Dream Mysteries

Iu a thoughtful, well written article on "Dreams and Their Mysteries," in The North American Review, Elizabeth Bisland reminds us that we are so familiar with the phenorneua of sleep that the strangest drearus come as uo surprise. She says, truly : "Prove that you have the hypnotic power to make a man feel pain or pleasure without material canse ; that yon can forcé him to believe himself a soldier, say, or a woman, or thaC he is three feet high, or two persons at once, ancl he will gape upou this occult uiastery with uwe and wild surprise - he who every 24 hours of his life, with no more magic potion than healthy fatigue, with no greater wonder WQrking weapon than a pillow, may créate for himself phantasmical delusions beside which all mesmeric suggestions are but the flattest of dull commonplace. " Because people are afraid of being thought superstitious with regard to dreams there has been an unscientific avoidance of the wliole topic, which is no less superstitious and puerile, the consequence of which foolish revulsión has been that one of the most curious f unctions of the brain is still in a period of universal investigation - left unexamined and unexplained. Some dabbling therc has been in the matter, but so far no tenable explanation has been offered of those strange illusions of sleep with which all mankind is familiar. The results up to this time of this dabbling are for the most part of little more value than the contents of the greasy, well thumbed dreambooks that formed the only and dearly beloved library of eighteenth century milkmaids and appren tices. The greater portion Of such labor as has been bestcwed on the subject has been rnainly directed toward efforts to prove the extreme rapidity witli which the dream passes through the niind, and that it is some trivial ontward cause at the moment of rousing from slumber, such as a noise, a light or the like, which wakes the brain to this miraculous celerity of imaeinative creation. The general couviction that dreains occur only at the instant of the awakening shows how little real attention has been bestowed upou the matter, siuce the most casual observation of "the dog that hunts in dreams" would show that he may be chasing the wild deer and following the roe in the gray kingdom of seeruing without breaking his shmibers. He will start aud twitch and give tongue after the phantom quarry he dreams himself pursuing. Butgiventho truth of any oneof these assertions, still the heart of the roystery has not yet been plucked out, since it is not explained why n noise or a gleam of light - such as the senses are quite familiar with in waking conscionsness - should at the moment of rousing cause the brain to créate with inconceivable rapidity a series of phantasmagoria in order to explain to itself the familiar phenomena of light or sound. It is broadly asserted by many that the memory retains each and every esperience which life has presented for its contemplation, but this is hardly true. It makes to a certain extent a choice and chooses oftentimes with apparent caprice. To demónstrate the truth of this, let one endeavor to recall the first impression retained by his childisn miud, and it usually proves to be soniething extremely trivial. A lady, interrogated as to this, declared first clear memory was a sense of the comfort to her tired little 2-year-old body of the clean linen sheets of the bed at the end of the most perilous and adventurous journey, and of whose startling incidents her memory had preserved nothing. Again this capricious faculty will seize on some few high lights in a vivid picture and reject ail the unirnportant details. As a rule, however, it is the profound stirrings of the emotions which wake the memory to activity. A woman never forgets her flrst lover. A man to the end of his life eau recall his first triumph. Miss Bisland believes fchat we inherit many of the memories that come to us, waking as well as sleeping. Every one has feit many times in his life a seuse of familiarity with incidents that have had no place in his own experience and has found it impossible to offer any explanation for the feeling. Coming suddenly around a turn of a hill upon a fair and unknown landscape, his heart may bound with a keen seuse of recognition of its uufamiliar outlines. In the mid-st of a tingling sense of emotion a sensation of the whole incident being a mere dnll repetition will rob it of its joy or pain. A sentence begun by a friend is recognized as trite and old before it is half done, though it refers to matters new to the hearer. A sound, a perfume, a sensation, will awaken feelings having no oonnection with the occasion. In sleep the brain is peculiarly active ia certain directions, not being distracted by the rnultitude of impressions coustantly couveyed to it by the live senses, and experimenta with hypnotic sleepers ■prove that sorne of its functions beconie in sleep abnorrnally acute and vigorous. Why not the function of memory ? The possessions which during the waking hours were useless, and therefore rejected by the will, surge up again, vivid and potent, md troop before the perception unsummoned, inotley and fantastic, serving no purpose more apparent tJian do the idle, disconnected recollections of one's waking moments of dreaniiness, and yet it may hap, withal, that the tireless brain, forever turning over and over its heirlooms in the night, is seeking here an inspiration or there a mernory to be used in that fierce and oomplex