The Elements of Law Natural and Politic [4]
are the imaginations of them that sleep. 3. The causes of DREAMS (if they be natural) are the actions or violence of the inward parts of a man upon his brain, by which the passages of sense, by sleep benumbed, are restored to their motion. The signs by which this appeareth to be so, are the differences of dreams proceeding from the different accidents of man's body. Old men being commonly less healthful and less free from inward pains, are thereby more subject to dreams, especially such dreams as be painful: as dreams of lust, or dreams of anger, according as the heart, or other parts within, work more or less upon the brain, by more or less heat. So also the descent of different sorts of phlegm maketh one to dream of different tastes of meats or drinks. And I believe there is a reciprocation of motion from the brain to the vital parts, and back from the vital parts to the brain; whereby not only imagination begetteth motion in those parts; but also motion in those parts begetteth imagination like to that by which it was begotten. If this be true, and that sad imaginations nourish the spleen, then we see also a cause, why a strong spleen reciprocally causeth fearful dreams. And why the effects of lasciviousness may in a dream produce the image of some person that hath caused them. If it were well observed, whether the image of the person in a dream be as obedient to the accidental heat of him that dreameth, as waking his heat is to the person, and if so, then is such motion reciprocal. Another sign that dreams are caused by the action of the inward parts, is the disorder and casual consequence of one conception or image to another: for when we are waking, the antecedent thought or conception introduceth, and is cause of the consequent, as the water followeth a man's finger upon a dry and level table. But in dreams there is commonly no coherence (and when there is, it is by chance), which must proceed from this, that the brain in dreams is not restored to its motion in every part alike; whereby it cometh to pass, that our thoughts appear like the stars between the flying clouds, not in the order which a man would choose to observe them in, but as the uncertain flight of broken clouds permit. 4. As when the water, or any liquid thing moved at once by divers movements, receiveth one motion compounded of them all; so also the brain or spirits therein, having been stirred by divers objects, composeth an imagination of divers conceptions that appeared. singly to the sense. As for example, the sense sheweth us at one time the figure of a mountain, and at another time the colour of gold; but the imagination afterwards hath them both at once in a golden mountain. From the same cause it is, there appear unto us castles in the air, chimeras, and other monsters which are not in rerum natura, but have been conceived by the sense in pieces at several times. And this composition is that which we commonly call FICTION of the mind. 5. There is yet another kind of. imagination, which for clearness contendeth with sense, as well as a dream; and that is, when the action of sense hath been long or vehement: and the experience thereof is more frequent in the sense of seeing, than the rest. An example whereof is, the image remaining before the eye after a steadfast looking upon the sun. Also, those little images that appear before the eyes in the dark (whereof I think every man hath experience, but they most of all, that are timorous or superstitious) are examples of the same. And these, for distinction sake, may be called PHANTASMS. 6. By the senses (which are numbered according to the organs to be five) we take notice (as hath been said already) of the objects without us; and that notice is our conception thereof: but we take notice also some way or other of our conceptions. For when the conception of the same thing cometh again, we take notice that it is again; that is to say, that we have had the same conception before; which is as much as to imagine a thing past; which is impossible to sense, which is only of things present.