Illusions - James Sully (online e reader .txt) 📗

incident or chain of incidents in this experience, though the dream-fancy invariably transforms the particular objects, relations, and events of waking life, it still makes the order of our daily experience its prototype. It fashions its imaginary world on the model of the real. Thus, objects group themselves in space, and act on one another conformably to these perceived space-relations; events succeed one another in time, and are often seen to be connected; men act from more or less intelligible motives, and so on. In this way, though the dream-fancy sets at nought the particular relations of our experience, it respects the general and constant relations. How are we to account for this?

It is said by certain philosophers that this superposition of the relations of space, time, causation, etc., on the products of our dream-fancy is due to the fact that all experience arises by a synthesis of mental forms with the chaotic matter of sense-impressions. These philosophers allow, however, that all particular connections are determined by experience. Accordingly, what we have to do here is to inquire how far this scientific method of explaining mental connections by facts of experience will carry us. In other words, we have to ask what light can be thrown on these tendencies of dream-imagination by ascertained psychological laws, and more particularly by what are known as the laws of association.

These laws tell us that of two mental phenomena which occur together, each will tend to recall the other whenever it happens to be revived. On the physiological side, this means that any two parts of the nervous structures which have acted together become in some way connected, so that when one part begins to work the other will tend to work also. But it is highly probable that a particular structure acts in a great many different ways. Thus, it may be stimulated by unlike modes of stimuli, or it may enter into very various connections with other structures. What will follow from this? One consequence would appear to be that there will be developed an organic connection between the two structures, of such a kind that whenever one is excited the other will be disposed to act somehow and anyhow, even when there is nothing in the present mode of activity of the first structure to determine the second to act in some one definite way, in other words, when this mode of activity is, roughly speaking, novel.

Let me illustrate this effect in one of the simplest cases, that of the visual organ. If, when walking out on a dark night, a few points in my retina are suddenly stimulated by rays of light, and I recognize some luminous object in a corresponding direction, I am prepared to see something above and below, to the right and to the left of this object. Why is this? There may from the first have been a kind of innate understanding among contiguous optic fibres, predisposing them to such concerted action. But however this be, this disposition would seem to have been largely promoted by the fact that, throughout my experience, the stimulation of any retinal point has been connected with that of adjoining points, either simultaneously by some second object, or successively by the same object as the eye moves over it, or as the object itself moves across the field of vision.

When, therefore, in sleep any part of the optic centres is excited in a particular way, and the images thus arising have their corresponding loci in space assigned to them, there will be a disposition to refer any other visual images which happen at the moment to arise in consciousness to adjacent parts of space. The character of these other images will be determined by other special conditions of the moment; their locality or position in space will be determined by this organic connection. We may, perhaps, call these tendencies to concerted action of some kind general associative dispositions.

Just as there are such dispositions to united action among various parts of one organ of sense, so there may be among different organs, which are either connected originally in the infant organism, or have communications opened up by frequent coexcitation of the two. Such links there certainly are between the organs of taste and smell, and between the ear and the muscular system in general, and more particularly the vocal organ.[96] A new odour often sets us asking how the object would taste, and a series of sounds commonly disposes us to movement of some kind or another. How far there may be finer threads of connection between other organs, such as the eye and the ear, which do not betray themselves amid the stronger forces of waking mental life, one cannot say. Whatever their number, it is plain that they will exert their influence within the comparatively narrow limits of dream-life, serving to impress a certain character on the images which happen to be called up by special circumstances, and giving to the combination a slight measure of congruity. Thus, if I were dreaming that I heard some lively music, and at the same time an image of a friend was anyhow excited, my dream-fancy might not improbably represent this person as performing a sequence of rhythmic movements, such as those of riding, dancing, etc.

A narrower field for these general associative dispositions may be found in the tendency, on the reception of an impression of a given character, to look for a certain kind of second impression; though the exact nature of this is unknown. Thus, for example, the form and colour of a new flower suggest a scent, and the perception of a human form is accompanied by a vague representation of vocal utterances. These general tendencies of association appear to me to be most potent influences in our dream-life. The many strange human forms which float before our dream-fancy are apt to talk, move, and behave like men and women in general, however little they resemble their actual prototypes, and however little individual consistency of character is preserved by each of them. Special conditions determine what they shall say or do; the general associative disposition accounts for their saying or doing something.

We thus seem to find in the purely passive processes of association some ground for that degree of natural coherence and rational order which our more mature dreams commonly possess. These processes go far to explain, too, that odd mixture of rationality with improbability, of natural order and incongruity, which characterizes our dream-combinations.

Rational Construction in Dreams.

Nevertheless, I quite agree with Herr Volkelt that association, even in the most extended meaning, cannot explain all in the shaping of our dream-pictures. The "phantastical power" which Cudworth talks about clearly includes something besides. It is an erroneous supposition that when we are dreaming there is a complete suspension of the voluntary powers, and consequently an absence of all direction of the intellectual processes. This supposition, which has been maintained by numerous writers, from Dugald Stewart downwards, seems to be based on the fact that we frequently find ourselves in dreams striving in vain to move the whole body or a limb. But this only shows, as M. Maury remarks in the work already referred to, that our volitions are frustrated through the inertia of our bodily organs, not that these volitions do not take place. In point of fact, the dreamer, not to speak of the somnambulist, is often conscious of voluntarily going through a series of actions. This exercise of volition is shown unmistakably in the well-known instances of extraordinary intellectual achievements in dreams, as Condillac's composition of a part of his Cours d'Études. No one would maintain that a result of this kind was possible in the total absence of intellectual action carefully directed by the will. And something of this same control shows itself in all our more fully developed dreams.

One manifestation of this voluntary activity in sleep is to be found in those efforts of attention which not unfrequently occur. I have remarked that, speaking roughly and in relation to the waking condition, the state of sleep is marked by a subjection of the powers of attention to the force of the mental images present to consciousness. Yet something resembling an exercise of voluntary attention sometimes happens in sleep. The intellectual feats just spoken of, unless, indeed, they are referred to some mysterious unconscious mental operations, clearly involve a measure of volitional guidance. All who dream frequently are occasionally aware on awaking of having greatly exercised their attention on the images presented to them during sleep. I myself am often able to recall an effort to see beautiful objects, which threatened to disappear from my field of vision, or to catch faint receding tones of preternatural sweetness; and some dreamers allege that they are able to retain a recollection of the feeling of strain connected with such exercise of attention in sleep.

The main function of this voluntary attention in dream-life is seen in the selection of those images which are to pass the threshold of clear consciousness. I have already spoken of a selective action brought about by the ruling emotion. In this case, the attention is held captive by the particular feeling of the moment. Also a selective process goes on in the case of the action of those associative dispositions just referred to. But in each of these cases the action of selective attention is comparatively involuntary, passive, and even unconscious, not having anything of the character of a conscious striving to compass some end. Besides this comparatively passive play of selective attention, there is an active play, in which there is a conscious wish to gain an end; in other words, the operation of a definite motive. This motive may be described as an intellectual impulse to connect and harmonize what is present to the mind. The voluntary kind of selection includes and transcends each of the involuntary kinds. It has as its result an imitation of that order which is brought about by what I have called the associative dispositions, only it consciously aims at this result. And it is a process controlled by a feeling, namely, the intellectual sentiment of consistency, which is not a mode of emotional excitement enthralling the will, but a calm motive, guiding the activities of attention. It thus bears somewhat the same relation to the emotional selection already spoken of, as dramatic creation bears to lyrical composition.

This process of striving to seize some connecting link, or thread of order, is illustrated whenever, in waking life, we are suddenly brought face to face with an unfamiliar scene. When taken into a factory, we strive to arrange the bewildering chaos of visual impressions under some scheme, by help of which we are said to understand the scene. So, if on entering a room we are plunged in medias res of a lively conversation, we strive to find a clue to the discussion. Whenever the meaning of a scene is not at once clear, and especially whenever there is an appearance of confusion in it, we are conscious of a painful feeling of perplexity, which acts as a strong motive to ever-renewed attention.[97]

In touching on this intellectual impulse to connect the disconnected, we are, it is plain, approaching the question of the very foundations of our intellectual structure. That there is this impulse firmly rooted in the mature mind nobody can doubt; and that it manifests itself in early life in the child's recurring "Why?" is equally clear. But how we are to account for it, whether it is to be viewed as a mere result of the play of associated fragments of experience, or as something involved in the very process of the association of ideas itself, is a question