Page:Faithhealingchri00buckiala.djvu/142

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128
DREAMS, NIGHTMARE, AND SOMNAMBULISM

under the control of the will, when at night the imagination is set free, scenes of early life or childhood furnish the materials of the images much more frequently than contemporaneous events. This is in harmony with the known laws of memory.

In regard to the dreams of the insane, the "Medical Critic and Psychological Journal" of April, 1862, says:

The dreams of the insane are generally characteristic of the nature of the aberration under which they labor; those of the typho-maniac are gloomy and frightful; of the general paralytic, gay and smiling; of the maniac, wild, disordered, pugnacious; in stupidity they are vague, obscure, and incoherent; in dementia, few and fleeting; in hypochondria and hysteria the sleep, especially during indigestion, is disturbed and painful.

This is in accordance with all the indications.


ACCOUNTING FOR THE CHARACTERISTICS OF DREAMS

In dreams, time and the limitations of space are apparently annihilated. This is to be explained by the fact that the reports of the senses and the movements of external bodies by which we measure time are shut out, and the mind is entirely absorbed in a series of images.

I entered the South Kensington Museum in London, and saw a painting of an Alderney bull, cow, and calf in a field, which produced so extraordinary an illusion that I advanced several steps toward it in broad daylight, under the belief that I was looking out of a window into the park. The same phenomenon occurs under the spell of an orator of the highest grade; and it is the charm of a theatrical performance to make an audience think and feel that a series