Part 8 (2/2)
_Coherence of Dreams._
A fully developed dream is a complex of many distinct illusory sense-presentations: in this respect it differs from the illusions of normal waking life, which are for the most part single and isolated. And this complex of quasi-presentations appears somehow or other to fall together into one whole scene or series of events, which, though it may be very incongruous and absurdly impossible from a waking point of view, nevertheless makes a single object for the dreamer's internal vision, and has a certain degree of artistic unity. This plastic force, which selects and binds together our unconnected dream-images, has frequently been referred to as a mysterious spiritual faculty, under the name of ”creative fancy.” Thus Cudworth remarks, in his _Treatise concerning Eternal and Immutable Morality_: ”That dreams are many times begotten by the phantastical power of the soul itself ... is evident from the orderly connection and coherence of imaginations which many times are continued in a long chain or series.” One may find a good deal of mystical writing on the nature and activity of this faculty, especially in German literature. The explanation of this element of organic unity in dreams is, it may be safely said, the crux in the science of dreams.
That the laws of psychology help us to understand the sequences of dream-images, we have seen. What we have now to ask is whether these laws throw any light on the orderly grouping of the elements so brought up in consciousness in the form of a connected experience.
It is to be remarked at the outset that a singular kind of unity is sometimes given to our dream-combinations by a total or partial coalescence of different images. The conditions of such coalescence have been referred to already.[93] Simultaneous impressions or images will always tend to coalesce with a force which varies directly as the degree of their similarity. Sometimes this coalescence is instantaneous and not made known to consciousness. Thus, Radestock suggests that if the mind of the sleeper is simultaneously invaded by an unpleasant sensation arising out of some disturbance of the functions of the skin, and a subjective visual sensation, the resulting mental image may be a combination of the two, under the form of a caterpillar creeping over the bodily surface. And the coalescence may even be prepared by sub-conscious operations of waking imagination. Thus, for example, I once spoke about the cheapness of hares to a member of my family, who somewhat grimly suggested that they were London cats. I did not dwell on the idea, but the following night I dreamt that I saw a big hybrid creature, half hare, half cat, sniffing about a cottage. As it stood on its hind legs and took a piece of food from a window-ledge, I became sure that it was a cat. Here it is plain that the cynical observation of my relative had, at the moment, partially excited an image of this feline hare. In some dreams, again, we may become aware of the process of coalescence, as when persons who at one moment were seen to be distinct appear to our dream-fancy to run together in some third person.
A very similar kind of unification takes place between sequent images under the form of transformation. When two images follow one another closely, and have anything in common, they readily a.s.sume the form of a trans.m.u.tation. There is a sort of overlapping of the mental images, and so an appearance of continuity produced in some respects a.n.a.logous to that which arises in the wheel-of-life (thaumatrope) cla.s.s of sense-illusions. This would seem to account for the odd transformations of personality which not unfrequently occur in dreams, in which a person appears, by a kind of metempsychosis, to transfer his physical ego to another, and in which the dreamer's own bodily phantom plays similar freaks. And the same principle probably explains those dissolving-view effects which are so familiar an accompaniment of dream-scenery.[94]
But pa.s.sing from this exceptional kind of unity in dreams, let us inquire how the heterogeneous elements of our dream-fancy become ordered and arranged when they preserve their separate existence. If we look closely at the structure of our more finished dreams, we find that the appearance of harmony, connectedness, or order, may be given in one of two ways. There may, first of all, be a subjective harmony, the various images being held together by an emotional thread. Or there may, secondly, be an objective harmony, the parts of the dream, though answering to no particular experiences of waking life, bearing a certain resemblance to our habitual modes of experience. Let us inquire into the way in which each kind of order is brought about.
_Lyrical Element in Dreams._
The only unity that belongs to many of our dreams is a subjective emotional unity. This is the basis of harmony in lyrical poetry, where the succession of images turns mainly on their emotional colouring.
Thus, the images that float before the mind of the Poet Laureate, in his _In Memoriam_, clearly have their link of connection in their common emotional tone, rather than in any logical continuity. Dreaming has been likened to poetic composition, and certainly many of our dreams are built upon a groundwork of lyrical feeling. They might be marked off, perhaps, as our lyrical dreams.
The way in which this emotional force acts in these cases has already been hinted at. We have seen that the a.n.a.logy of feeling is a common link between dream-images. Now, if any shade of feeling becomes fixed and dominant in the mind, it will tend to control all the images of the time, allowing certain congruous ones to enter, and excluding others.[95] If, for example, a feeling of distress occupies the mind, distressing images will have the advantage in the struggle for existence which goes on in the world of mind as well as in that of matter. We may say that attention, which is here wholly a pa.s.sive process, is controlled by the emotion of the time, and bent in the direction of congruent or harmonious images.
Now, a ground-tone of feeling of a certain complexion, answering to the sum of sensations arising in connection with the different organic processes of the time, is a very frequent foundation of our dream-structure. So frequent is it, indeed, that one might almost say there is no dream in which it is not one great determining factor. The a.n.a.lysis of a very large number of dreams has convinced me that traces of this influence are discoverable in a great majority.
I will give a simple ill.u.s.tration of this lyrical type of dream. A little girl of about four years and three-quarters went with her parents to Switzerland. On their way she was taken to the cathedral at Strasburg, and saw the celebrated clock strike, and the figures of the Apostles come out, etc. In Switzerland she stayed at Gimmelwald, near Murren, opposite a fine ma.s.s of snowy mountains. One morning she told her father that she had had ”such a lovely dream.” She fancied she was on the snow-peaks with her nurse, and walked on to the sky. There came out of the sky ”such beautiful things,” just like the figures of the clock. This vision of celestial things was clearly due to the fact that both the clock and the snow-peaks touching the blue sky had powerfully excited her imagination, filling her with much the same kind of emotion, namely, wonder, admiration, and longing to reach an inaccessible height.
Our feelings commonly have a gradual rise and fall, and the organic sensations which so often const.i.tute the emotional basis of our lyrical dreams generally have stages of increasing intensity. Moreover, such a persistent ground-feeling becomes reinforced by the images which it sustains in consciousness. Hence a certain _crescendo_ character in our emotional dreams, or a gradual rise to some culminating point or climax.
This phase of dream can be ill.u.s.trated from the experience of the same little girl. When just five years old, she was staying at Hampstead, near a church which struck the hours somewhat loudly. One morning she related the following dream to her father (I use her own language). The biggest bells in the world were ringing; when this was over the earth and houses began to tumble to pieces; all the seas, rivers, and ponds flowed together, and covered all the land with black water, as deep as in the sea where the s.h.i.+ps sail; people were drowned; she herself flew above the water, rising and falling, fearing to fall in; she then saw her mamma drowned, and at last flew home to tell her papa. The gradual increase of alarm and distress expressed in this dream, having its probable cause in the c.u.mulative effect of the disturbing sound of the church bells, must be patent to all.
The following rather comical dream ill.u.s.trates quite as clearly the growth of a feeling of irritation and vexation, probably connected with the development of some slightly discomposing organic sensation. I dreamt I was unexpectedly called on to lecture to a cla.s.s of young women, on Herder. I began hesitatingly, with some vague generalities about the Augustan age of German literature, referring to the three well-known names of Lessing, Schiller, and Goethe. Immediately my sister, who suddenly appeared in the cla.s.s, took me up, and said she thought there was a fourth distinguished name belonging to this period.
I was annoyed at the interruption, but said, with a feeling of triumph, ”I suppose you mean Wieland?” and then appealed to the cla.s.s whether there were not twenty persons who knew the names I had mentioned to one who knew Wieland's name. Then the cla.s.s became generally disorderly. My feeling of embarra.s.sment gained in depth. Finally, as a climax, several quite young girls, about ten years and less, came and joined the cla.s.s.
The dream broke off abruptly as I was in the act of taking these children to the wife of an old college tutor, to protest against their admission.
It is worth noting, perhaps, that in this evolution of feeling in dreaming the quality of the emotion may vary within certain limits. One shade of feeling may be followed by another and kindred shade, so that the whole dream still preserves a degree, though a less obvious degree, of emotional unity. Thus, for example, a lady friend of mine once dreamt that she was in church, listening to a well-known novelist of the more earnest sort, preaching. A wounded soldier was brought in to be shot, because he was mortally wounded, and had distinguished himself by his bravery. He was then shot, but not killed, and, rolling over in agony, exclaimed, ”How long!” The development of an extreme emotion of horror out of the vague feeling of awe which is a.s.sociated with a church, gives a curious interest to this dream.
_Verisimilitude in Dreams._
I must not dwell longer on this emotional basis of dreams, but pa.s.s to the consideration of the second and objective kind of unity which characterizes many of our more elaborate dream-performances. In spite of all that is fitful and grotesque in dream-combination, it still preserves a distant resemblance to our actual experience. Though no dream reproduces a particular incident or chain of incidents in this experience, though the dream-fancy invariably transforms the particular objects, relations, and events of waking life, it still makes the order of our daily experience its prototype. It fas.h.i.+ons its imaginary world on the model of the real. Thus, objects group themselves in s.p.a.ce, and act on one another conformably to these perceived s.p.a.ce-relations; events succeed one another in time, and are often seen to be connected; men act from more or less intelligible motives, and so on. In this way, though the dream-fancy sets at nought the particular relations of our experience, it respects the general and constant relations. How are we to account for this?
It is said by certain philosophers that this superposition of the relations of s.p.a.ce, time, causation, etc., on the products of our dream-fancy is due to the fact that all experience arises by a synthesis of mental forms with the chaotic matter of sense-impressions. These philosophers allow, however, that all particular connections are determined by experience. Accordingly, what we have to do here is to inquire how far this scientific method of explaining mental connections by facts of experience will carry us. In other words, we have to ask what light can be thrown on these tendencies of dream-imagination by ascertained psychological laws, and more particularly by what are known as the laws of a.s.sociation.
These laws tell us that of two mental phenomena which occur together, each will tend to recall the other whenever it happens to be revived. On the physiological side, this means that any two parts of the nervous structures which have acted together become in some way connected, so that when one part begins to work the other will tend to work also. But it is highly probable that a particular structure acts in a great many different ways. Thus, it may be stimulated by unlike modes of stimuli, or it may enter into very various connections with other structures.
What will follow from this? One consequence would appear to be that there will be developed an organic connection between the two structures, of such a kind that whenever one is excited the other will be disposed to act somehow and anyhow, even when there is nothing in the present mode of activity of the first structure to determine the second to act in some one definite way, in other words, when this mode of activity is, roughly speaking, novel.
Let me ill.u.s.trate this effect in one of the simplest cases, that of the visual organ. If, when walking out on a dark night, a few points in my retina are suddenly stimulated by rays of light, and I recognize some luminous object in a corresponding direction, I am prepared to see something above and below, to the right and to the left of this object.
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