The Bennington banner. [volume] (Bennington, Vt.) 1858-1894, 1894-03-16
MYSTERY OF DREAMS.
THEORIES AS TO THE ACTION OF
THE MIND DURING SLEEP.


love-" There are thousands of intelligent
people who still entertain that belief. The
opinion commonly held by physicists is
shat, if the whole brain is locked up in
sleep, there is no dream. If portion of
it is emancipated, thoughts peculiar to
that portion arise, and those thoughts are
Dreams According to DR. David Hartley,
they are nothing but the imaginations,
fancies or reveries of sleeping person,
and are due to some peculiar state of the
stomach or brain, to impressions received
while awake or to the effect of assoca-
| ton.
In the same vein Andrew Baxter de-
clares that most of the representations of
fered to the soul in sleep are not only not
produced by it, but there is no conscious
ness of any action of the will to intro
duce them. They extraordinarily obtrud-
| ed upon it, He cannot conceive of any
thing more absurd than to suppose that
the soul, as in a nightmare, would lay a
plot to brighten itself. In reply to the ar
gument of those who contend that dreams
indicate the activity of the soul separate
from and independent of the body, DR..
| Priestly asked: Why does not this indie
pendent entity contemplate the state of
the body and brain during sleep, which
might well afford it matter enough for
reason and reflection?
So, too, DR.. Cromwell, in his work on
"The Soul and the Future Life" asserts
that dreams take place only when the
sleep is unsound and arise from partial re-
turns of activity of the brain itself. These
views fairly reflect the consensus of opin-
ion regarding the origin and character of
the phenomena
On theother hand, there is authority
as eminent for the belief that all dreams
cannot be satisfactorily explained on the
grounds above stated-that there is a
something left out which it is of the high
est consequence to understand before a
positive Judgment can be pronounced.
| The student of XenOphon will recall the
remarka bic passage which the historian
puts into the mouth of the dying Cyrus
the Elder: "Nor do / feel convinced that
the soul will be devoid of sense when it is
separated from the senseless body, but it is
probable that when the mind is separated,
unmixed and pure, it is then also most
intelligent. When the frame of man is
dissolved, every part of him is seen return
ing to that which is of the same nature as
itself, except the soul, which alone is seen
neither present nor departing Reflect.
too, that nothing more closely resembles
the death OF man than Sleep but it is in
sleep that the soul of man appears most
divine, and it is then that it foresees some
thing of the future for then, as it seems,
it is most at liberty"
The letters of le great Euler to Ger
man princess contain the following state
ment "Sleep furnishes something like an
| nil IF ha tota Of ha off
death, as the union of the soul and body
is then, in a great measure, interrupted,
and the soul ceases not from activity, be-
ing employed in the production of dreams.
These are usually disturbed by the re-
naming influence which the senses exer-
else, and we know by experience that the
more this influence is suspended, which is
the case in profound sleep, the more regu-
lar and connected are orr dreams"
Blackwell affirms that to be able to see
without the eye, to hear with the ear and
to feel without touching objects, as we do
in dreams, are facts which afford direct
proof that the percipient principle is indie
pendent of the organs of sense and lead
to the inference that the material organi-
zation of the brain, by which the impress
sions of external objects are originally
!
from the power that receives and retains
these impressions; otherwise it would be
impossible to account for the activity of
the perceptive power during the time when
the brain ceases to hold any direct com
munication with the material world. Lord
Brougham cites tho inconceivable rapid
! ty of the minds operations as proof of
its independence of matter and capacity
] I'D, Al - 4 "a
multitude of facts chiefly connected with
the phenomena of dreams says that "noth-
ing can be conceived better calculated
than these facts to demonstrate the ex-
IRENE agility of the mental powers, their
total diversity from any material sub
stance or action. Nothing better adapted
to satisfy us that the nature Of the mind
is consistent with its existence apart from
the body"
There is no denial by the advocates of
the latter view that dreams can ordinar-
| ly be accounted for on the hypothesis gen
orally accepted by medical men. Impaired
digestion, feverish condition of the body,
intense nervous strain, and other physic-
al causes, it is admitted, may be reasona-
bly, adduced to explain the phenomena
But there are well authenticated cases of
dreams of a character so remarkable as to
render the theory of physical causes Who'll
| ly inapplicable to them. They seem to
demonstrate the power of the soul, during
sleep, to evolve clear ideas and new de-
velopments of thought which are not the
result of automatic or unconscious reflex
action.
! Coleridge tells us that "Kubla Khan"
was composed entirely while he slept, 1.-THE
images rising up before him as things with
parallel production of the corresponding
expressions, without any sensation or con
seriousness of effort. " For man of his pc
culiar temperament that does not seem so
strange an experience but that the famous
mathematician and philosopher, Condor
Get, saw in his dreams the final stage of
difficult calculation which had puzzled
him during the day is a most extraordina-
ry fact and one that is scarcely to be ex-
planned by reference to any abnormal
bodily conditions. But if we admit the
soundness of Colquhouns doctrine, we
shall have An adequate means of explana-
lion. He maintained that dreaming is
che exercise of an original spiritual ener-
gy; that it is an effort of the soul to man
ifest itself free from material trammels:
that all sleep is accompanied with dream
ing, and that, in the case of the soundest
sleep, dreams are not remem bered because
the soul has not notified the sensorirTn of