What I have described should be considered rather at the dreams of crazy persons than as the judgments of philosophers. - Cicero de Natur. Deor. L. i. Exposui fere, etc.

Upon a collective retrospect of the accounts considered in the preceding chapters, it does not appear, that there is sufficient reason to suppose, that there was any preternatural in-terference displayed in the communication of the dreams referred to, or that the minds of the persons concerned were endowed with prophetic powers. The author has selected those which have the highest claim to regard, from their character, and the authority on which they are delivered; and after such an examination has but little hesitation in rejecting the pretensions of pagan antiquity to the illumination of prophetic dreams.

It is probable, that the philosophers of antiquity, who had no revelation to enlighten them, and who perceived the influence of those fears which result from a belief in the existence of a Supreme Power, and of the Divine superintendence and -government of the world, were well inclined to encourage the popular notions which naturally prevailed on the subject; and notwithstanding accounts of inspired dreams were industriously collected, we find that very few of those which are transmitted to us with the most imposing reputation will bear a strict scrutiny. Some are evidently the contrivance of political or superstitions interests; many must be considered as fabulous tales of classical embellishment, and others, if received as real and mexaggerated, are resolvable into natural explications, Or casual coincidences.

If any preternatural interposition be admitted, it must be that of evil spirits. The 'false dreams fabricated in support of religious inventions, only serve to argue the existence of true visions, furnished with extraordinary impression in evidence of religion: they are copied from originals which deserve attention; but it is presumed that it may be maintained, that divine dreams were never imparted to the nations of antiquity, excepting in connection with the scheme of God's immediate and ostensible interference, as described in the sacred history of the earliest ages, and of the rise and progress of the Hebrew and Christian dispensations. They do not seem to have been furnished to pagan nations, unless where their interests were implicated with those of the Jews, but were reserved, together with other tokens of miraculous interference, is evidence of revealed religion.

The knowledge of the existence of such modes of communication might have been conveyed to heathen nations on the scattered leaves- of tradition, and have given rise to the fictitious reports that prevailed of their continuance in the ordinary concerns of the world.

The desire of discovering future events is natural to the human mind, which is hurried on by a kind of divine impulse to futurity; artifice is ever ready to avail itself of this curiosity, and was especially so inclined among the heathen nations, whose bewildered minds turned with eagerness to every gleam of revelation.

The idea of divine dreams was traced up by them to the highest antiquity, and sometimes with indication of the vestiges of truth. Pliny represents Amphyction, the son of Deucalion, to have first displayed skill in the interpretation of them, while Trogus Pompeius ascribes the honour to Joseph, the son of Jacob, and Philo Judaeus to Abraham.

The exposition of dreams was reduced to scientific principles, and practised by men who engaged in it as a profession. Some writers distinguish between "dreamers of dreams *," and "expositors of dreams *," one of the latter description appears to have been deified for his skill; and many of them flourished with high reputation in early days near the Boris-thenes, the Gades, and in Sicily.

The eastern nations, who might have beheld the very stones which served as pillows to those who were blessed with divine visions †, regarded dreams with punctilious veneration; and much of the reputed wisdom of their sages was shewn in the interpretation of them ‡.

The Greeks and the Romans were also considerably influenced by dreams, and often acted in affairs of consequence on their suggestion. We find in Homer the idea that and see Nestor, the oracle Of Wisdom, exhorting the Grecians in council to attend to the dream of Agamemnon, which had enjoined a battle *. In succeeding times almost every sect, excepting that of Epicurus, admitted their claim to reverence, and the vulgar regarded them with the most implicit credulity.

"Dreams descend from Jove§."

† Gen. xxviii. 11.

‡ Dan. ii. 2,3.

§Pope's Homer, B. i. 1. 86, and. note.

Plutarch informs us, that in consequence of a dream of Arimnestus (who was general of the Plataeans, when the Grecians were confederated against the Persians), in which Jupiter Soter informed him, that the country round Plataea was the district pointed out by . the oracle at Delphi as the scene of victory, the Plataeans altered the boundaries which separated their country from Greece, in order. to enlarge the territories of Attica, that the Athenians might, according to the direction of the oracle, give the enemy battle within their own dominion †.

* Diad B. 2.

† Plutarch, in Aristidis.

The superstitious regard paid to dreams by the Grecians in general was carried to a great extent. When Pelopidas was encamped with his army on the plains of Leuctra, he dreamed, before his engagement with the Lacedaemonians, that he beheld the daughters of Sce-dasus, who were called the Leuctrides, weeping at their tombs, and loading the Spartans with execrations, because some of that nation, having despoiled them of their virgin honour, had driven them to suicide; and at the same time their father Scedasus commanded him to sacrifice a young red-haired virgin to his daughters, if he desired to obtain the victory. As many of the soothsayers and commanders recommended a literal compliance with the dream, it would probably have been productive of a sanguinary oblation, had not a diviner of the name of Theocritus happily proposed the sacrifice of a wild filly with a red mane, which casually broke into the camp, or was designedly introduced, and which he represented as the victim which the gods had provided and required *.