Part 41

Above all, it is our duty to avert the impressions of evil from the superstitious mind. The apprehension of a misfortune or fatality may prove its cause. Ay, and if the intellect were really gifted with prescience, how oft would the happiness of life be blighted?

The allegory of the tree of knowledge is a practic precept for our lives.

ASTR. And yet Virgil has thus alluded to the delight of peeping into futurity:

“Felix qui potuit rerum cognoscere causas.”

EV. I would rather echo the benevolent precept of Horace, to ensure the bliss of ignorance on this point:

“Tu ne quæsieris, scire (nefas) quem mihi, quem tibi, Finem Dii dederint.”

in other words: “Seek not to know the destiny that awaits us.”

And Milton’s wisdom, too:

“Let no man seek Henceforth, to be foretold what shall befall Him or his children: evil, he may be sure, Which, neither his foreknowing can prevent; And he the future evil shall, as less In apprehension than as substance, feel Grievous to bear.”

Listen to the melancholy influence of the dream and death of Glaphyra, as told by Josephus:

“She was married when she was a virgin to Alexander, the son of Herod, and brother of Archelaus, but since it fell out so that Alexander was slain by his father, she was married to Juba, the King of Lydia; and when he was dead, and she lived in widowhood in Cappadocia with her father, Archelaus divorced his former wife Mariamne, and married her, so great was his affection for this Glaphyra, who during her marriage to him saw the following dream:—she thought she saw Alexander standing by her, at which she rejoiced and embraced him with great affection, but that he complained of her, and said to Glaphyra: ‘Thou provest that saying to be true, which assures us that women are not to be trusted. Didst not thou pledge thy faith to me? and wast thou not married to me when thou wast a virgin? and had we not children between us? Yet hast thou forgotten the affection I bare to thee out of a desire for a second husband. Nor hast thou been satisfied with that injury thou didst me, but thou hast been so bold as to procure thee a third husband, and hast been married to Archelaus—thy husband and my brother. However, I will not forget my former affection for thee, but will set thee free from every such reproachful action, and cause thee to be mine again as thou once wast.’ When she had related this to her female companions, in a few days’ time she departed this life.”

The fatality which coincided with the prophetic warning of Lord Lyttelton, might well be adduced as another illustration, were it not for some imputation of suicidal disposition in that nobleman, which would more forcibly invalidate the prophetic dignity of his dream.

I may relate another story, not remotely illustrative of this influence, from Brand’s “Popular Antiquities.”—“My friend, the late Captain Mott, R. N., used frequently to repeat an anecdote of a seaman under his command. This individual, who was a good sailor and a brave man, suffered much trouble and anxiety from his superstitious fears. When on the night watch, he would see sights and hear noises, in the rigging and the deep, which kept him in a perpetual fever of alarm. One day the poor fellow reported upon deck, that the devil, whom he knew by his horns and cloven feet, stood by the side of his hammock on the preceding night, and told him that he had only three days to live. His messmates endeavoured to remove his despondency by ridicule, but without effect. And the next morning he told the tale to Captain Mott, with this addition, that the fiend had paid him a second nocturnal visit, announcing a repetition of the melancholy tidings. The captain in vain expostulated with him on the folly of indulging such groundless apprehensions. And the morning of the fatal day being exceedingly stormy, the man, with many others, was ordered to the topmast to perform some duty among the rigging. Before he ascended, he bade his messmates farewell, telling them that he had received a third warning from the devil, and that he was confident he should be dead before night. He went aloft with the foreboding of evil on his mind, and in less than five minutes he lost his hold, fell upon the deck, and was killed upon the spot.”

Were an aversion to these gloomy fancies inculcated, it might avert many a fatal foreboding, which, even in our own enlightened era, has closely resembled the fate of the African victims of Obi; that magic fascination, which its Syriac namesake, Obh, works by spell, until the doomed one pines to death, with the deep conviction that he is under the ban of an enchanter.

MATERIAL CAUSES OF DREAMS.

“Iago. Nay, this was but his dream. Othello. But this denoted a foregone conclusion; ’Tis a shrewd doubt, tho’ it be but a dream.” OTHELLO.

ASTR. We looked for more from you, Evelyn, than these proofs of a negative.

I presume still to think your philosophy is very weak in controversion of the inspiration of a dream, and its supernatural causes. I cannot but believe, with Baxter, that dreams may be “spirits in communion with us.”

EV. And you will define these shadowless ministers in the fashion of Master Richard Burthogge, Medicinæ Doctor, (in his book, printed by Raven, in the Poultry, in 1694.) I have a smack, you see, of medical bibliomania, Astrophel. Burthogge, although one of the most rational interpreters of dreams and spectres, thinks their internal causes purely metaphysical; and then refutes his own opinion point blank by this sophistry,—that “there are things incorporated, but invisible, which we call spirits;” as who should say, with Shakspere’s fairies, “We have the gift of fern seed; we are invisible.”

No; we will account for the causes of dreams, Astrophel, without the ministry of spirits.

Analyzing, then, the notions of all, it is clear that the essence of the dream is recurrence of ideas. In the words of Walpole,—“The memory retains the colouring of the day.”

Now memory is the first faculty to fail in age, and you know old people seldom dream: the same objects are applied, but there is little or no association, for the brain is dull and feeble; imbecility, indeed, is mad memory.

The two common periods associated with the dream, are the past and the future, involving memory and prognostication; the latter being but the memory of an intention,—an image excited in the mind by analogy. Even when present sensations excite the dream, it is ever associated, as you remember, with something before seen or felt.

The waking thought will thus again modify the dream; and Dr. Abercrombie has a curious illustration of this combining of two minds,—one waking subject, one dream, and one disturbing cause.

The French invasion was the universal topic in Edinburgh; and the city was, indeed, one company of volunteers. It was decided that the tocsin of alarm on the approach of the enemy, was to be the firing of the castle guns, followed by a chain of signals. At two, an officer was awoke from a vivid dream of guns and signals, and reviews of troops, by his lady, who herself was affrighted by a similar dream, with a few associations of a different nature. And whence all this alarm?—the falling of a pair of tongs on the hearth, the noise of which was quite sufficient for the production of their dreaming associations.

ASTR. It would seem to me that Evelyn was too anxious to find employment for the brain, in thus imputing so much to substantial causes.

There is a funny scrap, I remember to have read, and of which I may shrewdly suspect my friend to be the scribbler. “Whence we may compare the powers of mind to a court of judicature:—the outward senses being as the solicitors that bring the causes; the common sense, as the master of requests, who receives all their informations; and phantasy (or imagination), like the lawyers and advocates that bandy the business to and fro in several forms, with a deal of noise and bustle; reason, as the judge, that having calmly heard each party’s pretensions, pronounces an upright sentence; and memory, as the clerk, records the whole proceedings.” But say, if the dream is but the memory of an impression, are metaphysics to be counted as a cypher, in our discussion of the nature of intellect?

EV. Nay, the psychologist must ever call metaphysics to his aid, especially when speaking of the health or disorder of mind: there is an intimate blending of metaphysics and philosophy. But believe not, Astrophel, that I presume to develope that mysterious influence which is going on between mind and matter, so essential to the manifestation of the former, during its earthly condition. The mystery will ever be a sealed letter to the intellect. It is enough that we have evidence of its existence without yearning for deeper insight of final causes. I have assured you that I do not believe thought or reflection, or any act of mind to be material, and speak even with all due courtesy to the abstract metaphysician, and the divine who, doubtless from pure and holy motives, would seek to cut the Gordian knot of this sublime enigma.