Part 9 (1/2)
Why is this? There may from the first have been a kind of innate understanding among contiguous optic fibres, predisposing them to such concerted action. But however this be, this disposition would seem to have been largely promoted by the fact that, throughout my experience, the stimulation of any retinal point has been connected with that of adjoining points, either simultaneously by some second object, or successively by the same object as the eye moves over it, or as the object itself moves across the field of vision.
When, therefore, in sleep any part of the optic centres is excited in a particular way, and the images thus arising have their corresponding loci in s.p.a.ce a.s.signed to them, there will be a disposition to refer any other visual images which happen at the moment to arise in consciousness to adjacent parts of s.p.a.ce. The character of these other images will be determined by other special conditions of the moment; their locality or position in s.p.a.ce will be determined by this organic connection. We may, perhaps, call these tendencies to concerted action of some kind general a.s.sociative dispositions.
Just as there are such dispositions to united action among various parts of one organ of sense, so there may be among different organs, which are either connected originally in the infant organism, or have communications opened up by frequent coexcitation of the two. Such links there certainly are between the organs of taste and smell, and between the ear and the muscular system in general, and more particularly the vocal organ.[96] A new odour often sets us asking how the object would taste, and a series of sounds commonly disposes us to movement of some kind or another. How far there may be finer threads of connection between other organs, such as the eye and the ear, which do not betray themselves amid the stronger forces of waking mental life, one cannot say. Whatever their number, it is plain that they will exert their influence within the comparatively narrow limits of dream-life, serving to impress a certain character on the images which happen to be called up by special circ.u.mstances, and giving to the combination a slight measure of congruity. Thus, if I were dreaming that I heard some lively music, and at the same time an image of a friend was anyhow excited, my dream-fancy might not improbably represent this person as performing a sequence of rhythmic movements, such as those of riding, dancing, etc.
A narrower field for these general a.s.sociative dispositions may be found in the tendency, on the reception of an impression of a given character, to look for a certain kind of second impression; though the exact nature of this is unknown. Thus, for example, the form and colour of a new flower suggest a scent, and the perception of a human form is accompanied by a vague representation of vocal utterances. These general tendencies of a.s.sociation appear to me to be most potent influences in our dream-life. The many strange human forms which float before our dream-fancy are apt to talk, move, and behave like men and women in general, however little they resemble their actual prototypes, and however little individual consistency of character is preserved by each of them. Special conditions determine what they shall say or do; the general a.s.sociative disposition accounts for their saying or doing something.
We thus seem to find in the purely pa.s.sive processes of a.s.sociation some ground for that degree of natural coherence and rational order which our more mature dreams commonly possess. These processes go far to explain, too, that odd mixture of rationality with improbability, of natural order and incongruity, which characterizes our dream-combinations.
_Rational Construction in Dreams._
Nevertheless, I quite agree with Herr Volkelt that a.s.sociation, even in the most extended meaning, cannot explain all in the shaping of our dream-pictures. The ”phantastical power” which Cudworth talks about clearly includes something besides. It is an erroneous supposition that when we are dreaming there is a complete suspension of the voluntary powers, and consequently an absence of all direction of the intellectual processes. This supposition, which has been maintained by numerous writers, from Dugald Stewart downwards, seems to be based on the fact that we frequently find ourselves in dreams striving in vain to move the whole body or a limb. But this only shows, as M. Maury remarks in the work already referred to, that our volitions are frustrated through the inertia of our bodily organs, not that these volitions do not take place. In point of fact, the dreamer, not to speak of the somnambulist, is often conscious of voluntarily going through a series of actions.
This exercise of volition is shown unmistakably in the well-known instances of extraordinary intellectual achievements in dreams, as Condillac's composition of a part of his _Cours d'etudes_. No one would maintain that a result of this kind was possible in the total absence of intellectual action carefully directed by the will. And something of this same control shows itself in all our more fully developed dreams.
One manifestation of this voluntary activity in sleep is to be found in those efforts of attention which not unfrequently occur. I have remarked that, speaking roughly and in relation to the waking condition, the state of sleep is marked by a subjection of the powers of attention to the force of the mental images present to consciousness. Yet something resembling an exercise of voluntary attention sometimes happens in sleep. The intellectual feats just spoken of, unless, indeed, they are referred to some mysterious unconscious mental operations, clearly involve a measure of volitional guidance. All who dream frequently are occasionally aware on awaking of having greatly exercised their attention on the images presented to them during sleep. I myself am often able to recall an effort to see beautiful objects, which threatened to disappear from my field of vision, or to catch faint receding tones of preternatural sweetness; and some dreamers allege that they are able to retain a recollection of the feeling of strain connected with such exercise of attention in sleep.
The main function of this voluntary attention in dream-life is seen in the selection of those images which are to pa.s.s the threshold of clear consciousness. I have already spoken of a selective action brought about by the ruling emotion. In this case, the attention is held captive by the particular feeling of the moment. Also a selective process goes on in the case of the action of those a.s.sociative dispositions just referred to. But in each of these cases the action of selective attention is comparatively involuntary, pa.s.sive, and even unconscious, not having anything of the character of a conscious striving to compa.s.s some end. Besides this comparatively pa.s.sive play of selective attention, there is an active play, in which there is a conscious wish to gain an end; in other words, the operation of a definite motive. This motive may be described as an intellectual impulse to connect and harmonize what is present to the mind. The voluntary kind of selection includes and transcends each of the involuntary kinds. It has as its result an imitation of that order which is brought about by what I have called the a.s.sociative dispositions, only it consciously aims at this result. And it is a process controlled by a feeling, namely, the intellectual sentiment of consistency, which is not a mode of emotional excitement enthralling the will, but a calm motive, guiding the activities of attention. It thus bears somewhat the same relation to the emotional selection already spoken of, as dramatic creation bears to lyrical composition.
This process of striving to seize some connecting link, or thread of order, is ill.u.s.trated whenever, in waking life, we are suddenly brought face to face with an unfamiliar scene. When taken into a factory, we strive to arrange the bewildering chaos of visual impressions under some scheme, by help of which we are said to understand the scene. So, if on entering a room we are plunged in _medias res_ of a lively conversation, we strive to find a clue to the discussion. Whenever the meaning of a scene is not at once clear, and especially whenever there is an appearance of confusion in it, we are conscious of a painful feeling of perplexity, which acts as a strong motive to ever-renewed attention.[97]
In touching on this intellectual impulse to connect the disconnected, we are, it is plain, approaching the question of the very foundations of our intellectual structure. That there is this impulse firmly rooted in the mature mind n.o.body can doubt; and that it manifests itself in early life in the child's recurring ”Why?” is equally clear. But how we are to account for it, whether it is to be viewed as a mere result of the play of a.s.sociated fragments of experience, or as something involved in the very process of the a.s.sociation of ideas itself, is a question into which I cannot here enter.
What I am here concerned to show is that the search for consistency and connection in the manifold impressions of the moment is a deeply rooted habit of the mind, and one which is retained in a measure during sleep.
When, in this state, our minds are invaded by a motley crowd of unrelated images, there results a disagreeable sense of confusion; and this feeling acts as a motive to the attention to sift out those products of the dream-fancy which may be made to cohere. When once the foundations of a dream-action are laid, new images must to some extent fit in with this; and here there is room for the exercise of a distinct impulse to order the chaotic elements of dream-fancy in certain forms.
The perception of any possible relation between one of the crowd of new images ever surging above the level of obscure consciousness, and the old group at once serves to detain it. The concentration of attention on it, in obedience to this impulse to seek for an intelligible order, at once intensifies it and fixes it, incorporating it into the series of dream-pictures.
Here is a dream which appears to ill.u.s.trate this impulse to seek an intelligible order in the confused and disorderly. After being occupied with correcting the proofs of my volume on _Pessimism_, I dreamt that my book was handed to me by my publisher, fully ill.u.s.trated with coloured pictures. The frontispiece represented the fantastic figure of a man gesticulating in front of a s.h.i.+p, from which he appeared to have just stepped. My publisher told me it was meant for Hamlet, and I immediately reflected that this character had been selected as a concrete example of the pessimistic tendency. I may add that, on awaking, I was distinctly aware of having felt puzzled when dreaming, and of having striven to read a meaning into the dream.
The _rationale_ of this dream seems to me to be somewhat as follows. The image of the completed volume represented, of course, a recurring antic.i.p.atory image of waking life. The coloured plates were due probably to subjective optical sensations simultaneously excited, which were made to fit in (with or without an effort of voluntary attention) with the image of the book under the form of ill.u.s.trations. But this stage of coherency did not satisfy the mind, which, still partly confused by the incongruity of coloured plates in a philosophic work, looked for a closer connection. The image of Hamlet was naturally suggested in connection with pessimism. The effort to discover a meaning in the pictures led to the fusion of this image with one of the subjective spectra, and in this way the idea of a Hamlet frontispiece probably arose.
The whole process of dream-construction is clearly ill.u.s.trated in a curious dream recorded by Professor Wundt.[98] Before the house is a funeral procession: it is the burial of a friend, who has in reality been dead for some time past. The wife of the deceased bids him and an acquaintance who happens to be with him go to the other side of the street and join the procession. After she has gone away, his companion remarks to him, ”She only said that because the cholera rages over yonder, and she wants to keep this side of the street to herself.” Then comes an attempt to flee from the region of the cholera. Returning to his house, he finds the procession gone, but the street strewn with rich nosegays; and he further observes crowds of men who seem to be funeral attendants, and who, like himself, are hastening to join the procession. These are, oddly enough, dressed in red. When hurrying on, it occurs to him that he has forgotten to take a wreath for the coffin.
Then he wakes up with beating of the heart.
The sources of this dream are, according to Wundt, as follows. First of all, he had, on the previous day, met the funeral procession of an acquaintance. Again, he had read of cholera breaking out in a certain town. Once more, he had talked about the particular lady with this friend, who had narrated facts which clearly proved her selfishness. The hastening to flee from the infected neighbourhood and to overtake the procession was prompted by the sensation of heart-beating. Finally, the crowd of red bier-followers, and the profusion of nosegays, owed their origin to subjective visual sensations, the ”light-chaos” which often appears in the dark.
Let us now see for a moment how these various elements may have become fused into a connected chain of events. First of all, it is clear that this dream is built up on a foundation of a gloomy tone of feeling, arising, as it would seem, from an irregularity of the heart's action.
Secondly, it owes its special structure and its air of a connected sequence of events, to those tendencies, pa.s.sive and active, to order the chaotic of which I have been speaking. Let us try to trace this out in detail.
To begin with, we may suppose that the image of the procession occupies the dreamer's mind. From quite another source the image of the lady enters consciousness, bringing with it that of her deceased husband and of the friend who has recently been talking about her. These new elements adapt themselves to the scene, partly by the pa.s.sive mechanism of a.s.sociative dispositions, and partly, perhaps, by the activity of voluntary selection. Thus, the idea of the lady's husband would naturally recall the fact of his death, and this would fall in with the pre-existing scene under the form of the idea that he is the person who is now being buried. The next step is very interesting. The image of the lady is a.s.sociated with the idea of selfish motives. This would tend to suggest a variety of actions, but the one which becomes a factor of the dream is that which is specially adapted to the pre-existing representations, namely, of the procession on the further side of the street, and the cholera (which last, like the image of the funeral, is, we may suppose, due to an independent central excitation). That is to say, the request of the lady, and its interpretation, are a _resultant_ of a number of adaptative or a.s.similative actions, under the sway of a strong desire to connect the disconnected, and a lively activity of attention. Once more, the feeling of oppression of the heart, and the subjective stimulation of the optic nerve, might suggest numberless images besides those of anxious flight and of red-clad men and nosegays; they suggest these, and not others, in this particular case, because of the co-operation of the impulse of consistency, which, setting out with the pre-existing mental images, selects from among many tendencies of reproduction those which happen to chime in with the scene.
_The Nature of Dream-Intelligence._
It must not be supposed that this process of welding together the chaotic materials of our dreams is ever carried out with anything like the clear rational purpose of which we are conscious when seeking, in waking life, to comprehend some bewildering spectacle. At best it is a vague longing, and this longing, it may be added, is soon satisfied.