Edward W. Cox

“ We are conscious that we can no longer control the movements of the mind. Momentary resistance to the influence but provokes its more vigorous return. For an instant we wake with a start to consciousness of the external world. If we desire to resist the coming [18] on of sleep, we exert the Will fitfully, start into waking life for a few moments, contract the relaxed muscles, open the drooped eyelids, stare with a peculiar expression of imbecile amazement, strive to look as if we had not been surprised by sleep, and for a while the mind resumes its normal action. ”

“ Nevertheless, there are characteristics of Dream which appear to indicate a suspension of activity in some parts of the intellectual mechanism. Although perfectly conscious of the presence of the dream, we are unable to discover that it is not real; we cannot discern incongruities, nor recognize impossibilities. The dead of long ago come to us and we are not amazed. We walk the waters and float in the air and are not astonished. Nothing is too impossible to be done and nothing too monstrous to be implicitly believed. We are, in fact, insane in dream. ”

“ Unless you are a skilful and practised dramatist you will find yourself wholly at fault. Remember that what you in the full possession of your intellect have failed to do, the most ignorant and stupid do every night and you will begin to measure this marvel of the exaltation of the mental powers that attends upon the condition of dream. If you indulge in the pleasant but dangerous practice of reading in bed, have you not often, on closing the book, extinguishing the candle, and turning to sleep, continued in a state of dream to read on, believing that you were still reading the book. ”

“ Consciousness is regained with an effort and a start. The thread of waking thought is resumed. But it is for a moment only. Again the head nods, the eyes blink and close, the limbs relax. He is asleep.
What are our own sensations when we go to sleep? [6] Thought wanders. Ideas come straying into the mind unbidden and with no apparent association. External objects grow dim to the eye and sounds fall faint upon the ear. The communications of the senses to the brain are dull and uncertain. We are conscious that the power of the Will is relaxed. ”

“ Nothing is too impossible or unreal for acceptance by the dreamer as facts that cause him neither surprise at their presence nor wonder how they come to be.
What is the change in the mental condition that has wrought this mental revolution—not slowly and by degrees, but wholly and in a moment? At this instant, the mind is competent to discern the ideal from the real, the shadow from the substance, the practical from the impossible. ”

“ When the brain is sleeping but partially there is some consciousness of time in sleep and of the lapse of time upon awaking. Is such partial sleep the slumber of one brain only, and are these phenomena of dream due to the action of that one brain deprived of the correcting influence of the other brain? Does the faculty of comparison fail to show us that our mental impressions are subjective and not objective because it is not assisted by the normal action of the duplicate faculty of the other brain? Comparison is the foundation of the process of reasoning. ”

“ Not only do we invent the dream, but we act it in thought. Not merely do we act in it [56] ourselves, but we paint the scenery, construct the dresses and decorations, invent the characters, and put into their mouths the language that would properly be theirs had they been beings of flesh and blood instead of shadows summoned by the fancy. Almost every faculty of the mind must be exercised upon such a work. Even the waking mental condition will not enable us to do this. ”

“ The substance of the brain itself is insensible, although it is the recipient and supposed seat of the pains and pleasures of the body—or rather of the nerves, for what we call the body is only the insensible clothing of the nerves. The nerves feel; the flesh and bones do not feel.
Is not this fact another powerful argument against the doctrine of the Materialists that consciousness and mind are only states of brain or conditions of matter? If the brain is not conscious of injuries done to itself, if it is insensible even to its own destruction, how can it be the “Conscious Self?” ”

“ In Dream we never lose the consciousness of our own identity. We retain our individuality. You dream often that you are something other than you are, but never that you are some other person. Does not this indicate the existence of an entity, other than the dreaming brain, which preserves its oneness and its sanity while the material organ with which it is associated and through which it communicates with the external world is, as it were, forgetting its reason, its experience and itself, and so becoming in very truth insane. ”

“ If the mind can thus live a life of its own when severed from the influences of the body by the paralysis of a section of the brain in sleep, is not the presumption strong that this something that does not sleep with the body, that preserves an individual consciousness, that has memory and a Will, can create a world of its own and live and act in it with entire belief in its reality and which has a perfect sense of pleasure and of pain, is not the material brain merely, but something other than brain and of which the brain hemispheres are only the material mechanism? ”

“ Dream is essentially a psychological condition and therefore an important study for the Psychologist, for in dream we learn, not only what is the mechanism of the Mind, but also much of the manner in which its operations are performed. Dream teaches us what recent physiologists have by their experiments confirmed—that the mind is not structured as one homogeneous entity, the whole of which is employed in every mental act; but that it is a machine composed of parts, each of which has its own special function, exhibited in the various expressions which we call ideas, sentiments and emotions. ”

“ With some sleepers sleep is, as they affirm, a condition of entire unconsciousness. These tell us they have no sense of existence until the moment of waking and that, however protracted their slumber, the moment of waking is to them as the moment after having fallen asleep. It is impossible to contradict those who thus affirm, for their mental condition in sleep cannot be read. But if a judgment may be formed from their actions in sleep, as talking and motions of the limbs, the probable explanation will be that they dream but do not remember their dreams. ”

“ Nevertheless, while that form is so still and seemingly so senseless—while consciousness of a world without is suspended—in this sleep that has been called the twin brother of death—the senseless sleeper is making a world and living a life of his own within himself. That brain is not sleeping with that body. It is awake and busy—often more busy than when the body is awake. ”

“ We do not pause to think how great the marvel is, nor how it comes to be. May I venture to hope that the reader will be induced to look upon this marvellous mental phenomenon with some curiosity and hereafter to recognise in the phenomena of dream, not only something to awaken curiosity, but something to command his serious attention, as being peculiarly fitted to reveal to the inquirer some of the mysteries of Mind, its structure, its faculties, the manner of its action. ”

“ The various mental functions are not exercised vaguely, but in more or less of orderly relationship to one another. Thus, imagination presents pictures which are accepted as having been brought from without by the senses and therefore to the sleeper are as real as if they had been objects of sight. These ideal pictures, thus received as real, according to their various characteristics excite precisely the same emotions as they would have excited had they been real. But although the picture is imaginary, the emotion is actual. We do not merely dream that we are angry or fearful ”

“ The most unmusical are often haunted by scraps of tune that no effort will banish. Airs are composed in dream which are remembered upon waking. Perhaps it is not that music is more the subject of dream than other mental creations, but it is the most capable of being retained by the mind and expressed after the dream has vanished. My own experience of this capacity of the dreaming mind has been to myself very surprising ”

“ This result is sometimes obscured by the fact, not sufficiently recognised by the Physician and the Mental Philosopher, that we have two brains—two organs of Mind—one of which can act alone when the other is wholly or partially disabled. If a Dream be analysed, it is not difficult to trace the action of each separate faculty. The imagination supplies the picture, which we mistake for a reality because we have lost the means by which, when awake, we distinguish the mere mental creation from the impressions borne to us by the senses. ”

“ The senses are not wholly paralysed in ordinary sleep. They carry [60] to the mind impressions of various degrees of power and act with more or less of force according to the condition of the recipient ganglion. Sounds are heard and suggest dreams. But the loudest sounds are not always perceived most readily. The unaccustomed sound most startles the consciousness. Often a whisper will waken when the roar of cannon makes no impression upon the sleeper. A dweller in a noisy street sleeps soundly amid the roar of carts and carriages and is wakeful in the country by reason of the silence. ”

“ In dream, with rare exceptions, we are not conscious that we are dreaming. Fancies are accepted as facts, shadows as substances, the ideal as the real. And they are so accepted without suspicion or doubt. ”

“ I can suggest no other solution of this than that the brain that dreams, and the Conscious Self that perceives the dream, are two entities, and that it is the Conscious Self or Soul that notes the flight of time in the external world, while the dreaming brain is revelling in its own conception of time as measured by the flow of its own ideas, and not in hours measured by the motions of the earth and moon. ”

“ May it not be that a similar condition is produced by temporary paralysis of the brain in sleep? As already stated, the power to reason is not absent in dream. We often reason elaborately and well, taking the ideal pictures as real incidents. [69] We accept as objective facts what are merely mental impressions and thus build an argument on an incorrect assumption. The reasoning is right, but the basis of it is false. Question each mental faculty in turn and it will appear that but one is at fault in dream—namely, comparison. ”

“ If such a condition could be imagined as a mind continuing to live in a dead body, we might find in this phenomenon of sleep how the mind could exist in the same state of activity as now, feel the same emotions of pleasure and of pain, and enjoy a life as real to itself, although imaginary in fact, as is the actual existence of any living man. ”

“ Does Soul exist and, if it exists, what is its relationship to the body?
A Dream is not a confused crowd of disconnected ideas. It is a succession of associated incidents more or less orderly, even when incongruous, improbable or even impossible. The mind of the sleeper constructs a drama, often having many parts played by many persons; but always himself is one of the actors. ”

“ The strange neglect of such an obvious means of knowledge is doubtless due to the fundamental error that has excluded Mind and Soul from the category of physical sciences and consigned them to the hopeless region of metaphysics, persisting in their pursuit by abstractions, argument and conjecture, and refusing to them investigation by facts, as the other sciences are now investigated. If the phenomena of dream were strange and rare as are those of somnambulism, they would as much excite our curiosity and strike us with amazement. ”

“ Dream is not merely a reproduction in new combinations of impressions made upon the mind unconsciously as well as consciously, forgotten as well as remembered. The fact must also be taken into account that in dream mental action is vastly increased and the flow of ideas so accelerated that if life be measured, as it should be, by the number of ideas that are presented by the mind, the life of dream is vastly longer than waking life. ”