THE NATURE AND ORIGIN OF DREAMS.* Mos' people still speak
about dreams as the whole world two hundred years ago used to speak about comets or witches, or about a hare running across one's road early in the morning. There lurks in almost everybody's breast a certain vague and undefined idea, or rather notion, that dreams are something supernatural, that they neither constitute a " function " of the body nor of the mind or soul, and that they are be- yond explanation, as well as above the control of human beings. The Germans express the futility of reasoning or arguing about dreams in the significant phrase " Tritume sind Schaume," which of course merely means that dreams are mere bubbles, hardly worth thinking or speaking of ; whereas another popular explanation, " Trduine kommen aus dem Magen," still more contemptuously throws the whole theory about dreams over- board, and explains them as the effect of bad digestion or of an overloaded stomach. Of course everybody knows Queen Mab, with her wonderful fairy chariot, and how she manages to produce dreams, but unfortunately nobody has yet succeeded—though it has been several times tried—in accomplishing Queen Mab's clever tricks ; and we are still compelled to consider dreams as mysteri- ous metaphysical enigmas, which we cannot produce at our will,
• The Nature and Origin of Dreams. fly L. Striimpell, Protezeor in Leipzig. (Veit and Co.) London: Triibner. 1874.
nor keep " fixirt" when they have been produced without our active co-operation.
The principal difficulty in examining the nature of dreams lies in the circumstance that the dreamer is unable to control the state of his mind while dreaming, or to make any observations during that time, while no one else is able easily to ascertain whether a sleeping person is dreaming at a certain moment. So mysterious is the nature of dreams, that we cannot even account for the wonderful fact that very often a prisoner who has been sentenced to suffer the extreme penalty of the law passes his last night on earth in a perfectly calm and dreamless state, while the happiest man may be haunted during his sleep by the most terrible visions and dreams. These facts prove at least in a negative form that the actual circumstances in which a man lives do not necessarily influence his dreams. Where, then, can be found the origin of dreams, and what is their nature ? Professor Striimpell tries to answer these questions in the following manner. He examines, first, the disputed theory whether we always dream when asleep, and arrives at the conclu- sion that the soul does not dream in every sleep, though there may be reasons for assuming that this is mostly the case. But it does not follow that the soul, though not dreaming in every sleep, has therefore lost its entire activity, and consequently given up its very nature. Most of our dreams are forgotten before we awake, and of a great many we merely preserve a dim or confused recollection.
Professor Striimpell then asks the following question, "Do we think in our dreams ?" and his answer is, "No, never ;" no chain of logical " atoms " can be linked together while we dream, no conclusion can be drawn while the soul is in that state of unconsciousness, no argument can be "followed up," and nothing new can be discovered ; we are only able, he says, to repeat in our dreams all the arguments which have led us while awake to a certain conclusion, and we may even sometimes imagine, while meditating over the dream of last night, that we really came to a certain conclusion, but a closer investigation will, he thinks, show that we merely went over a field which had been worked by us while awake, and that the conclusion consisted only in a recollection of a previous action of our soul. But these so-called recollections are sometimes very unlike ordinary recollections. Mr. Maury relates the following in his book, Le Sommeil et les Reyes :—A Mr. F— passed his childhood in Montbrison, and at that time sometimes visited the environs of that town. Twenty years afterwards he makes up his mind to visit again his native place. The night before his departure he sees in a dream an entirely unknown town, and there meets a gentleman, whom he did not know at all, but with whom he entered into conversation, and who told him his name. Several days after his dream Mr. F— arrives at a place, which he at once recognises as the town which he had seen in his dream, and he meets there a gentleman, whom he also immediately recognises as the gentleman who had addressed him in his dream, with the slight difference only that the gentleman looked rather older in propria persona than in the dream. A conversation with the man proves the complete truth of the dream, and it appears that the gentleman was a friend of the deceased father of Mr. F--, who in his childhood had visited this place with his father, and at that time bad seen the gentleman. But for his dream, Mr. F— would not have recognised the town nor the gentleman ; be bad not even the slightest recollection of the fact that he had ever been there. We do not see how that dream can in any way be explained as a recollection. Professor Striimpell compares the talking of a dreaming person with the prattling of little children, who very often, when alone in a room, repeat their entire vocabulary, or utter words the meaning of which they certainly cannot understand, but which they have heard from grown persons ; in both cases, according to Professor Striimpell, the words are not the expression of a thought, but only the natural tendency of human beings to speak, which distinguishes them from all other beings. A prattling child is dreaming while awake, and when addressed by somebody will at once-stop the dream-conversation with its doll, and properly answer again, according to its faculties of mind and childish understanding. The conversation with the doll is like the dreamy talk, and not seldom we ask and receive answers in our dreams which are almost as impossible as the reply of the doll to the question of the prattling baby. A great many dreams owe their origin to very simple actions of the body ; almost every- body has dreamed that he suddenly fell down from a high steeple or from a mountain ; these dreams are caused by the expansion of the muscles of the knee, which a great many persons are in the habit of contracting when settling themselves in bed for the night, and which expand again after we have fallen asleep. Sometimes
an arm, gliding down the side of the body, or one foot falling down from the other, will also produce the sensation of falling into an abyss, while an unevenness in the bed-sheets may make us imagine that we roll down a precipice.
Why we forget dreams so quickly, is another question pro- pounded by Professor Striimpell, for which he gives several reasons. First, the different " elements " of a dream do not always possess sufficient cohesive power to form a complete picture or idea ; further, there is very often a complete want of connection between the dream and the usual forms of our daily life and thoughts ; then the flitting visions of our dreams easily disappear before the returning power of observation, just as darkness vanishes before the light of the coming day; and finally, a great many people don't pay any attention to their dreams. Professor Strumpell treats all the questions he discusses in an exhaustive manner, but as we cannot follow him into all his metaphysical speculations, —with which we are by no means disposed always to agree,— we merely recommend his book to students who desire to become somewhat better acquainted with the interesting question about " the nature and origin of dreams."
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