Case XCI

A learned man, who was deeply engaged in reading Plato, said that one night, in his own house, and before going to sleep, he saw a philosopher, whom he knew intimately, come to him, and expound some Platonic propositions - a thing which he had always hitherto refused to do. On the following day, he was asked why he explained that in a strange house which he refused to do in his own. "I did not do so," replied the philosopher, "but I dreamed that I did."

"Thus," adds Saint Augustine, "the one sees and hears, when perfectly awake, by the force of imagination, what the other acted in a dream."

"For ourselves," he adds, "had it been indifferently related to us by indifferent people, we should have scorned to place any faith in it; but we know that he who related the fact is incapable of imposition."*

The hallucinations of dreams are almost always effaced on waking, or, if their impression continues, they do not exert any sensible influence on the conduct; but it is not so when they are the forerunners of a sickness, a mental alienation, or when they are manifested in the sleep of the insane. They then present an extreme intensity, a very powerful tenacity, and remain deeply engraven on the memory.

Pathological dreams have been noticed by all observers, and there is no doubt that they might afford useful indications. Galen speaks of a sick person who dreamed that he had a stone leg; and says that, sometime afterwards, that leg was paralyzed.

The learned Conrad Gessner dreamed one night that he was bitten in the left breast by a serpent, and a deep and severe lesion was soon manifested in that very spot; it was, in fact, a carbuncle, that terminated fatally at the end of five days.

Nervous diseases, and especially mental alienation, are most frequently preceded by whimsical and extraordinary dreams.

Odier, of Geneva, was consulted, in 1778, by a lady of Lyons, who, the night before the derangement of mind occurred, dreamed that her mother-in-law approached her with a poniard, in order to kill her. This strong impression, increasing in intensity during the following day, became hypochondria, and finally assumed all the characteristics of real insanity.

* St. Augustine, quoted from Dieu, liv. xviii. ch. xviii.

In cases where the mind is disposed to mysticism, or to great preoccupation, we witness the same results.

Case XCII

"In 1610," says Van Helmont, "being much fatigued with deep thinking, during which I had endeavored to acquire some knowledge of my soul, I slept. I was soon raised above the fetters of reason; and it appeared to me that I was in a dark room; on the left-hand side I saw a table, and on it a bottle containing a liquid, which thus addressed me: ' Dost thou wish for honors and riches?' I was stupefied at hearing these words. I paced up and down, endeavoring to understand what this could mean. On the right hand appeared a slit in the wall through which shone a light, the brightness of which made me forget the voice and the liquid, and changed the current of my thoughts, for I contemplated things surpassing the power of speech. This light lasted but an instant. In despair, I returned to the bottle, which I carried away with me. I wished to taste the liquid it contained. With great exertion, I uncorked it, but experienced a sensation of horror, and awoke. Still, my desire to comprehend the nature of the soul continued. This desire lasted for twenty-three years, that is to say, until 1633, when I had a vision, during which my own soul was exhibited to my astonished sight. It was a perfectly homogeneous light, composed of a spiritual substance, crystalline, and brilliant. It was shut up like a pea in its shell, and I heard a voice saying to me: 'Here is what thou sawest through the chink in the wall!' It is in the soul that that vision operated; he, who sees his own soul with his earthly eyes, shall become blind."*

According to M. Calmeil, when dreams exercised a universal empire over the mind, and the world was plunged in ignorance, the greater number of votaries who went into the temples of Isis, Esculapius, and Serapis, to implore aid, as well as many sectarians, and those whom religion had not enlightened, obeyed the hallucinations of sleep.

* Van Helmont, Ortus Medicines Imago mentis, etc., vol. i. quarto, p. 269, Amsterodami, 1643.

In the times of sorcerers, the magistrates asserted that the bewitched had not quitted their prisons, notwithstanding they declared they had just arrived from the witches' sabbath, and ended by believing that the soul went there alone, or that the devil fascinated their eyes, and assumed the shape of the persons accused.

In the first ages of the church, only a few select persons were instructed. The common people, who could neither read nor write, were only struck with the material view of Christianity. They, therefore, adhered to its forms, and accepted it in its literal sense. This was the era of dreams, which commanded the faith of many Platonists. It is not then surprising that individuals existed, who, impressed by a dream, ended by believing in its reality, and persuaded others that these visions had, independently of their fancy, a real cause. Without doubt, many of the histories related in the Golden Legend had no other source. In fact, it is impossible to attribute a more rational origin to the singular narrations this book contains.