Part 21
Nightingales’ notes (as Bechstein has beautifully recorded them) seem to me like the Mexican language, and to express variety of sentiments of adoration and love. The parrot, magpie, jackdaw, jay, starling, and bullfinch, are prattlers; and the exquisite little canary, the pupil of my friend, Mrs. H——, the pet, indeed, not only of its mistress, but of statesmen and learned physiologists, warbled its words in purest melody. From Sir William Temple we learn the faculty of the wonderful parrot of Prince Maurice, of Nassau, at the Hague, that responsed almost _rationally_ to promiscuous questions. Granting, then, this faculty of memory, it is clear the bird may _dream_, and I may add one other quotation from the “Domestic Habits of Birds,” in proof of this.
“We have, however, heard some of these night-songs which were manifestly uttered while the bird was asleep, in the same way as we sometimes talk during sleep—a circumstance remarked by Dryden, who says,
“‘The little birds in dreams their songs repeat.’
“We have even observed this in a wild bird. On the night of the 6th April, 1811, about ten o’clock, a dunncock (_accentor modularis_) was heard in a garden to go through its usual song more than a dozen times very faintly, but distinctly enough for the species to be recognised.” The night was cold and frosty, but might it not be that the little musician was dreaming of summer and sunshine? Aristotle, indeed, proposes the question whether animals hatched from eggs ever dream. Marcgrave, in reply, expressly says, that his “parrot, Laura, often rose in the night, and prattled while half asleep.”
Among quadrupeds, it is probable that those which, by their half-reasoning instinct, approach nearest to the power of comparison, and those which, in contrast to the _callous-hoofed_, possess an acuteness of feeling, and therefore the nearest approximate intelligence, are the most prone to dream.
Although we know nothing of the dreams of that very learned dog, which Leibnitz assures us he saw, and which uttered an _articulate_ language, and often enjoyed a chat with his master; yet, of the _slumbering visions_ of the canines I have many illustrations. _Vic_, a fat terrier, was a somniloquist. She would bark, and _laugh_, and run round the room, or _against tables_; the surest proof of somnambulism. Indeed dogs are celebrated by many poets for their dreaming propensities. Ennius writes—
“Et canis in somnis leporis vestigia latrat.”
And Lucretius has left us a very comprehensive poetical account of the dreams of brutes.
Even Chaucer refers to these dreams; and in the Hall of Branksome,
“The stag-hound, weary with the chace, Urged in dreams the forest race.”
It is probable that the dreams of brutes are very _short_.
From simple, unassociated memory, too, springs the dream of the _infant_; pure and innocent as the thought of a cherub. For delight is the common feeling of a dreaming child; and when its lips are touched in sleep, the memory of its mother’s bosom will excite its lips and tongue to the congenial action of suction, though a fright of the previous day will change its slumbers into moments of terror, and it will murmur and cry in its dream.
I believe it is Sir H. Wotton who lays much stress on the adoption of _plans of education_ for a child, grounded on the discovery of its secret thoughts during its simple somniloquent dream.
CAST. It is wonderful how vividly are revived in our dream those scenes of our early life, which our waking efforts could not recollect.
This did not escape Chaucer, as I remember in Dryden’s version of a fable:
“Sometimes forgotten things, long cast behind, Rush forward in the brain, and come to mind. The nurse’s legends are for truths receiv’d, And the man dreams but what the boy believ’d. Sometimes we but rehearse a former play, The night restores our actions done by day.”
EV. Yet do not associate this brilliancy of infantine reminiscence with _vigour_ of the thought. The brain in children is, as it were, like wax, _easily impressible_. And remember, the _ideas_ of children are more resembling the _imperfect_ associations of our dreams; the tutorage of our advancing mind fills it with more serious and rational images characterized by judgment.
The first impressions of childhood are bright as fancy; so that we think in waking more of things present. But, in dreams of things long agone there is, in fact, no complete oblivion, in a healthy mind, for any one of our infantile impressions _may_ chance to be brought to us in our dream.
But if impression be intense, it may assimilate that of childhood, and become as permanent. My friend, Dr. Uwins, told me of a patient who, in a joke, once amused himself by throwing stones at the gibbeted pirates on the bank of the Thames. An epileptic tendency succeeded; and ever after this, his dreams were of gibbets and chains, and to that degree, that his judgment and philosophy were powerless in controlling his fears.
And in the book of the Prussian, Greding, we read of J. C. V., a youth, who, in his eighth year, had been attacked by a dog. His future, and, indeed, nightly dreams, were of this creature, and these so intense, as to reduce his health to a very low degree.
Now it is easy to believe the period of slumber so limited, that the subject of reflection shall not have disappeared, that the thought had scarcely time to cool:
“Lateat scintillula forsan.”
Thus Moses Mendelssohn had all the sounds, heard during the day, reverberating in his slumbering mind.
Or we may suppose, that the idea last imprinted on the mind, or by which it had been exclusively occupied, and the thoughts which are so much modified by our temperament, study, and contemplation, would be the _first to influence as the mind awakened_, ere the image of fresh objects had been again perceived.
Sir Walter, in his diary, thus writes: “When I had in former times to fill up a passage in a poem, it was always when I first opened my eyes that the desired ideas thronged upon me. I am in the habit of relying upon it, and saying to myself when I am at a loss, ‘Never mind, we shall have it all at seven o’clock to-morrow morning.’”
Warton, the professor of poetry at Oxford, after partaking of a Sunday dinner with a friend, repaired to his service at his Church. On his way, he was powerfully saluted with a cry of “Live mackarel.” He slumbered in his pulpit during the singing of the psalm, and, on the organ ceasing, he arose, half awake, and instead of his solemn prayer, cried with a loud voice, “All alive, all alive oh!”
I remember the storytellers in the coffee-houses at Aleppo, as if aware of this _last impression_, used to run out when they perceived they had _excited a deep interest_.
IDA. It is curious to hear, even by your own quotations, Evelyn, that poets have so revelled in the luxury of dreams, from Homer to Pope, chiefly employing them, however, as the _materiel_ of their poesy. Have they condescended to glance at their causes?
EV. Lucretius, Claudian, George Stepney, Dryden, and a few others. _Apropos_ as to causes.
In the “Anatomy of Melancholy” we have the following quaint summary: “As Tully notes, for the most part our speeches in the daytime cause our phantasy to work upon the like in our sleep, so do men dream on such subjects they thought on last:
“‘Somnia quæ mentes ludunt volitantibus umbris, Nec delubra deûm nec ab æthere numina mittunt, Sed sibi quisque facit,’” &c.
For that cause, when Ptolemy, king of Egypt, had posed the seventy interpreters in order, and asked the nineteenth man what would make one sleep quietly in the night, he told him “the best way was to have divine and celestial meditations, and to use honest actions in the daytime.” Lod. Vives wonders how schoolmen could sleep quietly and were not terrified in the night, they had such monstrous questions and thought of such terrible matters all day long. They had need amongst the rest to sacrifice to god Morpheus, whom Philostratus paints in a white and black coat, with a horn, and ivory box full of dreams of the same colours, to signify good and bad.
_Cast._ These are the manufacture, I presume, of two of those sons of sleep, born to him by a beautiful but erring grace, “Phantasus,” or Fancy, and “Phobetor,” or Terror. With the relations and illustrations of these good and bad dreams, the pages of both fiction and authentic history abound: another poetical batch of causes, Ida. Lucia exclaims:
“Sweet are the slumbers of the virtuous man, Oh Marcia! I have seen thy godlike father— A kind refreshing sleep is fallen upon him. I saw him stretch’d at ease, his fancy lost In pleasing dreams. As I drew near his couch, He smil’d, and cried: ‘Cæsar, thou cans’t not hurt me.’”
Another poet writes thus:
“But most we mark the wonders of her reign, When sleep has lock’d the senses in her chain: When sober judgment has his throne resign’d, She smiles away the chaos of the mind; And, as warm fancy’s bright elysium glows, From her each image springs, each colour flows. She is the sacred guest, th’ immortal friend; Oft seen o’er sleeping innocence to bend, In that dead hour of night, to silence giv’n, Whispering seraphic visions of her heav’n.”
Then Richmond exclaims: “My heart is very jocund in the remembrance of so fair a dream.” While the coward conscience of Richard thus speaks:
“By the apostle Paul, shadows to-night Have struck more terror to the soul of Richard, Than could the substance of ten thousand soldiers.”
Aufidius thus recounts his slumbering memory of the prowess of Coriolanus:
“This happy Roman, this proud Marcius, haunts me. Each troubled night, when slaves and captives sleep, Forgetful of their chains, I in my dreams Anew am vanquish’d; and beneath his sword With horror sinking, feel a tenfold death— The death of honour.”
And yet another:
“Tho’ thy slumber may be deep, Yet thy spirit shall not sleep. There are shades that will not vanish; There are thoughts thou canst not banish.”
And, lastly, Crabbe, in his “World of Dreams:”
“That female fiend, why is she there? Alas! I know her. Oh, begone! Why is that tainted bosom bare? Why fixed on me that eye of stone? Why have they left us thus alone? I saw the deed——”
ASTR. You will drown us in a flood of Helicon, fair lady, if you thus dole out the thoughts of these maudlin poets. The records of national and domestic history, the dreams of the conqueror of thousands, and of the midnight assassin, are replete with incidents, if we will search for them, more impressive, ay, and more romantic, than all this rhyming; and from the legends of history alone I could select a legion of dreaming mysteries, which would dissolve all these fine-spun theories of Evelyn, regarding the _essence_, as he terms it, of the dream. He must adopt a clearer course, in showing us his _causes_, than by harping on this favourite theme of _memory_; and we must listen through another moonlight, ere we be made wiser, by the unfolding of this grand secret of visions.
INFLUENCE OF DARK BLOOD IN THE BRAIN.
“I talk of dreams, Which are the children of an idle brain.” ROMEO AND JULIET.
EV. That I may explain to you the _predisposition_ of a dream,—in other words, the state of _broken slumber_,—it is essential that I recur to the physiology of the brain; and I must humble our pride, by combining some of the debasing conditions of our nature, as influential on the divine mind, through the medium of its _chambers of marrow_; for to the intimate condition and function of the brain and its nerves, and its _contained blood_, we must chiefly look for elucidation of the _physical causes_ of a dream.
Yet I may even grant you, for an argument, Astrophel, the flight of an immortal spirit, and all the amiable vagaries of Sir Thomas Brown; reserving to myself to prove at what moment we become conscious of this flight.
In natural actions, there are ever _three requisites_, like the points of a syllogism:
1. A susceptibility of influence; 2. The influence itself; 3. The effect of this influence:
And these I call the _predisposing_, the _exciting_, and the _proximate_ causes.
1. The brain is brought to this susceptibility by excited temperament, study, intense and undivided thought; in short, by _any_ intense impression.
2. The influence or excitement is applied; congestion of blood producing impression on extremities, or origin of a nerve, at the period of departing or returning consciousness. At these periods, the blood changes, and I believe, _as it changes_, the phenomena of mind, as in the waking state, obey these changes:—rational and light dreams being the effect of circulation of _scarlet_ blood; dull and reasonless visions and “night-mare,” that of crimson, or _black_ blood.
3. The effect of this influence is recurrence of idea, _memory_,—more or less erroneously associated, as the blood approximates to the black or scarlet state, or as the brain itself is constituted.
Now it is essential to the perfect function of the brain, not only that it shall have a due supply of blood, but that this blood shall be of that quality we term _oxygenated_. If there be a simple _deficiency_ of this scarlet blood, a state of sound undisturbed sleep will ensue (slightly analogous to the condition of _syncope_, or fainting). This may be the consequence of any _indirect_ impression, or the natural indication of that _direct_ debility, which we witness in early infancy, and in the “second childishness and mere oblivion” of old age. But this deficiency of arterial blood may be depending on a more positive cause, _venous congestion_, impeding its flow; for in sleep, the breathing being slower, the blood becomes essentially darker. Even arterial blood itself will become to a certain degree _carbonized_, by _lentor_, or stagnation. Venous congestion and diminution of arterial circulation are not incompatible; indeed, Dr. Abercrombie reasons very ably on their relative nature, implying the necessity of some _remora_ of venous circulation to supply that want or vacuum which the brain would otherwise experience from the deficiency of the current in the arterial system. Thus will the languid arterial circulation of the brain, which causes sleep in the first instance, produce, secondarily, that congestion of blood in the veins and sinuses, which shall reduce it to disturbed slumber, and excite the dream. May we not account, on this principle, for the difficulty which many persons experience in falling into a _second_ slumber, when they have been disturbed in the _first_?
IDA. Combe, I believe, observed, through a hole in a fractured skull, that the brain was elevated during an apparent dream.
EV. This is a matter of frequent observation with us. There was, in 1821, at Montpelier, a woman who had lost part of the skull, and the brain and its membranes lay bare. When she was in deep sleep, the brain lay in the skull almost _motionless_; when she was dreaming, it became elevated; and when her dreams (proved by her relating them when awake) were on vivid or animating subjects, but especially when she was awake, the brain was _protruded through the cranial aperture_.
Blumenbach states that he, himself, witnessed in one person a sinking of the brain, whenever he was asleep, and a swelling with blood when he awoke. David Hartley, therefore, may be half right and half wrong when he imputes dreams to an impediment to the flow of blood, a collapse of the _ventricles_, and a diminished quantity of their contained _serum_.
We thus have not only a deficiency of _proper_ stimulus, but a _deleterious_ condition of the blood, which acts as a poison to the brain. In fatal cases of coma and delirium, we observe deep red points, chiefly in the _cineritious_ part of the brain, from this congestion of its vessels. Sound sleep is thus prevented, but the congestion of carbonized blood acting as a sort of narcotic, depresses the energy of the brain so far as to prevent waking, inducing that middle state, drowsiness or slumber; so that sleep may thus depend on congestion _from exhaustion_; and “spectral illusion” from congestion in that state _short of slumber_; and insanity itself from congestion _still more copious and permanent_.
From this results a disturbed condition of the brain; it is _irritated_, not excited, by its healthy or proper stimulus; and it follows that such derangement of the manifestations of mind ensues as we term a dream. Waking, however, soon takes place, and the blood is more scarlet, and the faculties themselves gradually awake. As this is more perfect, we remember the dream, and are enabled to explain it, and know _that it was a dream_. The mind is now _restored_, so that scarlet blood indicates _healthy thought_, and black blood its _reverse_. Your pardon for this prolixity and dulness. The healthy or unhealthy crisis of the blood is a most important subject in our argument, and too constantly slighted in the question of illusion.
Monsieur Denis records the story of a young man of Paris, in the 17th century, who was cured of a stubborn and protracted lethargy, by the transfusion of the _arterial blood of a lamb_; and another of a recovery from madness, by that of the arterial blood of a calf, and these in presence of men both of _science_ and _high quality_.
I do not affirm my implicit faith in this statement, of the effect of _gentle_ blood, but I am certain of the poisonous influence of that of _another quality_; and I will cite a passage from Hoffman, the German poet, whom Monsieur Poupon, in his “Illustrations of Phrenology,” adduces as a specimen of marvellousness, ere I offer my cases.
“Why do my thoughts, whether I am awake or asleep, always tend, in spite of all my efforts, to the gloomy subject of insanity? It seems to me as if I felt my disordered ideas escaping from my mind, like _hot blood from a wounded vein_.”
This was figurative, but it was true; for of itself this black blood may be suddenly the cause of furious and fatal mania. When Dionis, in his “Cours d’Opérations de Chirurgie,” is referring to that operation that has lately, by its revival, occupied so much of the attention of the medical world (the process of _transfusion_) he says: “La fin funeste de ces malheureuses victimes de la nouveauté, detruisit, en un jour, les hautes idées qu’ils avoient conçues; ils devinrent foux, _furieux, et moururent ensuite_.”
The relief of the brain, by the escape of this blood, is of deeper interest to science than the mere romancer may imagine.
Sir Samuel Romilly was for a moment, I believe, in a state of sanity, when blood had flowed from the divided vessels of his throat; for he attempted, it appeared, to stop its flow by thrusting the towel with some force into the wound.
So diseases of the heart, by keeping the black blood in the brain, predispose to dreaming. During the age of terror in France, organic diseases of the heart and _cases of mania_ were most prevalent.
I may for a moment indulge in analogies regarding this arrest of the blood. Cases of inflammation of the ear are often seen in confirmed maniacs (the _helix_ being usually the part most inflamed), and _black_ blood often oozes from the part.
M. Calmeil considers _chronic phlegmasia_ of the brain as the cause of insanity, the derangement itself being, as it were, _the moral result_ or disease, and the organic changes or proximate cause the _physical_ disease; both being but the _sequelæ_, or consequence of inflammation.
A boy, the servant of a medical friend (Mr. A——), was, some years ago, placed under my care for fever, with delirium. About the acme of his disorder the impetuosity of the blood in the vessels of the head was such as to project his ears prominently forwards, like those of a satyr, or, as the gossips thought, rather of a demon. Yet all this subsided _as the fever waned_.
Yet, believe me, I draw a decided distinction between mania and dreaming; though the phenomena may sometimes bear resemblance. In one essential point they differ; that the _transient_ illusion is not manifested, except _during slumber_, or a state closely analogous to it, when the senses are languid, or asleep. It is true, however, the maniac will, on his recovery, often _dream of the subject of his insanity_, yet insanity is more exemplified by _action_, the dream being usually _passive_.
The predisposition to insanity is often, too, _hereditary_, so that the slightest moral influence, imperceptible perhaps to the physician, may incite such a mind to madness; for where there is _no_ predisposition, that is, a perfect integrity of brain, a right judgment is evinced even under the potent influence of the passions.
As the condition of insanity, so the illusive vision, does not always primarily depend on _medullary_ disease; there are primary moral as well as physical causes. But even the exertion of thought, which the ultra spiritualist may term an immaterial faculty, is attended by increased action on the matter of the brain. The organ of mind will, if diseased, (though not always,) produce deranged actions. Yet it is equally true, if even a sound brain be _badly instructed_, and its passion uncontrolled, insanity may ensue; not however without quickly, I believe _immediately_, inducing structural change.
On one point, the dream and insanity are often _alike_; they are _mental fulfilments of a wish_: and the dreamer, during his slumber, and the madman throughout his derangement, are presented with the spectra of their desires, and their hopes and fears become, _for these periods, reality_.
It was with a reference to the wanderings of the understanding in dreams, that Sir James Mackintosh thus writes in a letter to Robert Hall:
“These will familiarise your mind to consider its other aberrations as only more rare than sleep and dreams, and, in process of time, they will cease to appear to you much more horrible.”
ASTR. And pray, Evelyn, how doth all this profound prosing affect the subject of dreams?
EV. By similitude. I may even remind you with devout veneration, of the dreams of a prophet, to prove the brain highly sensitive when these visions are before it. Listen to the words of Daniel, to whom “God gave knowledge and skill in all learning and wisdom.”
“I, Daniel, was grieved in my spirit, in the midst of my body, and the visions of my head troubled me.”
“And I, Daniel, fainted and was sick certain days.”
Even here, may we not believe, that the Creator did not alter his law?
It was Dr. Cullen who first drew a parallel between insanity and dreams. As some proof of his insight, we read in Lode of a man who never dreamed until he fell into a fever in the twenty-fifth year;—in Beattie, of a young friend who never dreamt unless his health was deranged.
And Mr. Locke thus writes: “I once knew a man who was bred a scholar, and had no bad memory, who told me that he had never dreamed in his life until he had fever.”
This immunity from dreams is also most marked in savages, unless during disorder or at the dying moment. Ulloa, Humboldt, and La Condamine, all agree as to the character of indolence and absence of thought and fancy in the native Americans, and it is as sure that they seldom dream.