ART. VI.—THE ORIGIN AND GROWTH OF DREAMING.

THE subject of dreaming, as full of mystery and fraught with fascination, has always interested the thoughtful in every age. It seems doubtful whether the innate tendencies of the human mind to unduly love the supernatural has not often caused too much prominence to be given to the dream itself, without enough consideration of the growth of the habit of dreaming. Perhaps, too, the dreams of childhood have not been sufficiently noticed as the germs of the dreams of a lifetime. May it not, indeed, be that the precise form and manner of dreaming is more or less distinctly moulded and determined for each individual very early in life? May not many other dreams, which seem remarkable, be traced back to unconscious memories or impressions upon the brain which have hitherto lain dormant, or in some cases to atmospheric influences, causing both the dream and its fulfilment.

It would appear that a conception of sleep and dreams may be one of the earliest of which we are capable. In counting the distinct words used by a child of two years and three months, in a number amounting to 3,140, of which 1,260 were substantives, all of the latter, as might naturally be expected, were the names of things, and unconnected with ideas, with the exception of 47. These 47 included sleep and dreams, of which the child had so distinct a realisation that it attributed to flowers the faculty of dreaming, and said, "How much the wallflowers must be thinking, during their long sleep, of what the garden and everything would look like when they awoke." Yet unable to enter into the new products formed out of ideas in dreams, it tried to explain away the wonderful beauty of a certain doll's dress of which it had dreamt, by saying that "it must have been really an old one cleaned and made to look quite different." When a dog who has been in the possession of a kind master for many years, howls in sleep as if beaten, and testifies his joy on being awakened, we may only surmise that he has had terrible dreams of his own former experiences, or of those of his ancestors, and rejoices to find that they are not realities. So too with regard to the dreams of early infancy. We can rarely attempt more than faint guesses at truth, for when an infant of eight months old gives utterance in sleep to terms of endearment which it never uses when awake, and has only heard from

a nurse, who is absent for a night, we have no means of telling whether it dreams of the nurse or of its doll, or is merely an example of unconscious mimicry. It was interesting to trace back to its cause the dream of a child who at eighteen months was much frightened by seeing a hideous old woman with misshapen bloated face, standing by a gate near a country church. A year later, after seeing a similar church, and having eaten chocolate creams in the evening, it seemed to dream of this old woman, and talked in its sleep, exclaiming, "I want to go to the church; I am frightened of that old woman; send away that ugly old woman standing by the gate." Might there not have been in such a case countless sensorial memories, the scent of flowers, the hum of insects, the bleating of lambs, and other sounds peculiar to the time of year, to call up associations and act upon the brain? Very young children certainly dream much of their toys; and any bodily states which would in the adult cause painful dreams of humiliation of self, induce the same in them. The young child is distressed in sleep at the fancied loss of some article of clothing for a doll, or because it has "old milk" given to it instead of new; it dreams that its toys are taken away, or has a nightmare that some one is holding one of which it strives in vain to obtain possession, and a strong effort of will seems to awake it as it exclaims, "I must have my doll's right frock, the one that I want." A striking instance of the direct translation of ideas in sleep into movement of speech was that of an infant of twenty months, who very rarely spoke in its sleep, and on having a mustard plaster put upon its chest whilst asleep, evidently dreamed that a favourite cat had sprung upon it, and exclaimed almost instantaneously, five seconds might have perhaps elapsed, "Oh, naughty Minnie, to jump up at me like that, go down Minnie."

It would seem as if the whole mystery of the mechanism of memory was closely interwoven with that of dreaming, and that the tactile sense plays perhaps the earliest, although other senses also, a most important part in the building up of a good unconscious memory, and consequently in the origin and gradual growth of dreaming. An infant of eighteen months who knows its way about, and can arrive at any precise spot it wishes to find along a most monotonous country road, may seem to be guided by instinct, and suggest an inquiry into the existence of a sixth sense of direction. But if, a few months later, the same child can give intelligent explanations of the spot where it lost something, and lead the way to it, guided by its own. indications as "the place where there were a great many nettles in the ditch, a pink dog-rose which grew much higher than a white one, and there was a sweet smell from some clover, which looked

as if it was made into bows," it becomes easy to realise how, when a year older, it can show the way home in London, by a route quite unknown to it and never even seen before; the way this is done being evidently due neither to the possession of a new sense, nor to any special development of other senses. For a young child's mind is open to sense perceptions which, although not lost to the adult, would be received unconsciously, other more violent impressions predominating; whilst the child receives one separate and distinct impression. Thus a railway whistle at a distance of a mile, which acts in so slight a degree upon the adult ear that we are not aware of its operation, is on another occasion perceived distinctly by the vivid mind of this young child, insulated from all other impressions, who led the way in a strange town guided by it. It is easy to conceive how, later in life, all these processes of smelling, seeing, hearing, and comparing become automatic, so that it would be quite impossible to describe how a result was arrived at.

Thus if Mr. Bishop, whose thought-reading recently attracted so much attention, often played at hide-and-seek when a child, the scientific interest of his experiments, even when successful, may be considerably lessened thereby. If the principles upon which children base their mode of playing at this game be inquired into and noticed, I think it will be found that only a child evidently deficient in mental power, ever blunders to and fro in the room without aim or design, seeking and never finding. The intelligent child appears to have two ways of quickly attaining the end he has in view; he may, while searching for the object, seek for information by intently reading the muscular indication of his own proximity to it in his companions' faces and hands. Or, choosing a surer way, knowing that hiding an object so thoroughly betrays the idiosyncrasies of character, that each individual has only a few ways of doing it in consonance with his character, he shuts or fixes his eyes for a moment to concentrate his attention, and then bases his search on the supposed character of the person who hid the object. If the latter should attempt to hide it in a way utterly at variance with the broad lines of his disposition, as shown in his face or felt in his muscles, something unnatural about him quickly betrays itself, and he will choose a place so foreign to his whole nature's bent that it is speedily divined. A good deal of seeming clairvoyance in sleep, and even instances of so-called second-sight may be perhaps explained in the following way. The power of thought-reading, so active in childhood, has left extensive substrata, as it were, of different expressions of people's faces stereotyped on the brain; each flitting expression or glance of the eye having its own meaning attached to it. Perhaps no one

could consciously call up, classify, and utilise these long dormant memories; but an intense concentration of attention may often bring to light and group together old memories which shall seem like intuitions, and apparently produce almost miraculous results. May it not be that some of our keenest intuitions are thus originated, and that occasional opportunities of tracing their source to events in early life, may bear on the origin of many seemingly remarkable or even prophetic dreams? One conscious instance of this process may be worth recording. As a young child I chanced to recognise in a begging impostor a man who had twice before appeared very differently dressed, with a new story of distress each time. I believe that I did not at all enter into the deception, but thinking rather to express an interest and sympathy in the very varying circumstances of his life, I confronted him with, "You have been here before; the last time you were a countryman with a green coat, and all your little children had been burnt in a fire." A fierce glare in the man's eye, accompanied as it was by a volley of oaths, left that expression of the eye indelibly fixed on the brain to be recognised afterwards at most unexpected moments, but never with its true significance at once attached to it, but only after an interval of half-conscious effort to revive the associations. Once it was seen in a pretended clergyman when one of his pupils, probably a mythical one, was spoken of by mistake as Brown instead of Smith! Perhaps a certain halting or sluggishness in the process by which the remembrance was arrived at, made that recognisable to me, which to another would have been a momentary and sure intuition.

Probably first and foremost in the origin of the manner and form of each one's dreaming must be placed the inherited conformation of his brain. Although no two persons dream precisely alike, yet a strong family likeness may often be detected in the dreams most common to those related to one another. Next must be traced a curious relation between vivid impressions of a painful kind, received at a very early age, and the dreams which persistently cling to a person, and reappear throughout the whole after life, in connection with certain mental and bodily states upon which they apparently depend. At about the age of two, sometimes much earlier, there appears to be an important crisis in a child's mental history; its first direct cravings after the supernatural, it "wants to go into the stars," is in intense sympathy with nature in her varying moods; is terrified at the unknown, sees in shadows "great men with big white hands," or a vague "something in the corner." Some of the kindergarten toys would seem to be of great value in inculcating early, before this crisis arrives, the difference

severe.

between shadows or semblances and realities. Especially might be mentioned the second gift of the revolving cube. If the critical moment be rightly used, and the source of a shadow be shown to the infant, a great gain has been achieved; it will of its own accord recognise a cat's fear of a top spinning, and reassure it by leading it up to touch it when not in motion, and explain to it that it "must look at it closely and find out what it really is and understand it, and then it will not be frightened at it." But if the earliest fears in the unformed mind of the infant are left to vibrate there, it is hard to tell to what they may not in time grow. Doubtless many nervous miseries would date from such neglect; and it seems quite possible that any tendencies to brain disease would be readily lighted up by the too susceptible mind left untrained, thus morbidly preying upon itself, and that such a child would be also predisposed to fall a victim to the first epidemical illness which should attack it in a form at all A relative of my own, who was narrating instances of the harmful effects of sensational nursery rhymes on the minds of young children, alluded to one intended to deter them from taking birds' nests, by bidding them to picture to themselves some great monster a dozen yards high, who might stalk up at night to your bed, and out of the window away with you fly, nor stop while you bid your dear parents good-bye, nor care for a word that you said." He vividly described the terror with which he used himself to fancy at night, as a young child, that he saw the great arm put in at the window to take him out. He also mentioned as a whimsical feature of one of his most frequent forms of terrible nightmare, which had clung to him from childhood, that there was always a sweep connected with it, sometimes six sweeps, each one growing bigger and bigger as he vainly tried to elude their pursuit. I was able to account for this, and could trace the peculiarity to a very early infantile impression received from the verse of another nursery rhyme about a child, who "at night when he was gone to bed did jump up in his sleep, and sob and weep and cry again, I thought I saw the sweep.' I never myself saw this traditional being even in dreams, but always after hearing the rhyme recited in the evening was full of horror and unable to sleep for fear lest I should see the sweep. Madame de Staël's confession about "les revenants," "Je ne les crois pas, mais je les crains," would well embody the experience of many children.

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Of nightmare dreaming, my own earliest experiences date from about the age of twenty months. There were only two forms of it in one my fingers were inextricably entangled in