The Montgomery advertiser., 1901-12-08
' < 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 {
 lRY Andrew James Millerl

(By Andrew James Miller)
 Scientifically speaking, dreams are im- pressions received from the mind through the disturbed condition of the nerves of sensation. They are really an internal medium, by which the mind enjoys its capacity, as if the external were in con- nection with the world. Yet, in spite of all the deep researches and investiga- tions of science, the phenomena of dreams have eluded any near approach to their actual origin. Science can't give the true cause of a mystery, which will arise out of .passiveness and suddenly pass into a vigor of dramatic invention, to which the waking mind is unequal.
 In another sense, dreams are the recess of the minds activity, when the monarch, reason" IS asleep. By their waywardness and unlicensed disporting. they show themselves to be the wild and unguided children in fancy's maze run mad" Shakespeare, the greatest poetical philosopher of all the ages, calls them "the children of an idle brain, begot of nothing but vain phantasy, which is as thin of substance as the air, and more inconsistent than the wind" More ire quently do they represent the abuses of diet and the disorders of the stomach, which leads Churchill to say:
 Like the dreams
 Children of night of indigestion bred.'
 
 | made a careful and scientific study of the subject, thus weightiy describes the phenomena: Dreams are nothing more than the common vibrations of terrestrial media, acting upon corporal vibra- | torium." Stripped of this apparent | scientific nebulosity, he means that they l are superinduced from without like the | firing of gun. ringing of bells. currents | of cold air. etc. Professor James Scully | in the Fortnightly Review also declares l that "the dream Is the weakened activi- 1 ty of a mature mind,' as distinct from | the Authorizations of a diseased mind. In old times, presentiments in dreams | were very noteworthy. if one could only | be assured that they were not manufac- tured after the event. Arlott. the mother of William. the Conquerer dreamt that l she grew so stout as to occupy all Nor mandy and England, which her son, in l a military sense actually accomplished. | The daughter of the tyrant, Polycrates, | dreamed that she saw him lifted in the air, where Jupiter washed him and Apollo anointed him. This came to pass | for we are told he was hanged upon a | gibbet, where his body was washed by l the rain and the fat of it melted by the l sum-"
 People are always ready to believe statements about dreams and other like | phenomena, which, were they offered to them, sitting in a jury box, would be unhesitatingly rejected. Byron. who was a sweet, but cratic dreamer. thought that dreams had breath and inspiration: They do divide our being; they become | A portion of ourselves, as of our time, And look like heralds of eternity" | But Cato tells us Regard not dreams. since they are but the images of our hopes and fears Coleridge dreamt a lovely bit of musical verse; but then his unfortunate habit of taking opium, like | Poe. made him dreamer by day, as we'll as night. The experience of the man, who, upon regretting that he had dreamt some exquisite lines and forgotten them, is here appropriate. as he learned from his wife that the lines were nonsense.