“I am prolix, and I fear tedious, in treating of the sensory; but it is a point of some consequence, and this ingenious Author’s scheme principally turns on the supposition of its being shut up during sleep, from the soul’s inspection; whereby he divests it of memory, and thence infers it of memory, and thence infers the necessity of receiving all the materials of our dreams from foreign agents. I am induced to conjecture, that he found himself a little pressed by Mr. Locke’s arguments against the soul’s perpetual thinking, but that it sometimes nods with the body, which has an aspect of making them too nearly related; and perfectly to get over this difficulty (which he has otherwise, with much success attempted) he deemed it proper to detach the soul from having the least dependence on the body as to dreams, by drawing a veil over the sensory in sleep; whereby too, the irrationality charged on our sleeping thoughts cannot be attributed to our wanting the assistance of the body, as tho’ we owed the perfection of thinking thereto; but must be occasioned by spirits, who obtrude on us what we then think about. But I cannot help apprehending, that tho’ his Hypothosis makes the soul sometimes active, whilst the body sleeps, and its thoughts at that time independent on the body; yet it renders the view of the sensory so necessary to thinking, that, should the soul, deprived of its aid, be at the same time unoccupied by spirits, it might, nay must, as soundly nod, as by the other supposition.”
Thomas Branch, Thoughts on Dreaming, (London: R. Dodsley, 1738) pp. 25-6.
from ‘Lady Barbara; or, The Ghost’, Book XVI of Tales of the Hall.
‘But then in sleep those horrid forms arise,
That the soul sees,— and, we suppose, the eyes,—
And the soul hears,— the senses then thrown by,
She is herself the ear, herself the eye;
A mistress so will free her servile race
For their own tasks, and take herself the place:
In sleep what forms will ductile fancy take,
And what so common as to dream awake?
On others thus do ghostly guests intrude?
Or why am I by such advice pursued?
One out of millions who exist, and why
They know not – cannot know – and such am I;
And shall two beings of two worlds, to meet,
The laws of one, perhaps of both, defeat?
It cannot be.— But if some being lives
Who such kind warning to a favourite gives,
Let him these doubts from my dull spirit clear,
And once again, expected guest! appear.’
[39-56]
‘Yes, all are dreams; but some as we awake
Fly off at once, and no impression make;
Others are felt, and ere they quit the brain
Make such impression that they come again;
As half familiar thoughts, and half unknown,
And scarcely recollected as our own;
For half a day abide some vulgar dreams,
And give our grandams and our nurses themes;
Others, more strong, abiding figures draw
Upon the brain, and we assert “I saw;”
And then the fancy on the organs place
A powerful likeness of a form and face.
‘Yet more – in some strong passion’s troubled reign,
Or when the fever’d blood inflames the brain,
At once the outward and the inward eye
The real object and the fancied spy;
The eye is open, and the sense is true,
And therefore they the outward object view;
But while the real sense is fix’d on these,
The power within its own creation sees;
And these, when mingled in the mind, create
Those striking visions which our dreamers state;
For knowing that is true that met the sight,
They think the judgment of the fancy right.
Your frequent talk of dreams has made me turn
My mind on them, and these the facts I learn.
Or should you say, ’t is not in us to take
Heed in both ways, to sleep and be awake,
Perhaps the things by eye and mind survey’d
Are in their quick alternate efforts made;
For by this mixture of the truth, the dream
Will in the morning fresh and vivid seem.
‘Dreams are like portraits, and we find they please
Because they are confess’d resemblances;
But those strange night-mare visions we compare
To waxen figures – they too real are,
Too much a very truth, and are so just
To life and death, they pain us or disgust.’
[814-855]
George Crabbe, ‘Lady Barbara; or, The Ghost’, in The Complete Poetical Works, ed. by Norma Dalrymple-Champneys and Arthur Pollard, 3 vols (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press: 1988) II, pp.547-573.
“In healthy sleep we often fly rather than walk, our dimensions are enlarged, our resolutions have more force, our actions are less confined. And though all this depends on the body, as the least circumstance respecting the soul must harmonize with it, as long as her powers are so intimately incorporated with its structure; yet the whole of the phenomena of sleep and dreaming, which are certainly singular, and would greatly astonish us, were we not accustomed to them, shows us, that every part of the body does not belong to us in the same manner; nay, that certain organs of our machine may be unstrung, and the superior power act more ideally, vividly, and freely, from mere reminiscence. Now since all the causes that induce sleep, and all its corporal symptoms, are, not metaphorically, but physiologically and actually analogous to those of death; why should not the spiritual symptoms of both be the same? Thus, then, when the sleep of death falls on us from weariness or disease, still the hope remains, that death, like sleep, only cools the fever of life, gently interrupts the too uniform and long-continued movement, heals many wounds incurable in this life, and prepares the soul for a pleasurable awakening, for the enjoyment of a new morning of youth. As in dreams my thoughts fly back to youth; as in them, being only half-fettered by a few organs, but more concentred in myself, I feel more free and active: so thou, revivifying dream of death, wilt smilingly bring back the youth of my life, the most pleasing and energetic moments of my existence, till I awake in its form—or rather in the more beautiful form of celestial juvenility.”
Johann Gottfried Herder, Outlines of a Philosophy of the History of Man, trans. by Thomas Churchill (London: J. Johnson, 1800), p.122.
“The Dreams of sleeping Men, are, as I take it, all made up of the waking Man’s Ideas, though for the most part oddly put together. ’Tis strange if the Soul has Ideas of its own, that it derived not from Sensation or Reflection, (as it must have, if it thought before it received any Impression from the Body) that it should never, in its private Thinking, (so private that the Man himself perceives it not) retain any of them, the very Moment it wakes out of them, and then make the Man glad with new Discoveries.”
John Locke, An Essay concerning human understanding in 4 books, (Edmund Parker: London, 1731) vol.1 of 2. p.76
“[…] when all is at rest and silent, and the impressions on the sensory designedly sealed up from the view of the mind; it is easy […] to make new and foreign impressions on the sensory; nothing else acting upon it at the same time. And these impressions must be perceived; for the soul is still active and percipient; and its perceptivity is now no other way solicited by any thing external. And the register of former impressions being sealed up from its view, these new impressions must be perceived without memory of what hath passed before: and therefore they must be perceived as caused by real external objects, such as usually make impressions upon the sensory.
[…]
“A set of new objects is immediately presented to it, and that succeeded by another, and that still by another, with greater variety and latitude of nature, than what it perceives by the in-let of the senses; for a new creation of things, of different species and other natures, really beyond the licence of the Painter or the Poet’s imagination, is now offered to it, or forced upon it.
[…]
“To say the soul acts without willing the action, hath been shewn […] to be repugnant: and since willing is one species of consciousness, or thinking; not to be conscious of our own willing, is not to be conscious of our own consciousness.”
Andrew Baxter, An Enquiry into the Nature of the Human Soul: Wherein the Immateriality of the Soul is evinced from the Principles of Reason and Philosophy, 2nd edn, 2 vols (London: A. Miller, 1737) II, pp. 8-14
“I grant that the Soul in a waking Man is never without Thought, because it is the Condition of being awake: But whether Sleeping without Dreaming be not an Affection of the whole Man, Mind as well as Body, may be worth a waking Man’s Consideration; it being hard to conceive that any thing should think, and not be conscious of it. If the Soul doth think in a sleeping Man, without being conscious of it, I ask, whether, during such Thinking, it has any Pleasure or Pain, or be capable of Happiness or Misery? I am sure the Man is not, no more than the Bed or Earth he lies on. For to be Happy or Miserable, without being conscious of it, seems to me utterly inconsistent and impossible; or if it be possible that the Soul can, whilst the Body is sleeping, have its Thinking, Enjoyments and Concerns, its Pleasure or Pain apart, which the Man is not conscious of, nor partakes in: It is certain, that Socrates asleep, and Socrates awake, is not the same Person: But his Soul when he sleeps, and Socrates the Man, consisting of Body and Soul when he is waking, are two Persons; since waking Socrates has no Knowledge of, or Concernment for that Happiness or Misery of his Soul, which it enjoys alone by it self whilst he sleeps, without perceiving any thing of it; no more than he has for the Happiness or Misery of a Man in the Indies, whom he knows not. For if we take wholly away all Consciousness of our Actions and Sensations, especially of Pleasure and Pain, and the Concernment that accompanies it, it will be hard to know wherein to place Personal Identity.”
John Locke, An Essay concerning human understanding in 4 books, (Edmund Parker: London, 1731) vol.1 of 2. p.72-3
JRWB 