The Philosophy of Mystery

The arguments in the “Phædo” of Plato point to this truth, that the germ of all ideas is sown in the mind by the senses. So, also, the metaphysics of Kant teach that the senses are feelers or conductors, by which we obtain materials of our knowledge; and indeed that matter and sensation are synonymous; that matter exists à priori in the mind. This was the belief of Coleridge, that there can be nothing fancied in our dreams, without an antecedent quasi cause, a Roman having written, before him, the same sentiment: —

I am aware that among the deaf and dumb high moral sentiments may exist. But if they can read essays, these sentiments may be imbibed in their reading. And yet a very learned lord has asserted, that a being, doomed to absolute solitude and estrangement from his very birth, could discover the principles of algebra! At this sophism, oh shade of Epictetus! thou mightest rise, to vindicate the importance of our beautiful senses; of the eye, beyond all, that achromatic globe of brightest crystal, the contemplation of which first convinced thee of design in the Creator, and prompted thee to pen the first “Bridgewater Treatise.”

On the opening, or even the restoration of a sense, in this forlorn “plant animal,” all his associations would be erroneous. He would, at first, see double; he would, like children, consider all bodies, however distant, within his grasp; and, like the idiot, draw all his figures topsy-turvy, as they are really painted on the retina, until judgment and practice rectified his error.

There are romantic stories, not foreign to this subject, in which the creation of a Caliban is almost a truth; and which exemplify to us the accordance of nature with habit and circumstance, and the dearth of mind when deprived of the light of instruction.

I allude to those unhappy creatures who, with the form and organs of man, have run wild in the woods, and fed on husks, and berries, and herded with the brute. We have some very curious histories of these beings, especially in the 17th and 18th centuries. Two were discovered in the Forest of Lithuania; one in the Forest of Yuary, in the Pyrenees, by M. Le Roy; two wild girls by a nobleman, near Chalons, in Champagne; and Peter the wild boy, found by the escort of George I. in the woods of Hertswold, in Hanover. In these cases disease might have been discovered; yet the effect of partial civilization, even in minute points, indicates some power of acquiring ideas not congenital.

But as to these dreaming flights of the spirit of good Sir Thomas Brown, I may confess, Astrophel, that you have some poets and metaphysicians, and even a few philosophers, on your side. You may read in Plato’s “Phædo,” that “the body is the prison of the soul; that the soul, when it came from God, knew all; but, inclosed in the body, it forgets and learns anew.” And in Seneca:

This sentiment Addison has very readily adopted; prating about “the amusements of the soul when she is disencumbered of her machine,” and so forth. And yet Addison, I remember, thus qualifies his creed:—“I do not suppose that the soul, in these instances, is entirely loose and unfettered from the body; it is sufficient if she is not so far sunk and immersed in matter, nor entangled and perplexed in her operations, with such motions of blood and spirits, as when she actuates the machine in its waking hours. The corporeal union is slackened enough to give the mind more play,” &c.

In this conceit, deficient both in philosophy and psychology, you perceive the speculator draws in his horns, and concludes with that which means nothing. It is, indeed, a mere compromise; an endeavour to extricate from their perilous dilemma the metaphysical pathologists who talk so fluently of the diseases of the immaterial mind, forgetful, it would seem, of this truth—that which is diseased may die; a consummation which would undermine the Christian faith, and blight the holiest hope of man—the prospect of immortality.

And yet my Astrophel will lean to the vagaries of our pseudo-psychologists, who believed the dream to be the flight of the soul on a visit to other regions; and its observation of their nature and systems from actual survey. Of the fruits of this ethereal voyage the dreamer, I presume, is made conscious when the soul returns to the brain, its earthly pabulum or home. Were this so, it should enjoy visions of unalloyed beatitude; and even were there a limit to its excursions, a thing so pure and perfect would select angelic communion only. I do not aver that such things are not, but that we cannot know it here. We have no satisfactory remembrance of cities and temples thus surveyed, more gorgeous than the waking conceptions of the thousand and one nights; or the legends of the genii; no wonders or eccentricities which eclipse the exploits of Gulliver, Peter Wilkins, Friar Bacon, or Baron Munchausen.

Lavater carries out this caprice, by a very fine metaphysical thought, to illustrate the night-apparition. That it is their “transportive or imaginative faculty that causes others to appear to us in our dreams.” And I myself was once gravely told by a visionary, that he dreamed, one night, of a certain old woman; and she afterwards told him, that she dreamed she was, on that very night, in his chamber. So, you perceive, her imago, or material thought, entered into his mind, and caused his dream.

Now it is clear that these illusions cannot tend to advance the dignity of mind. Nothing can be more convincing to prove a suspension of judgment. Remember that during this life,—the incorporation of the soul,—we are conscious of it only through the brain. It is not yet emancipated; and it is an error to think, because sometimes we have a brilliant vision, that therefore, if the body were more inactive, the soul would be more ethereal.

Astr. And yet we are assured that Alexander, and Voltaire, and La Fontaine, and Condillac, and Tartini, and Franklin, and Mackenzie, and Coleridge, were wont to compose plans of battles, and problems, and poems, in their dreams, with a degree of vigour and facility, far exceeding their waking studies.

Ev. This very facility proves that there was association from memory, without volition or effort; the mind being in a state of reverie, and the senses quiescent. In this consists the vivid and delightful visions lighted up by our memory in slumber, especially when there is darkness and silence, so that there is no perception; or when the mind is concentrated, and has been reposing, so that its fancy is a novelty.

It were indeed much better that we established either the material hypothesis of Priestley, or his antipodes, Berkeley,—that nature was but a compound of spirits, ideas unfettered by matter; or the visionary scheme of Hume (borrowed indeed from the Hindoo philosopher, Abul Fazel), that there is nought but impression and idea in nature; or even the absolute scepticism of Pyrrho;—than that we should favour the rhapsody of Brown, that the consciousness of waking moments should thus deteriorate reason, and render the mind incompatible with sublunary duties.

Ev. Coleridge was an opium-eater, and the whole intellectual life of this mighty metaphysician was a dream. And you may forget that Coleridge was already a poet, and reasons thus from impressions in his own visions, during the elysium of his anodyne. But the contrasted feelings of Coleridge’s nights at once confirm the monomania of his dreaming; and if you read his “Pains of Sleep,” Castaly, you will not deem them a slight penalty, even for his libel on your sweet Shakspere.

“All power of Fancy over Reason is a degree of insanity. By degrees, the reign of Fancy is confirmed; she grows first imperious, and in time despotic. Then fictions begin to operate as realities, false opinions fasten upon the mind, and life passes in dreams of rapture, or of anguish.”

And why, Astrophel, dream we of strange things? Because we cannot compare illusion with reality. So we may reverse the doctrine of Pyrrho (who doubted his own existence), and imagine ourselves possessed of ubiquity. We may fancy we are both old and young at the same moment, nay, that we are and are not; possess the hundred eyes of Argus, or the hundred arms of Briareus; that Zoroaster, and Virgil, and Shakspere, and ourselves, are co-existent. Indeed, our thoughts and actions are all modelled on a principle of paradox,—as wild even as the visions in the “Confessions of an Opium-Eater.”

“I was reduced so low, that I could read nothing but the Arabian Nights’ Entertainments; and it is extraordinary that often, while every other faculty, judgment, the will, association, perfection, even the memory itself, is in a state of almost total re-action, this volatile thing, imagination, should be the most robust and active; it seems to rejoice at the release from companionship with its fellows, and darts off on seraph-wings, rambles through all space, visits all places, turning, and tossing, and jostling all things in its progress, or conjoining them in the most grotesque shapes. The imagination in madmen is often of this description; and there may be

Cast. Yet this truth may be often withheld by potent impression, as in the illusion of Rip Van Winkle, and the trances of Nourjahad. I believe the waking mind of Caspar Hauser knew not the difference between dream and reality; he related his dream as fact.