or, at least, as familiar to us; and that this may be solved by the readiness with which they start up, and succeed one another, in the fancy.
Seventhly, It has also been remarked, that dreams ought to be soon forgotten, as they are in fact; because the state of the brain suffers great changes in passing from sleep to vigilance. The wildness and inconsistency of our dreams render them still more liable to be forgotten. It is said that a man may remember his dreams best by continuing in the same posture in which he dreamt; which, if true, would be a remarkable confirmation of the doctrine of vibrations; since those which take place in the medullary substance of the brain would be least disturbed and obliterated by this means.
Eighthly, the dreams which are presented in the first part of the night are, for the most part, much more confused, irregular, and difficult to be remembered, than those which we dream towards the morning; and these last are often rational to a considerable degree, and regulated according to the usual course of our associations. For the brain begins then to approach to the state of vigilance, or that in which the usual associations were formed and cemented. However, association has some power even in wild and inconsistent dreams.
Cor. I. As the prophecies were, many of them, communicated in the way of divine visions, trances, or dreams, so they bear many of the foregoing marks of dreams. Thus they deal chiefly in visible imagery; they abound with apparent impossibilities, and deviations from common life, of which yet the prophets take not the least notice: they speak of new things as of familiar ones: they are carried in the spirit from place to place; things requiring a long series of time in real life are transacted in the prophetical visions as soon as seen; they ascribe to themselves and others new names, offices, &c.; every thing has a real existence conferred upon it; there are singular combinations of fragments of visible appearances; and God himself is represented in a visible shape, which of all other things must be most offensive to a pious Jew. And it seems to me that these and such like criterions might establish the genuineness of the prophecies, exclusively of all other evidences.
Cor. II. The wildness of our dreams seems to be of singular use to us, by interrupting and breaking the course of our associations. For, if we were always awake, some accidental associations would be so much cemented by continuance, as that nothing could afterwards disjoin them; which would be madness.
Cor. III. A person may form a judgment of the state of his bodily health, and of his temperance, by the general pleasantness or unpleasantness of his dreams. There are also many useful hints relating to the strength of our passions deducible from them.
