The Press., 1897-05-06
DREAM MYSTERIES.
MAY BE sHADoWY MEMORIES OF PRE-
 vouS EXISTENCE.

Little satisfaction Found In the Many
 Explanations Given For the Formation of
 the Phantasmagoria Which Come to Us
 as We Sleep.
 In a thoughtful. we'll written article on . .Dreams and Their Mysteries, in The North American Review, Elizabeth Bisland reminds us that we are so fa- miliar with the phenomena of sleep that the strangest dreams come as no surprise She says. truly:
 "Prove that you have the hypnotic power to make a man feel pain or pleas ure without material cause; that you can force him to believe himself sol- dier, say, or a woman, or that he IS three feet high, or two persons at once. and he will gape upon this occult mas tery with awe and wild surprise-he who every 24 hours of his life, with no more magic potion than healthy fatigue, with no greater wonder working weapon than pillow, may create for himself phantasmical delusions beside which all mesmeric suggestions are but the flat test of dull commonplace.
 Because people arc afraid of being thought superstitious with regard to dreams there has been an unscientific avoidance of the whole topic, which is no less superstitious and puerile. the consequence of which foolish revulsion | has been that one of tho most curious | functions of the brain is still ill perlod of universal investigation-leftu unex- amined and unexplained. Some dab | bling there has been ill tie matter, but | so far no tenable explanation has been offered of those strange illusions of s!eep with which all mankind is tamil- | jar. The results up to this time of this dabbling are for the most part of little more value than the contents of the greasy, we'll thumbed dreambooks tl:at | formed tho only and dearly beloved li brary of eighteenth century milkmaids and apprentices. The greater portion of | such labor as has been bestowed on the subject has been mainly directed toward efforts to prove the extreme rapidity with which the dream passes through the mind, and that it is some trivial outward cause at the moment of rous- | ing from slImber, such as a noise, a l Ii; Int or the like, which wakes the brain to this miraculous celerity of inn | aginative creation.
 The RonGFGl occur only at the instant of the awaken ing shows how little real attention has been bestowed upon the matter, since l the most Casual observation of ''the dog that hunts in dreams would show that he may be chasing the wild deer and | following the roe i'll the gray kingdom of seeming without breaking his slum- bers. He will start and twltch and give tongue after the phantom quarry he dreams himself pursuing. But given the truth of any one of these assertions, still the heart of the mystery has not yet been plucked out, since it is not ex- plained why noise or d gleam of light such as the senses are quite familiar with in waking consciousn ness-should at the moment of rousing cause the brain to create with inconceivable ra- pidity a series of phantasmagoria i'll order to explain to itself the familiar phenomena of light or sound.
 It is broadly asserted by many that the memory retains each and every ex- perience which life has presented for it's contemplation, but this is hardly true It makes to certain extent a choice and chooses oftentimes with apparent caprice. To demonstrate the truth of this, let one endeavor to recall the first impression retained by his childish mind, and it usually proves to be some thing extremely trivial
 A lady, interrogated as to this, de- clared her first clear memory was a sense of the comfort to her tired little 2-year body of the clean linen sheets of the bed at the end of the most perilous .f startling incidents her memory had pre- served nothing. Again this capricious faculty will seize on some few high lights in vivid picture and reject all the unimportant details. As 8 rule. however, it is the profound stirrings o1 the emotions which wake the memory to activity. A woman never forgets hel first lover. A man to the end of his life can recall lis first triumph.
 Miss Bis aud believes that we inherit many Of tlte men ories that come to us, waking as we'll as sleeping. Every one has felt mauy times in his life a sense of familiar ity with incidents that have had no place in his own experience and has found it impossible to offer any ex. planation for the feeling Coming sud denly around turn of 8 hill upon g fair and unknown landscape, his heart may bound with keen sense of recog nition of its unfamiliar outlines. In the midst of a tingling sense of emotion g sensation of the whole incident being 8 mere dull repetition will rob it of its joy or pain. A sentence begun by 8 friend is recognized as trite and old be- fore it is half done, though it refers tC | matters new to the hearer A sound a perfume, sensation, will awaken feel ings having no connection with the oc casion.
 In sleep the brain is peculiarly active in certain directions, not being distracted by the multitude of impressions con- stantly COL veyed to it by the live senses, and experiments with hypnotic sleeperf prove that some of its functions become in sleep abuormally acute and vigorous. Why not the function of memory? The possessions which during the waking hours wero useless, aud therefore re- jected by tue will, surge up again, vivid and potent and troop before the percep. tion unsummoned, mo1ley and fantastic, serving no purpose more apparent tbaI do the idle, disconnected recollections of one's waking moments of dreaminess, and yet it may nap, withal, that the tireless brain, forever turning over and over its heirloorns ill the night, is seek. ing here au insplration or there 8 mem. ory to be used ill that fierce and complex struggle called life.-New York Com. merciaI Advertiser
 Auntie's Practical Arithmetic. |, If was only the other night in tht