DREAMS.

"To sleep--perchance to dream."

--HAMLET.

Of the two parts of our being, one, spiritual and heaven-born, is always
active, the other, the bodily, earth-born part, requires frequent and
regular rest in sleep. During this time of repose, however, the mind
also ceases apparently its operations, merely, however, because it has
no longer servants at its command, who are willing and able to give
expression to its activity. When the senses are asleep the mind is
deprived of the usual means of communication with the outer world; but
this does not necessarily condemn it to inaction. On the contrary, it
has often been maintained that the mind is most active and capable of
the highest achievements when released from its usual bondage to the
senses. Already AEschylus in his "Eumenides" says:

The mind of sleepers acts more cunningly;
The glare of day conceals the fate of men.

It seems, however, as if the intermediate state between the full
activity of wakeful life and the complete repose of the senses in sound
sleep, is most favorable to the development of such magic phenomena as
occur in dreams. The fact that the susceptibility of the mind is at
that time peculiarly great is intimately connected with the statement
recorded in Holy Writ, that God frequently revealed His will to men in
dreams. If we admit the antiquity of the book of Job, we see there the
earliest known announcement of this connection. "In a dream, in a vision
of the night, when deep sleep falleth upon men, in slumberings upon the
bed; then He openeth the ears of men and sealeth their instruction"
(xxxiii. 15). Next we are told that "God came to Abimelech in a dream by
night" (Gen. xx. 3), and from that time we hear of similar revelations
made by night in dreams throughout the whole history of the chosen
people. Frequently, however, the dreams are called visions. Thus Balaam
prophesied: "He hath said, which heard the words of God and knew the
knowledge of the Most High, which saw the vision of the Almighty,
falling into a trance, but having his eyes open." Daniel had his secret
"revealed in a night vision," but such favor was denied to Saul, for
"the Lord answered him not, neither by dream nor by Urim, nor by
prophets." To Solomon, on the contrary, "the Lord appeared in a dream by
night" many times; Joel was promised that "old men should dream dreams
and young men shall see visions," a pledge quoted by St. Peter as having
been amply fulfilled in his day (Acts ii. 17). For dreams did not lose
their importance at the coming of Christ. To his reputed father "the
Angel of the Lord appeared in a dream," bidding him to take Mary to his
wife; again he was warned in a dream "not to return to Herod," and the
Lord spake "to Paul in the night by a vision" more than once, as he was
by a dream also sent to Macedonia.

What in these and similar cases is accepted as divine inspiration, is in
secular history generally looked upon as mysterious, magic revelation;
but the phenomena remain the same in all instances, and those appearing
in dreams are identical with the symptoms exhibited in revelations
occurring during the day, when the favored recipient is wide awake.

Clairvoyance by night differs in no way from clairvoyance during the
day; a state of ecstasy, a trance, is necessary in either case. That
prophetic dreams generally remain unknown--outside of Holy Writ--must be
ascribed to the fact that they leave no recollection behind, unless they
are continued into a state of half-sleep, from which a sudden awakening
takes place; and soon then they are invariably clothed in some allegoric
form, and become liable to be erroneously or, at least, imperfectly
interpreted. Thus dreams, like trances, often prefigure death under the
form of a journey, and represent the dying man as an uprooted tree, a
withered flower, or a drowning swimmer. The early Christians, foreseeing
martyrdom, very frequently received in dreams an intimation of their
impending fate under such symbolic forms, and, what was quite peculiar
to their visions was that they often extended to the pagan jailors and
keepers, whose minds had been excited by witnessing the sufferings and
the constancy of their victims, and who, in many cases, became, in
consequence of these dreams, converts to the new faith. The facility,
however, with which such symbols can be misunderstood, has been as fatal
to dreams in the estimation of most men, as the inaccurate manner in
which the real revelation is often presented to the still half-sleeping
mind. Hence the popular belief that dreams "go by contraries," as vulgar
slang expresses it. This faith is based upon the well-established fact
that a genuine dream, in the act of impressing itself upon memory, often
suffers not only mutilation but actual reversion. Thus Rogers saw, in a
dream, Hikey, a small, weak man, murder a powerful giant, Caulfield--in
the actual encounter, which he had really foreseen, the latter killed
his puny antagonist. It is, therefore, as dangerous to "believe in
dreams," as to deny their value altogether and to ascribe all
realizations of dreams, with, Macnish, to mere accident. ("Sleep," p.

81.) Men of cool judgment and clear mind have at all times been found on
the side of believers, and even our great Franklin, with his eminently
practical mind and well-known aversion to every kind of superstition,
firmly trusted in views which he believed to have come to him in dreams.

Antiquity believed in dreams, not only as means by which the Gods
revealed their will, but as special favors accorded to fortunate men.

Thus we are told that once two men were traveling together from Arcadia
to Megara; when they reached the city, one of the two remained at an
inn, while the other went to stay with a a friend. Both, wearied by the
journey, retired to rest; but the traveler who was at a private house
dreamt in the night that his friend urged him to come to his assistance,
as the innkeeper was about to murder him. Terrified by the vivid dream,
he jumped up; but, upon reflection, he concluded that the whole was but
an idle fancy, and lay down again. Thereupon the dream was repeated; but
this time his friend added, that it was too late to come to his aid now,
as he had been murdered, and his body would in the morning be carried
out of the city, concealed under a load of manure. This second dream
made such an impression upon the Arcadian that he went at an early hour
to the city gate, and to his amazement soon saw a wagon loaded with
manure approaching the place where he stood. He stopped the driver and
asked him what he had hidden in his wagon? The man fled, trembling; the
body of the murdered friend was found, and the treacherous innkeeper
paid with his life for his crime. (Cicero, _De divin._)

One of the oldest of well-authenticated dreams in Christian times,
revealed to St. Basil the death of Julian the Apostate. It seemed to him
in his sleep that he saw the martyr Mercurius receive from God the order
to kill the tyrant, and after a short time return and say: "O Lord,
Julian is killed as Thou hast commanded!" The saint was so firmly
convinced of having received a direct revelation from heaven, that he
immediately made the news known to the people, and thus gained new honor
when the official information at last arrived. (_Vita S. Basil._, etc.,
p. 692.) Here, also, the deep-seated hatred of the Christian priest
against the Emperor, who dared to renew the worship of the ancient gods
of the Pagans, no doubt suggested the vivid dream, while, on the other
hand, the transmission of the actual revelation was so imperfect as to
change the real occurrence--Julian's death by a Persian lance--according
to the familiar way of thinking of St. Basil, into his execution at
divine command by a holy martyr. There is no lack of renowned men of all
ages who have had their remarkable dreams, and who have, fortunately for
future investigation, recorded them carefully. Thus Melanchthon tells us
that he was at a convent with a certain Dr. Jonas, when letters reached
him requesting him to convey to his friend the sad news of his
daughter's sudden death. The great reformer was at a loss how to
discharge the painful duty, and driven by an instinctive impulse, asked
Dr. Jonas whether he had ever had any remarkable dreams. The latter
replied that he had dreamt, during the preceding night, of his return
home, and of the joyful welcome he had met from all his family, except
his oldest daughter, who had not appeared. Thereupon Melanchthon told
him that his dream had been true, and that he would never see his
daughter again, as she had been summoned to her eternal home. Petrarch
had a dream which was evidently also the reflex of his thoughts in the
day-time, but accompanied by a direct revelation. He had been, for some
days, very anxious about the health of his patron, a Colonna, who was
Bishop of Lombez, and one night saw himself in a dream walking by his
friend's side, but unable to keep pace with him; the bishop walked
faster and faster, bidding him stay behind, and when the poet insisted
upon following him, he suddenly assumed a death-like appearance, and
said, "No, I will not have you go with me now!" During the same night in
which Petrarch had this dream in Parma, the bishop died at his palace in
Lombez. The well-known Thomas Wotton, also, dreamt a short time before
his death, while residing in Kent, that he saw five persons commit a
robbery at Oxford. On the following day he added a postscript to a
letter which he had written to his son Henry, then a student at that
university, in which he mentioned his dream, and asked if such a robbery
had really taken place. The letter reached the young man on the morning
after the crime had been committed, when town and university were alike
in a state of intense excitement. He made the letter immediately known
to the authorities, who found in the account of the dream so accurate a
description of the robbers, that they were enabled at once to ascertain
who were the guilty persons, and to have them arrested before they could
escape. (Beaumont, p. 223.) The great German poet Gustav Schwab received
the first intimation of the French Revolution in 1848 through a
remarkable dream which his daughter had in the night preceding the 24th
of February. She had been attacked by a malignant fever, and was very
restless and nervously excited; during that night she saw, in her
feverish dreams, the streets of Paris filled with excited crowds, and
was forced to witness the most fearful scenes. When her father came to
her bedside next morning, she gave him a minute description of the
building of barricades, the bloody encounters between the troops and the
citizens, and of a number of sad tragedies which she had seen enacted in
the narrow and dark streets of the great city. The father, though deeply
impressed by the vivid character of the dream, ascribed it to a
reminiscence of the scenes enacted during the Revolution of 1789, and
dismissed the subject, although his child insisted upon the thoroughly
modern character of the buildings, and the costumes and manners of all
she had seen. Great was, therefore, the amazement of the poet and of all
who had heard of the dream, when, several days afterwards, the first
news reached them of the expulsion of the Orleans family, and much
greater still when the papers brought, one by one, descriptions of the
scenes which the feverish dream had enabled the girl to see in minute
detail, and yet with unerring accuracy. It is true that the poet, in
whose biography the dream with all the attending circumstances is
mentioned at full length, had for years anticipated such a revolution,
and often, with a poet's graphic power, conjured up the scenes that
were likely to happen whenever the day of the tempest should arrive.

Thus his daughter's mind had, no doubt, long been filled with images of
this kind, and was in a state peculiarly susceptible for impressions
connected with the subject. There remains, however, the magic phenomenon
that she saw, not a poet's fiction, but actual occurrences with all
their details, and saw them in the very night during which they
happened. In the papers of Sir Robert Peel was found a note concerning
his journey from Antibes to Nice, in 1854. He was on board the steamer
Erculano, which, on the 25th of April, so violently collided with
another steamer, the Sicilia, that it sank immediately, and two-thirds
of the passengers perished. Among those who were rescued were the great
English statesman and the maid of two ladies, the wife and the daughter
of a counselor of a French court of justice at Dijon. The young girl had
had a presentiment of impending evil, but her wish to postpone the
journey had been overruled. The father, also, though knowing nothing of
the precise whereabouts of his beloved ones, had been much troubled in
mind about their safety, and in the very night in which the accident
happened, saw the whole occurrence in a harassing dream. He distinctly
beheld the vessel disappear in the waves, and a number of victims, among
whom were his wife and his child, struggling for life, till they finally
perished. He awoke in a state of great anguish, summoned his servants to
keep him company, and told them what he had dreamt. A few hours later
the telegraph informed him of the accident, and of his own grievous
affliction. (_Journ. de l'ame_, Fevr. 1857, p. 253.)

While in these dreams events were made known which happened at the same
time, in other dreams the future itself is revealed. Cicero, in his work
on Divination (I. 27, and II. 66), and Valerius Maximus have preserved a
number of such dream-visions, which were famous already in the days of
antiquity; a dream concerning the tyrant Dionysius was especially well
known.

It seems that a woman, called Himera, found herself in a dream among the
gods on Olympus, and there saw chained to the throne of Jupiter a large
man with red hair and spotted countenance. When she asked the divine
messenger who had carried her to those regions, who that man was, he
told her it was the scourge of Italy and Sicily, a man who, when
unchained, would destroy many cities. She related her dream on the
following morning to her friends, but found no explanation, till several
years afterwards, when Dionysius ascended the throne. She happened to be
in the crowd which had assembled to witness the triumph of the new
monarch, and when she saw the tyrant, she uttered a loud cry, for she
had recognized in him the man in chains under Jupiter's throne. The cry
attracted attention; she was brought before Dionysius, forced to relate
her dream, and sent to be executed. Equally well known was the
remarkable dream which Socrates had a short time before his death. His
sentence had already been passed, but the day for its execution was not
yet made known, when Crito, one of his friends, came to him and informed
him that it would probably be ordered for the next morning. The great
philosopher replied with his usual calmness: "If such is the will of the
gods, be it so; but I do not think it will be to-morrow. I had, just
before you entered, a sweet dream. A woman of transcending beauty, and
dressed in a long white robe, appeared to me, called me by name, and
said, 'In three days you will return to your beloved Phthia' (Socrates'
native place)." He did not die till the third day.

Alexander the Great came more than once, during his remarkable career,
in peculiar contact with prophetic dreams. He was thus informed of the
coming of Cassander long before he ever saw him, and even of the
influence which the still unknown friend would have on his fate. When
the latter at last appeared at court, Alexander looked at him long and
anxiously, and recognized in him the man he had so often seen in his
dreams. It so happened, however, that before his suspicions assumed a
positive form, a Greek distich was mentioned to him, written to prove
the utter worthlessness of all dreams, and the effect of these lines,
combined with the discovery that Cassander was the son of his beloved
Antipater, induced him to lay aside all apprehensions. Nevertheless, his
friend subsequently poisoned him in cold blood. Not less famous was the
dream which warned Caius Gracchus of his own sad fate. He saw in his
sleep the shadow of his brother Tiberius, and heard him announce in a
clear voice, that Caius also would share his tragic end, and be murdered
like himself in the Capitol. The great Roman frequently related this
dream, and the historian Coelius records that he heard it repeated
during Gracchus' life-time. It is well known that the latter afterwards
became a tribune, and was killed while he held that office, in the same
manner as his brother. Cicero also had his warning dream. He was
escaping from his enemies, who had driven him out of Rome, and seeking
safety in his Antium villa. Here he dreamt, one night, that, as he was
wandering through a waste, deserted country, the Consul Marius met him,
accompanied by the usual retinue, and adorned with all the insignia of
his rank, and asked him why he was so melancholy, and why he had fled
from Rome. When he had answered the question, Marius took him by his
right hand, and summoning his chief officer to his side, ordered him to
carry the great orator to the temple of Jupiter, built by Marius
himself, while he assured Cicero he would there meet with new hopes. It
was afterwards ascertained that at the very hour of the dream, the
Senate had been discussing in the temple of Jupiter the speedy return of
Cicero. It would have been well for the great Caesar, also, if he had
deigned to listen to the warning voice of dreams, for in the night
before his murder, his wife, Calphurnia, saw him, in a dream, fall
wounded and copiously bleeding into her arms, and there end his life.

She told him of her dream, and on her knees besought him not to go out
on that day; but Caesar, fearing he might be suspected of giving undue
weight to a woman's dreams, made light of her fears, went to the Senate,
and met his tragic fate. Among later Romans the Emperor Theodosius was
most strikingly favored by dreams, if we may rely upon the statement of
Ammianus Marcellinus (I. 29). Two courtiers, anxious to ascertain who
should succeed the Emperor Valens on the throne, employed a kind of
magic instrument, resembling the modern psychograph, and succeeded in
deciphering the letters Theod. Their discovery became known to the
jealous emperor, who ordered not only Theodorus, his second secretary of
state, to be executed, but with him a large number of eminent personages
whose names began with the ominous five letters. For some unknown
reasons, Theodosius, then in Spain, escaped his suspicions, and yet it
was he, who, when Valens fell in the war against the Goths, was summoned
home by the next emperor, Gratianus, to save the empire and assume the
supreme command of the army. When the successful general returned to
Byzantium to make his report to the emperor, he had himself a dream in
which he saw the great Patriarch of Antioch, Meletius, invest him with
the purple, and place the imperial crown upon his head. Gratianus,
struck by the brilliancy of the victory obtained at the moment of
supreme danger, made Theodosius Emperor of the East, and returned to
Rome. During the following year (380) a great council was held in
Constantinople, and here, amid a crowd of assembled dignitaries of the
church, Theodosius instantly recognized the Bishop of Antioch, whom he
had never seen except in his dream.

It is not generally known that the prediction of future greatness which
Shakespeare causes the three witches to convey to Macbeth, rests on an
historic basis. The announcement came to him, however, probably not at
an actual meeting, but by means of a prophetic dream, which presented to
the ambitious chieftain the appearance of an encounter with unearthly
agents. This presumption is strengthened by the first notice of the
mysterious event, which occurs, it is believed, in "Wyntownis Cronykil,"
where Macbeth is reported to have had a vivid dream of three weird
women, who foretold him his fate. Boethius derived his information from
this source, and for unknown reasons added not only Banquo as a witness
of the scene, but described it, also, first of all chroniclers, as an
actual meeting in a forest.

The report that the discovery of the famous Venus of Milo was due to a
dream, is not improbable, but is as yet without sufficient
authentication. The French Consul, Brest, who was a resident of Milo,
dreamed, it is stated, two nights in succession, that he had caused
diggings to be made at a certain place in the island and that his
efforts had been rewarded by the discovery of a beautiful statue. He
paid no attention to the dream; but it was repeated a third time, and
now so distinctly that he not only saw clearly all the surroundings,
but, also, the traces of a recent fire on the spot that had been pointed
out to him before. When he went on the following day to the place, he
instantly recognized the traces of fire, began his researches, and
discovered not only the Venus, now the glory of the Louvre, but, also,
several other most valuable statues. The well-known dream concerning
Major Andre is open to the same objections, although it is quoted in
good faith by Mrs. Crowe (i., p. 59). We are told that the Rev. Mr.

Cunningham, the poet, saw in a dream a man who was captured by armed
soldiers and hanged on a tree. To his utter consternation, he recognized
on the following day, in Major Andre, who was then for the first time
presented to him, the person he had seen in his dream. The latter was
then just on the point of embarking for America, where he met with his
sad fate.

A large number of dreams which are looked upon as prophetic, are nothing
more than the result of impressions made on the mind during sleep by
some bodily sensation. A swelling or an inflammation, for instance, is
frequently announced beforehand by pain in the affected part of the
body; the mind receives through the nerves an impression of this pain
and clothes it, during sleep and in a dream, into some familiar garb,
the biting of a serpent, the sting of an insect, or, even, the stab of
a dagger. An occasional coincidence serves to lend prestige to such
simple and perfectly natural dreams. Thus Stilling ("Jenseits," p. 284)
records the well-known story of a young man in Padua, who dreamed one
night that he was bitten by one of the marble lions which stand before
the church of St. Justina. Passing by the place, on the following day,
with some companions, he recalled the dream, and putting his hand into
the mouth of one of the lions, he said, defiantly: "Look at the fierce
lion that bit me last night." But at the same moment he uttered a
piercing cry and drew back his hand in great terror: a scorpion, hid in
the lion's mouth, had stung him, and the poor youth died of the venom.

The German poet Conrad Gessner dreamed, in a similar manner, that a
snake bit him in his left breast; the matter was completely forgotten,
when five days later a slight rising appeared on the spot, which
speedily developed itself into a fatal ulcer, and caused his death in a
short time.

Far more interesting, and occasionally productive of good results, are
dreams which might be called retrospective, inasmuch as they reveal
events of the past, which stand in some connection with present or
impending necessities. Many of these, no doubt, arise simply from the
recovery of forgotten facts in our memory; others, however, cannot be
thus explained. Justinus tells us of Dido's dream, in which she saw her
departed husband, Sichaeus, who pointed out to her his concealed
treasures and advised her to seek safety in flight. St. Augustine also
has an account of a father who after death appeared to his son and
showed him a receipted account, the loss of which had caused his heir
much anxiety. (_De cura pro mortuis_, ch. xi.) After Dante's death the
thirteenth canto of his Paradise could nowhere be found, and the
apparent loss filled all Italy with grief and sorrow. His son, Pietro
Alighieri, however, saw a long time afterwards, in a dream, his father,
who came to his bedside and told him that the missing papers were
concealed under a certain plank near the window at which he had been in
the habit of writing. It was only when all other researches had proved
vain, that, attention was paid to the dream; but when the plank was
examined the canto was found in the precise place which the dream had
indicated.

A similar dream of quite recent occurrence was accidentally more
thoroughly authenticated than is generally the case with such events.

The beautiful wife of Baron Alphonse de Rothschild of Paris had lost a
valuable ring while hunting in the woods near her castle of Ferrieres.

It so happened that early associations made the jewel specially dear to
her, and she felt the loss grievously; a reward of fifteen hundred
francs was, therefore, offered at once for its recovery. The night after
the hunt, the daughter of one of the keepers saw in a dream an unknown
man of imposing appearance, who told her to go at daybreak to a certain
crossroad in the forest, where she would find the ring at the foot of a
beech-tree, close to the highway. She awakes, dresses herself at once,
and goes to the place of which she has dreamed; after half an hour's
walk she reaches the crossroads and almost at the same moment sees
something glittering and shining like a firefly, picks it up, and
behold! it is the ring. The girl had not even seen the hunt, nor did she
know anything of the loss of the jewel; the whole occurrence, and the
place where it was lost, all were pointed out to her in her dream. (_Le
Monde Illustre_, Dec. 15, 1860).

It has already been mentioned that the question has often been mooted
whether the mind was really quite at rest during sleep, or still
operative in dreams. Some authors deny its activity altogether; others
admit a partial activity. The philosopher Kant went so far as to
maintain that perceptions had during sleep were clearer and fuller than
those of the day, because of the perfect rest of the other senses.

Recollection, alone, he added, was missing, because the mind acted in
sleep without the cooperation of the body.

There are, however, certain facts which seem to prove that the mind
does, at least, not altogether cease its activity while the body is
asleep. How else could we explain the power many persons undoubtedly
possess to awake at a fixed hour, and the success with which, more than
once, great mental efforts have been made during profound sleep? Of the
latter, Tartini's famous sonata is a striking instance. He had
endeavored in vain to finish this great work; inspiration would not
come, and he had abandoned the task in despair. During the night he had
a dream in which he once more tried his best, but in vain; at the moment
of despair, however, the Devil appeared to him and promised to finish
the work in return for his soul. The composer, nothing loath, surrenders
his soul and hears his magnificent work gloriously completed on the
violin. He wakes up in perfect delight, goes to his desk, and at once
writes down his "Devil's Sonata." Even children are known occasionally
to be able to give intelligent answers while fast asleep; the questions,
however, must be in accordance with the current of their thoughts,
otherwise they are apt to be aroused. A case is quoted by Reil of two
soldiers who used, at times, to keep up an uninterrupted conversation
during a whole night, while they were to all appearances fast asleep. A
lady, also, was unable to refuse answers to questions put to her at
night, and had at last to lock herself in carefully whenever she went to
sleep.

Hence it is that some of the most profound thinkers who have discussed
the subject of dreams, like Descartes and Leibnitz, Jouffroy and Dugald
Stewart, Richard and Carus, with a number of others, assert the
uninterrupted wakefulness of the mind. Some authors believe that the
spiritual part of man needs no sleep, but delights in the comfort of
feeling that the body is in perfect repose, and of forgetting, by these
means, for a time the troubles of daily life, and the responsibilities
of our earthly existence. They base this view upon the fact, that, as
far as we can judge, the mind is, during sleep, independent of the body
and the outer world. Thinking is quite possible during sleep without
dreaming, and certain bodily sensations, even, are correctly perceived,
as when we turn over in our sleep, because lying on one side produces
pain or uneasiness. We not only talk while we are asleep, but laugh or
weep, sigh or groan. A slight noise, a whispered word, affect the course
of our thoughts, and produce new images in our dreams, as certain
affections and even the pressure upon certain organs are sure to produce
invariably the same dreams. Space and time disappear, however, and
naturally, because we can measure them only by the aid of our senses,
and these are, for the time, inactive. Hence Dugald Stewart ascribes the
manner in which a moment's dream often comprises a year, or a whole
lifetime, to the fact that, when we are asleep, the images created by
our imagination appear to be realities, while those which we form when
we are awake are known to us to be mere fictions, and hence not subject
to the laws of time.

It will not surprise us, therefore, to find that this activity of the
mind, deprived of the usual means of making itself known to others by
gesture, sound, or action, seeks frequently a symbolical utterance, and
this is the grain of truth here also hid under the vast amount of
rubbish, known as the interpretation of dreams. Troubles and
difficulties may thus appear as storms; sorrow and grief as tears;
troubled waters may represent pain, and smooth ice impending danger; a
dry river-bed an approaching famine, and pretty flowers great joy to
come, provided, always, we are disposed to admit a higher class of
prophetic dreams. Such a view is supported by high authority, for since
the days of Aristotle, great writers, divines as well as philosophers,
have endeavored to classify dreams according to their nature and
importance. The great reformer, Melanchthon, in his work on the soul,
divided them into common dreams, void of importance; prophetic dreams,
arising from the individual gifts of the sleeper; divine dreams,
inspired by God either directly or through the agency of angels, and
finally, demoniac dreams, such as the witches' sabbath. One great
difficulty attending all such classification arises, however, from the
well-known fact, already alluded to, that external sensations are by far
the most frequent causes of dreams. Even these have been systematically
arranged by some writers, most successfully, perhaps, in the work of
Maine de Biran, but he overlooks again the numerous cases in which
external noises and similar accidents produce a whole train of thoughts.

Thus Pope dreamed of a Spaniard who impudently entered his library,
ransacked the books on the shelves, and turned a deaf ear to all his
remonstrances. The impression was so forcible that he questioned all his
servants, and investigated the matter thoroughly, till he was finally
forced to acknowledge that the whole transaction was a dream caused by
the fall of a book in his library, which he heard in his sleep. A still
more remarkable case occurred once in a hotel in Dantzic, where not one
person only, but all the guests, without exception, dreamed of the
sudden arrival of a number of travelers, who disturbed the whole house,
and took possession of their rooms with unusual clatter and noise. Not
one had arrived, but during the night a violent storm had arisen,
causing doors to slam and window-shutters to flap against the house,
noises which had aroused in more than fifty people precisely the same
impressions.