What Dreams are Made Of.

Auckland Star, Volume XXVI, Issue 4525, 29 November 1884, Page 4

What Dreams are Made Of.

The Strange Freaks Momory Flays When

tho Body Is Asleep.

Impressions on some special sense will produce very characteristic dreams, the origin of which may take such trouble in its determination that wo might well bo tempted to deny the material origin of tho vision. Dr. Roid had a blister applied to his head, and dreamt accordingly that ho had been scalped by Indians. Hero tho connection between tho droam and tho outward impression, manipulated so to speak •by the brain, was clear. But that connec.: tionmay bo anything but patent in cases where a person dreams of being frozen to death, tho exciting cause having boon merely a deficiency of bedclothes on a chilly night. In a cane related by Dr. Carpenter, whore an eminent judgo dreamt of being tormented by a crowd of lizards, which wore crawling over him, tho origin of the dream was still more difficult to trace. The cause of his reptilian visitation was readily explicable, however, on his entering the apartment in which he had spent tho previous evening, when he saw on tho base of the olook a number of carved lizards. A

similar instance is afforded by a personal experience of the writer, in which ho dreamt that he was walking in a forest in which lizards of every hue and kind wore engaged in a combat with humming-birds. Puzzling himself over the origin, of :hio dream; it at last dawned upon his nocollection "tli&fc 'some time previously he had travelled in a railway carriage, having for his vis-avis a lady whose hat was decorated with humming-birds' plumage, fastened by a brooch accurately representing a1 lizara, By'the same kind association revived: by' memory; arid often projecting forgotten reminiscences into tho mental foreground; • dreams: are suggested which deal with1 events' at■'first sight apt to be mistaken for those of utterly :spotttaneous nature. Maury ' relatei' that in early life he visited ft village on' tlie Marne named Trilport. His father had built ■'& bridge at'this spot. The subject of One dream was that his childhood days were being spent at Trilport, and that a man in uniform, on being asked his name, told Maurythat he was the bridgekeeper and mentioned his name, which Maury distinctly remembered when he woke. Of this name he had no recollection whatever, but on inquiring of an old servant of his father's

if a person of the name in question was once gatekeeper at Trilport bridgo, she re-* plied In the affirmative, and mentioned that the man kept the gate when the bridge was built.

Thus does memory play strange tricks with our imagination, especially when the latter faculty, runs riot in the absence of will'arfd-conseiousness, and relates itself to the world of,dreams. The supernatural theory of dreams and warnings recently revived in bur midst is, after all, but a sop to the of ignorance. It is easy—far too easy for the peace and comfort of many minds—to convert a more coincidence between a dream and an event into a close relationship which seems in the dream a foreshadowing of the event, in question. But in science, as in healthy common sense, there is no justification for the continuance of such superstition.; If certain dreams are warnings and portents, what,shall wo say of those to which no such functions can be, attached,? And if of certain trivial events we are'forewarned,, what is the explanation ot the striking anomaly, that of the grayo disasters of life \Vo usually receive no warning at all? , • Dr. Maudslej; says': "It has been justly romarked that if wo were actually to do in sleep all the strange things we dream we do, it would bo necessary to put every man is restraint before, he went to bed; for, as Cicero said, dreamers would do morostrange things than madmen. A dream put into action roust, indeed, look very much like insanity (e.g., tho ordinary sleep-vigil), as insanity has at timos the look of a waking dream."

Poets without number havo invariably treated dreams as the bet typo of the unrealities of life and nature. The physiolo-, gist, on the contrary, sees in the visions of the uight no trifling objects unworthy of serious study and reflection, but indications and clues to the better understanding of the mysteries which beset our waking lives. " The grave portents " of the night in this view cast no shadow over the future, and exercise no 8 way over the dostinies of the modern mind. They serve, however, a nobler purpose, as aids, through their revelations of the leisure fancies of the brain, towards a knowledge of the boundaries , which separate the realm of body from that 'of mind—'boundaries "which, in truth, " divide; pur being/'—"lTrom. the Gentleman's Magazine." ■ : ; ' .". ■ ' ■ :" r'