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| Causes and Circumstances of Dreams. What Best Contributes to Efficient Dreaming.
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Chapter
XLVIII.—Causes and Circumstances of Dreams. What Best Contributes
to Efficient Dreaming.
They say that dreams are more sure and clear when
they happen towards the end of the night, because then the vigour of
the soul emerges, and heavy sleep departs. As to the seasons of the
year, dreams are calmer in spring, since summer relaxes, and winter
somehow hardens, the soul; while autumn, which in other respects is
trying to health, is apt to enervate the soul by the lusciousness of
its fruits. Then, again, as regards the position of one’s
body during sleep, one ought not to lie on his back, nor on his right
side, nor so as to wrench1776
his intestines, as
if their cavity were reversely stretched: a palpitation of the heart
would ensue, or else a pressure on the liver would produce a painful
disturbance of the mind. But however this be, I take it that it all
amounts to ingenious conjecture rather than certain proof (although the
author of the conjecture be no less a man than Plato);1777
| 1777 See his
Timæus, c. xxxii. p. 71. | and possibly all may be no other than the
result of chance. But, generally speaking, dreams will be under control
of a man’s will, if they be capable of direction at all; for we
must not examine what opinion on the one hand, and
superstition on the other, have to prescribe for the treatment
of dreams, in the matter of distinguishing and modifying different
sorts of food. As for the superstition, we have an
instance when fasting is prescribed for such persons as mean to submit
to the sleep which is necessary for receiving the oracle, in order that
such abstinence may produce the required purity; while we find an
instance of the opinion when the disciples of Pythagoras, in
order to attain the same end, reject the bean as an aliment which would
load the stomach, and produce indigestion. But the three brethren, who
were the companions of Daniel, being content with pulse alone, to
escape the contamination of the royal dishes,1778
received from God, besides other wisdom, the gift especially of
penetrating and explaining the sense of dreams. For my own part, I
hardly know whether fasting would not simply make me dream so
profoundly, that I should not be aware whether I had in fact dreamt at
all. Well, then, you ask, has not sobriety something to do in this
matter? Certainly it is as much concerned in this as it is in the
entire subject: if it contributes some good service to superstition,
much more does it to religion. For even demons require such discipline
from their dreamers as a gratification to their divinity, because they
know that it is acceptable to God, since Daniel (to quote him again)
“ate no pleasant bread” for the space of three
weeks.1779
This abstinence,
however, he used in order to please God by humiliation, and not for the
purpose of producing a sensibility and wisdom for his soul previous to
receiving communication by dreams and visions, as if it were not rather
to effect such action in an ecstatic state. This sobriety, then,
(in which our question arises,) will have nothing to do with exciting
ecstasy, but will rather serve to recommend its being wrought by
God.E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
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