr,ly was actually nj the piano below
use that she was Just commencing Weber
ply polaccr. and that the trill. which occupi'
H. perhaps fraction over a second In execI
ON ton, was just being played.
any Now the amazing. not to say staggering
nov feature of the thing Is this; That the inc
=, dent which la the dream WAS anteceder
10 the playing OF the polaeca-viz.. I'll
Ais walk from the garden TO the DRAWN
ere room-must In reality have been invente
and by the dreamer's mind after the actui
me, 6rst note Of the music had been struck, an
tier invented for the purpose Of leading mp
ere that music. Mr.. Greenwood will probabl
, - agree with us that this Ii In certai
a. sense an even more complex case tina
those of prolepsy. IL seems TO imply thi
!, the dreaming mind cannot only annihilal
SCI the time condition OF things. IA we Apr
bend II In waking experience. but can ais
invert or dislocate their time sequence In
manner which the wide awake intellect
ate powerless to understand or to ccnceiv
ZEN Truly such stuff as dreams are made OF
WV II a material which we have yet to analyx
no London Spectator.
any False Alarm.
am ~ have just found well defined case
| of As,atie eoilarerr, shouted the excited cit
mi