The Philosophy of Mystery

In the “City of Dreams,” of Lucian, the blasphemer (whose beauties are stained by their impieties), these eternal gates are again alluded to. But the dreams in this city are all deceivers; for when a mortal enters the gates, a circle of domestic dreams in a moment unfold to him a budget of intelligence, which proves to be a tissue of lies.

The evidence of Holy Scripture again proves the occasion, indeed the necessity, for such communication; but, in our own time, I deem it little less than profaneness, to imagine that the Deity should indicate the future occurrence of common-place and trivial incidents through the medium of an organ, confessedly in a state of imperfection, at the moment when the faculties of mind are returning from a state of temporary suspension,—a death-like sleep.

When we reflect that the proportion of events, seemingly the fulfilment of a dream, is to the myriads of forebodings which never come to pass (as the dreams recorded with some solemnity by Herodotus, of Alcibiades; of Crœsus, regarding his son Atys; of Astyages and the vine; of Cambyses, respecting Smerdis; and of Hamilcar, at the siege of Syracusa;) as a drop in the ocean, the fallacy of the doctrine must be evident. I marvel much that credulity, in this reflecting age, can gain a single proselyte.

When the pagan priesthood of old lay down on the reeking skins of their victims to rouse the inspiration of their dreams, it was to cheat their proselytes. Such were the mummeries in the Temple of Æsculapius. The devotees were first purified by the “lustral water;” and then divine visions came over them, and priestesses in snowy robes, and a venerable priest in the habit of Æsculapius, paraded round the altar, and the charm was complete.

“Mr. Alexander Cooper, present minister of North-uist, told me that one John Erach, in the Isle of Lewis, assured him that it was his fate to have been led by his curiosity to some who consulted this oracle, and that he was a night within the hide as above mentioned, during which time he felt and heard such terrible things that he could not express them; the impression it made on him was such as could never go off, and he said for a thousand worlds he would never again be concerned in the like performance, for this had disordered him to a high degree. He confessed it ingenuously and with an air of great remorse, and seemed to be very penitent under a just sense of so great a crime: he declared this about five years since, and is still living in the Lewis for any thing I know.”

In imitation of this spell for the divine inspiration of a dream, the modern Franciscans, after the ceremony of mass, throw themselves on mats already consecrated by the slumber of some holy visionary, and with all this foolery, they vaunt the divine inspiration of their dream.

“Augurs, and soothsayers, astrologers, diviners, and interpreters of dreams I never consult, and despise their vain pretence to more than human skill.” And also this caution bequeathed to you by Epictetus: “Never tell thy dream; for though thou thyself mayest take a pleasure in telling thy dream, another will take no pleasure in hearing it.”

Astr. Epictetus was himself a dreamer in this; for the story of a dream is ever listened to with interest. And what would Epictetus think, were I to tell him that broad lands and mitres have been gained before now by the shrewd putting of a dream?

Pereskius, the friend of Gassiendi, after a severe fever, in 1609, was engaged in the study of ancient coins, weights, and measures. One night, he dreamed he met a goldsmith at Nismes, who offered him a coin of Julius Cæsar for four cardecues. The next day this incident was repeated to him in reality. But he was a philosopher, and deemed it, as it was, but a rare coincidence.

There were two sisters, who (as a learned physician has recorded) were sleeping together during the illness of their brother. One of these ladies dreamed that her watch, an old family relic, had stopped, and, on waking her sister to tell of this, she was answered by her thus: “Alas! I have worse to tell you: our brother’s breath is also stopped.” On the following night, the same dream was repeated to the young lady. On the morning after this second dream, the lady, on taking out the watch, which had been perfect in its movement, observed that it had indeed stopped, and at the same moment she heard her sister screaming; the brother, who had been till then apparently recovering, had just breathed his last.

These are sequences, and not consequences: and I might adduce a mass of these mere coincidences, which have been stretched and warped, to make up a prophecy. Such as the following legend of Sergius Galba, told by Fulgosius: “Galba had coquetted with two marble ladies,—the Fortune, at Tusculum, and the Capitoline Venus; and, to adorn the neck of the first, he had purchased a brilliant diamond necklace. But the charms of the Venus of the Capitol prevailed over her rival, and the necklace was at length presented to the goddess of beauty. At night, the form of Fortune appeared to him in his sleep, upbraiding him with his falsehood, and telling him that he should be deprived of all the gifts she had lavished on him, and Galba, as the story goes, soon after died.”

But, if dreams are essentially prophetic, why are they not all fulfilled? and if one is not fulfilled, how know we if all will not be equally fallacious? The argument for the prophetic nature is merely à posteriori, the shallow “post hoc, ergo propter hoc,” of the sophist. On the occurrence of any important event, all the auguries and dreams which bear the slightest semblance to a prophecy are immediately adduced, and stretched and warped to suit the superstition; as the whimsical mother will account for the marks on her child by frights and longings. When we know that myriads of enthusiasts and hypochondriacs have, by the failure of their predictions, deserved the stigma of false prophets, we may surely class these phantasies among the popular errors of the time.

As there are dreams from impressions on the body during sleep, so are there diseased tissues in the brain, which light up phantoms of terror and death perfectly prophetic. But wherefore so? Merely because they are induced by that disease which usually terminates in death. Such were the dreams during the nightmare which preceded, and, I believe, still precede, the epidemic fevers in Rome, and in those of Leyden, in 1669, when the patient fell asleep, and was attacked by incubus before each exacerbation. The impersonation of death was the prevailing phantom of their dream, and in reality death soon followed.

Among those heathen tribes, where superstition and ignorance form part of a national creed, there is a degree of blindness and inconsistency that may truly be termed mania. It is the doctrine, not of prophecy, but of debased and absolute fatalism. The North American Indians not only regard the dream as prophetic, but often receive it as a solemn injunction, and are themselves the active agents in its fulfilment. “In whatever manner,” says Charlevoix, “the dream is conceived, it is always looked upon as a thing sacred, and as the most ordinary way in which the gods make known their will to men. Filled with this idea, they cannot conceive how we should pay no regard to them. For the most part they look upon them either as a desire of the soul, inspired by some genius, or an order from him, and, in consequence of this principle, they hold it a religious duty to obey them. An Indian, having dreamt of the amputation of his finger, had it really cut off as soon as he awoke, first preparing himself for this important action by a feast!”

Among more enlightened people there may be an inducement to action from the impression of a dream; here, also, the consequence is the fulfilment of the prophecy. Such, Astrophel, were the dreams of Arlotte and Cadiga; of Judas Maccabæus; of Sylla; of Germanicus; and of Masulenius; and the dream of the priestess of Proserpine, on the eve of Timoleon’s expedition from Corinth to Syracuse, that Ceres volunteered to be his travelling companion into Sicily. The dream of Olympia, that she was with child of a dragon, might both have suggested the mode of education, and incited the warlike spirit of Alexander.

And we read in the travels of Herbert, that Cangius, the blacksmith of Mount Taurus, aspired to, and gained dominion over the Tartars from a similar influence, and from his name has the title of “Chan” been since conferred on some of the most warlike monarchs of the East.

I may remind you, too, that even a simple waking incident will impart this power of action. It is a record of history, that Robert Bruce slept, during his wandering, in the barn of a cottage. As he was lying, he saw a spider attempt to climb to the roof; twelve times the insect failed ere it gained its point. This potent lesson of perseverance instantly flashed across his mind, and in a few days was won the field of Bannockburn. Be sure the seers termed this an omen.

Of such a nature were the dreams of the Emperor Julian and of Calphurnia, if indeed these were more than fable; and such was the dream of Cromwell,—that he should be the greatest man in England. In all these, and a thousand more, the mere constant thinking excited the dream. The ambitious thought of Cromwell was constantly haunting his waking moments, pointing to personal aggrandisement, and, of consequence, imparted a like character to the dream of his slumbers. Could we have penetrated the privacy of Ireton, and Lambert, and other Presbyterian leaders, we should discover that such ambitious prepossessions were not confined to the bosom of the Protector.