Thomas Browne

“ Butt beside these innocent delusions there is a sinfull state of dreames; death alone, not sleepe is able to putt an end unto sinne, & there may bee a night booke of our Iniquities; for beside the trangressions of the day, casuists will tell us of mortall sinnes in dreames arising from evil precogitations; meanwhile human lawe regards not noctambulos; and if a night walker should breacke his neck, or kill a man, takes no notice of it. ”

“ The day supplyeth us with truths, the night with fictions and falsehoods, which uncomfortably divide the natural account of our beings. And therefore having passed the day in sober labours and rationall enquiries of truth, wee are fayne to betake ourselves unto such a state of being, wherin the soberest heads have acted all the monstrosities of melancholy, and which unto open eyes are no better then folly and madnesse. ”

“ Men act in sleepe with some conformity unto their awaked senses, & consolations or discoureagments may bee drawne from dreames, which intimately tell us ourselves. Luther was not like to feare a spirit in the night, when such an apparition would not terrifie him in the daye. Alexander would hardly have runne away in the sharpest combates of sleepe, nor Demosthenes have stood stoutly to it, who was scarce able to do it in his prepared senses. Persons of radicall integritie will not easily bee perverted in their dreames, nor noble minds pitifully things in sleepe. ”

“ Many dreames are made out by sagacious exposition from the signature of their subjects; carrying their interpretation in their fundamentall sence & mysterie of similitude, whereby hee that understands upon what naturall fundamentall every notionall dependeth, may by symbolicall adaptation hold a readie way to read the characters of Morpheus. ”

“ Pious persons whose thoughts are dayly busied about heaven & the blessed state therof, can hardly escape the nightly phantasms of it, which though sometimes taken for illuminations or divine dreames, yet rightly perpended may prove butt animal visions and naturall night scenes of their waking contemplations. ”

“ That there should bee divine dreames seemes unreasonably doubted by Aristotle. That there are demonicall dreames wee have little reason to doubt. Why may there not bee Angelicall?If there bee Guardian spirits, they may not bee unactively about us in sleepe, butt may sometimes order our dreames, and many strange hints, instigations, or discoveries which are so amazing unto us, may arise from such foundations. Butt the phantasms of sleepe do commonly walk in the great roade of naturall & animal dreames ”

“ Even Daniel, that great interpreter of dreames, in his leguminous dyet seeemes to have chosen no advantageous food for quiet sleepes according to Graecian physick. To adde unto the delusion of dreames, the phantasticall objects seeme greater then they are, and being beheld in the vaporous state of sleepe, enlarge their diameters unto us ”

“ Happy are they that go to bed with grave musick like Pythagoras, or have wayes to compose the phantasticall spirit, whose unrulie wandrings takes of inward sleepe, filling our heads with St. ”

“ There is an Art to make dreames as well as their interpretations, and physitians will tell us that some food makes turbulent, some gives quiet dreames. Cato who doated upon cabbadge might find the crude effects thereof in his sleepe ”