Sophereus discourses on the Nature and Origin of the Human Mind.
Sophereus, in fulfillment of his intention expressed at their last meeting, reads to the scientist the following
DISCOURSE ON THE NATURE AND ORIGIN OF THE HUMAN MIND.
I regard the mind as an organism, capable of anatomical examination, as the body is, but of course by very different means. In the anatomical examination of an animal organism we use our eye-sight to acquire a knowledge of its component parts, its organs, and its structure, by dissection of a dead or inspection of a living subject. But, in studying the anatomy of mind, we have a subject that is beyond our visual perception. It is not, however, beyond our examination. We carry on that examination by means of the introspection which consciousness enables us to have of our own minds, and by observing and comparing the phenomena of mind as manifested in other persons. If these respective means of investigation enable us to reach the conviction that in each individual of the human race there is an existence of a spiritual nature and another existence of a corporeal or physical nature, we shall have attained this conclusion by observing the difference between the two organisms. The fact that we can not detect the bond that unites them while they are united should not lead us to doubt their distinct existence as organisms of different natures, but made for a temporary period to act on and with each other.
Before entering further into the subject, I will refer to some of the terms which we are obliged to use in speaking of the nature of mind as an organism, when contrasted with the nature of the physical organism. We speak, for example, and from the want of another term we are obliged to speak, of the substance of mind. But, while we thus speak of mind in a term of matter, there is no implication that the subject of which we speak is of the same nature as that which constitutes the physical organism; nor is there any danger of the incorporation of materialistic ideas with our ideas of the fabric of mind. On the contrary, the very nature of the inquiry is whether that which constitutes mind is something different from that which constitutes body; and, although in speaking of both we use the term substance, we mean in the one case organized matter, and in the other case organized spirit. There is a very notable instance of a corresponding use of terms in the passage of one of St. Paul's epistles, where he discourses on the doctrine of the resurrection. According to my universal custom when I refer to any of the writings regarded by the Christian world as sacred, or inspired, I lay aside altogether the idea of a person speaking by divine or any other authority. I cite the statement of St. Paul, in its philosophical aspect, as an instance of the use of the term body applied to each of the distinct organisms. His statement, or assertion, or assumption—call it what you please—is, "If there is a natural body, there is also a spiritual body";[139] he uses the term body in speaking of that which is natural, or of the earth, earthy, and of that which is spiritual, or heavenly. Without following him into the nature of the occurrence which he affirms is to take place in the resurrection, the question is whether he was or was not philosophically correct, in speaking of two kinds of organisms, one composed of matter, and liable to corruption and dissolution, and the other composed of spirit, indestructible and imperishable.
In order to be understood, he was obliged to use the term body in reference to both of these organisms, just as we are obliged to use the term substance when we speak of the subject of contemplation as a physical or as a spiritual organism. Can this distinctness of nature be predicated of the body and the mind of man before what we call death?
The peculiar occurrence which St. Paul so vigorously and vividly describes as what is to happen at the resurrection, is a prophecy in which he mingles with great force philosophical illustrations and the information which he claims to have received from inspiration; or things revealed to him by the Almighty through the Holy Spirit. He expresses himself in terms level to the apprehension of those whom he is addressing; and in this use of terms he does just what we do when we speak of a natural body and a spiritual body. He puts the existence of the natural body hypothetically:
"If there is a natural body, there is also a spiritual body."[140] Paraphrased as the whole passage may be, he says, "You well know that there is a natural body, and I tell you that there is also a spiritual body." Laying aside the mode in which the spiritual body is to be manifested at and after the resurrection, we have to consider whether, during this life, there is a bodily organism and a mental organism, distinct in their natures, but united for a time by a bond which is hidden from our detection.
I have used the term anatomy of the mind, from the same necessity which compels me to speak of the substance of mind. You will understand that, when I speak of anatomical examination of the mind, I mean that analysis of its structure which we can make by the use of the appropriate means, and which enables us to conceive that it is an organized structure of a peculiar character.
The grand difficulty with Mr. Spencer's "Psychology" is, that after he has made what he calls "the proximate components of mind" to consist of "two broadly contrasted kinds—feelings and the relations between feelings," which are mere impressions produced on the nerve-center by molecular changes in the fluid or semi-fluid substance of the nerves, he has not approached to a solution of the question whether there is or is not a something to which these feelings and the relations between them suggest ideas, and which holds ideas continuously for future use.
Thus he makes consciousness to consist in passing groups of feelings and their relations, and not in a conscious subject. He denies that there is any ego, in the sense in which every person is conscious of a self, and maintains that the only substantive existence is the unknown ligament which holds together the ever-changing states of feelings and impressions produced in the nerve-center. There is a far better method of investigation. It is to inquire into the fabric of the mind as an organism, by determining whether mental phenomena justify us in the conclusion that it is an organism. In this way we may reach a satisfactory conclusion that the mind is a substantive existence, possessing a uniform structure, of a character, however, fundamentally different from the bodily structure; and in this way we may be able to explain, wholly or in part, how the mind and the body act on and with each other so long as the connection is maintained.
I am entirely free to acknowledge that, when I speak of the substance of mind, or speak of it as an organism, I am and must remain ignorant of the nature of its substance beyond the point where its self-manifestations cease. But the question is, whether we are not under an irresistible necessity of adopting as a postulate the existence of a something which has certain inherent powers, and whether the mental phenomena, the self-manifestations of those powers, do not necessarily lead us to the conception and conviction that mind is a substantive existence. I can not talk or think of consciousness apart from a conscious subject, or of feelings without a subject that feels. A thread of consciousness, or a series of feelings, conveys no meaning to me, apart from a being who has the consciousness and perceives the feelings.[141]
One very important question to be considered in all such investigations is, Whether our experience does not teach us that we are mentally so constituted that certain conceptions are necessary to us? Our mental nature is placed under certain laws, as our physical or corporeal nature is placed under certain other laws. One of these necessary conceptions, which are imposed on us, as it seems to me, by a law of our mental constitution, is a conception of the fundamental difference between matter and spirit. In what way is it forced upon us that there is a natural world and a spiritual world? The phenomena of matter and the phenomena of mind are essentially different. In ourselves they occur in conjunction, and they occur in disjunction. They are manifested synchronously, and they are manifested separately in point of time. The normal action of all the functions of the body is not necessary to the action of the mind. The body may be prostrated by disease, and the moment of its death may be at hand; yet the mind, to the last moment of the physical life, may be unclouded, and its manifestations may be as perfect as they ever were in the full health and activity of the vital functions of the body. No one who stands at a death-bed where this phenomenon occurs, and observes how completely the mind is master of itself; how it holds in consciousness the past and the present; how it essays to grasp the future for those whom it is to leave and for itself, can easily escape the conviction that death is nothing but the dissolution of the bond which has hitherto held together the two existences that constituted the human being, one of which is to be dissolved into its elemental and material substances, and the other of which is to go elsewhere, intact and indestructible.
Let me now refer to what is taking place while I am writing this essay. I have said that the phenomena of our bodily organism and the phenomena of our mental organism may occur synchronously in the same individual. The act of writing an original composition is an instance of this. The action of certain organs of the body and the action of the mind are simultaneous. In time, they can not be separated. In themselves, they are separable and separate. The thought springing up in the mind may be retained there, or may flow into language and be written by the hand upon the page. No one can detect in himself any instant of time when the mental formation of a sentence, or any clause of a sentence, as he writes, is separable from the physical act of writing. In that not very common, but still possible, feat of dictating to two amanuenses, at what appears to be the same time, on two distinct subjects, there is undoubtedly an appreciable interval, in which the mind passes from one subject to the other, and then back again, with great rapidity. But, when one is one's own amanuensis, when the act of thinking and formulating the thought, and the act of writing it down in words, is performed by the same person, there is a simultaneous action of that which originates the thought and clothes it in words, and the act of the bodily organ which inscribes the words upon paper. How is this phenomenon to be explained? And to what does it lead? Is there anything in the whole range of Mr. Spencer's "Psychology" that will interpret this familiar experience? May it not be interpreted by an anatomical examination of the mind as an organism?
I do not now refer to cases where a thought is completely formulated before the pen begins to be moved over the paper, and is then recalled by an effort of the memory and written down. I am referring to what I suppose is the habit of many persons in writing, namely, the origination and formulation of the thought as the hand moves the pen, a habit of which most practiced writers are perfectly conscious. The same thing occurs in what is truly called extemporaneous speaking,[142] when oral discourse is not a mere repetition, memoriter, of thoughts and sentences which had been previously formulated, but, as the word extemporaneous implies, when the thought and the language flow from the vocal organs eo instanti with their conception. In these and the similar cases of improvisation and animated conversation, in which there is a synchronous action of the mind and the bodily organs, it would be impossible for us to have that action if mind were constituted as Mr. Spencer supposes it to be. If there were no mind in the sense of an organized entity, conceiving a thought and clothing it in the language needful to give it written or oral expression, "if the ego were nothing more than the passing group of feelings and ideas"—if an "idea lasts (only) while the nerves of molecular motion last, ceasing when they cease"—if that which remains is (only) the "set of plexuses"—how could we originate any new thought? The very illustration to which Mr. Spencer resorts, when he likens the automatic human being to the non-automatic piano, and makes them analogous in their action, in order to show that passing ideas do not have a continual existence in the mind, but that the actual existence is the physical structure which, under like conditions, again evolves like combinations, reduces us at once to the level of the piano, and precludes the potentiality of a new and original idea which is not a combination of former ideas, and is produced under different conditions. The assertion or argument that each set of plexuses is capable of entering into countless combinations with others, and so renders possible future ideas, does not advance us one step to the solution of what takes place when we conceive a new thought, clothe it in language, and write it down on paper, or give it oral expression.
In justification of this criticism, let me now refer to that intellectual process which is called "invention," in its application to the mechanic arts. I do not mean to suggest or to claim that this kind of invention is an act which is to be referred to a distinct and peculiar faculty of certain minds, in the possession of which one man may differ from another. But I shall endeavor to describe what takes place when one conceives the intellectual plan of a certain new combination of mechanical devices, and embodies that plan in a machine which differs from all other previous machines in its characteristic method of operation. For convenience, I shall speak of the person who produces such a machine as the inventor, which is the same as speaking of him as the maker, as the poet is the maker of a poem. This act of invention, or the making of some concrete new thing, is an act of creation. The inventor, then, may be supposed to have learned all that empirical and all that scientific mechanics could teach him; to have had any quantity of passing groups of ideas pass through his consciousness; to be possessed of any number of plexuses capable of entering into countless combinations with others. These plexuses, or networks of transitory ideas, consisting of former impressions in the nerve-center, must, it is said, be recalled under the like conditions which produced them. But the conditions for the inventor are not the same. Something is to be produced into which the old ideas do not enter. There is to be a new arrangement of old mechanical devices; a new combination is to be made, which will possess a method of operation and accomplish a result never before seen or obtained. A new concrete thing, a new machine, is to be created. That the conception must be formed, that the objective point, to which the whole intellectual effort is to aim, must be seen, is manifest. A tentative intellectual process may have to be gone through before the full conception is reached, just as a tentative experimental process may be necessary in finding out how the practical embodiment of the conception is to be reached in building the structure. These processes may go on simultaneously or separately; but, when they are both completed, when the new machine stands before us, we see at once that the plan is an intellectual conception, perfectly original, and the physical structure is a new arrangement of matter effected by the hand of the inventor or by the hands of others, which he uses as his instruments in doing the physical work. I do not know, therefore, how this phenomenon is to be explained upon the theory that the only ego is the body and its functions, which lies behind and determines ever-changing states of consciousness. I know not how else to interpret the phenomenon of invention, excepting to adopt the postulate that there is a mind, a substantive existence, which, while its consciousness holds ideas suggested by former conditions, has the inherent power to originate ideas that did not form a part of any previous state of consciousness.
I have spoken of mind as an organism and as a substantive existence. This is a deduction to be drawn from the manifestations of mental phenomena. In order to guard against an objection that may possibly be interposed in the way of this method of investigation, I will anticipate and answer it. It will be said that we can not define or describe the substance of mind; can not tell whether it is a unit, in itself, or an aggregate of units; we know and can know nothing more than its approximate components, and all that we know of these does not justify us in assuming to speak of the substance of mind. I have more than once suggested, in our former conferences, that our inability to define and to describe the substance of any supposed existence is no proper objection to the hypothesis that there is such an existence. When we undertake to define matter, or to describe the substance of that which we call matter, we find that we soon reach a point where precise definition or description ceases. Yet we do not for that reason refrain from deducing the existence of matter from the manifestations of certain phenomena and from our experience with them. It is perfectly true that we know matter only by the manifestations of certain physical phenomena; that we can not define the nature of its substance. All we can do, by the most minute analysis, is to arrive at the perception of the ultimate particles or units of matter; and the nature of the substance of which these units are composed is incapable of any further description. "Matter"[143] is one of the words in the English language which are used in a great variety of senses, exact and inexact, literal and figurative. In its philosophical sense, meaning the substance of which all physical bodies are composed, the efforts of lexicographers to give a definition, descriptive of the nature of what is defined, show that definition is, strictly speaking, impossible. All that can be said is that matter is "substance extended"; or that which is visible or tangible, as "earth, wood, stone, air, vapor, water"; or "the substance of which all bodies are composed." But these efforts at definition express only what is needful to be expressed in contrasting matter with that other existence which is called "spirit." This is another word which is used in very different senses, but of which no more exact definition can be given, when it is used in its philosophical sense, than can be given of "matter." Lexicographers have defined "spirit," in one of its meanings, as "the soul of man; the intelligent, immaterial, and immortal part of human beings"; and in another of its meanings, more broadly, as "an immaterial, intelligent substance." In these definitions they have followed the metaphysicians, and the uses of the word in the English translation of the Bible. When we turn to the definition of "soul," we find it given as "the spiritual and immortal substance in man, which distinguishes him from brutes; that part of man which enables him to think and reason, and which renders him a subject of moral government." We also have it defined as "the understanding, the intellectual principle." Undoubtedly these definitions involve certain assumptions, such as the existence of a substance called spirit, and the existence of an intellectual principle, of which "soul," "spirit," and "intellect" are mere names. But there is no difficulty in the way of our knowing what is meant when these terms are used. The difficulty of giving a definition without a circuitous use of terms, explaining the one by the other, and then explaining the last by the first, does not prevent us from having a definite conception of the thing spoken of. When we speak of mind, soul, or intellect, what we think of is the something in ourselves of which we are conscious, and whose manifestations we observe in other beings like ourselves; and what we have to do is to examine the evidence which may bring home to our convictions the existence of this something that perceives, thinks, acts, originates new ideas; holds former ideas in consciousness, is connected with and acts upon and is acted on by bodily organs, and is at the same time more than and different from those organs.
I have referred to some of the mental phenomena which have the strongest tendency to prove the existence of the mind as an organized entity. These are the phenomena which occur in our waking hours, when the intellectual faculties and the bodily organs are in the full exercise of their normal functions respectively. There is another class of mental phenomena which may be said to be abnormal, in this, that the intellectual faculties and the bodily organs do not preserve the same relations to each other in all respects that they do when we are fully awake. These are the phenomena that occur during sleep—a class of mental phenomena of great consequence to be observed and analyzed in any study of psychology. They are of an extraordinary variety, complex in the highest degree, and dependent on numerous causes of mental and physical disturbance; but it is quite possible to extract from some of them certain definite conclusions.
Sleep, properly regarded, when it is perfect, is a state of absolute rest and inactivity of all the organs and functions of the body save the digestion of food and the circulation of the blood, and of all the mental faculties. Perfect sleep, sleep in which there is absolutely no consciousness, is more rare than those states in which there is more or less consciousness. But it is often an actual state of both body and mind, and it was evidently designed to renew the vigor of both, and to prevent the wear and tear of unbroken activity. Between absolute unconsciousness induced by perfect sleep and the full consciousness of our waking moments, there are many intermediate states; and the phenomena of these intermediate states present very strong proofs of the existence of the mind as a special and spiritual entity, capable in greater or less degree of acting without the aid of the physical organs. I do not except even the organ of the brain from this suspension of action during certain states when the mind is in more or less of activity; for I am convinced that in some of the mental phenomena to which I shall advert and which I shall endeavor to describe, the brain is in a state of perfect sleep, and that in the production of those phenomena it takes no part. In other mental phenomena, which occur during sleep, the brain or some part of it is evidently acted upon by the mind, as in the somnambulistic condition, when the nerves of motion, responding to the action of the mind, communicate action to the muscles, and the body walks about and performs other external acts.
There are other mental phenomena occurring during very profound sleep of the body and its organs, when the mind does not appear to derive its action from the brain, or to be dependent on the brain for its activity; when it is exceedingly active, and when it communicates action to none of the bodily organs; when, for example, it carries on long trains of thought, composes sentences, invents conversations, makes poetry and prose, and performs other intellectual processes. Distributed into classes, the most important mental phenomena occurring during sleep are the following:
First, and presenting perhaps the strongest proof of the mind's independence of all the bodily organs, is that whole class of mental phenomena in which, during profound sleep of the body, we carry on conversations, compose original matter in the form of oral or written discourse, which we seem to ourselves to be producing, and solve intellectual difficulties which have baffled us when awake, or imagine that we receive from an unexpected source important information that we are not conscious of having previously received.
The phenomena of conversations, to which we appear to ourselves to be listening during sleep, or in which we appear to ourselves to be taking part, are, when analyzed, most remarkable occurrences, for it is the mind of the sleeper which originates the whole of what appears to be said by different persons. These conversations are as vivid, as much marked by different intellectual and personal characteristics, sudden and unexpected turns, apt repartee, interchange of ideas between two or more persons, as are the real conversations which we overhear, or in which we take part, when we are awake. Yet the whole of what is said, or appears to us to be said, is the invention of the one mind, which appears to itself to be listening to or talking with other minds, and all the while the body is wrapped in profound sleep. This extraordinary intellectual feat, so familiar to us that it scarcely attracts our attention unless we undertake to analyze it, is closely akin to the action of the mind when the body and the mind are neither of them asleep, and when we invent a conversation between different persons. But this occurrence is marked by another extraordinary peculiarity: for it happens, during sleep, to persons who could not, when awake, invent and write such conversations at will, and who in their waking hours have very little of the imaginative faculty needed for such productions. I account for this phenomenon by the hypothesis that when the mind is free from the necessity of depending on the bodily organs for its action, as it is during profound sleep of the body, when its normal relations with the body are completely suspended and it is left to its independent action, it has a power of separate action. This, I think, accounts for a kind of mental action which, when compared with that which occurs in conjunction with the action of the bodily organs, may be called abnormal. Under the impulse of its own unrestrained and uncorrected activity, the mind goes through processes of invention, the products of which are sometimes wild and incoherent, sometimes exceedingly coherent, sensible, and apt. Let the person to whom this occurs be thoroughly awakened out of one of these states, and the mind becomes immediately again subjected to the necessity of acting along with, and under the conditions of its normal relations to the body.
Akin to this mental feat of inventing conversations, during a sleep of the body, is the power of composing, during such sleep, oral discourse of one's own, or the power of composing something which we appear to ourselves to be writing. I suppose this is an occurrence which happens to most persons who are much accustomed to writing or to public speaking. It is often an involuntary action of the mind; that is to say, it is sometimes accompanied with a distinct consciousness that it is a process that ought to be arrested because it is a dangerous one, and yet it can not be arrested before full waking consciousness returns. On goes the flow of thought and language, apparently with great success; we seem to be speaking or writing with even more than our usual power, and all the while in the style that belongs to us; but, until we are fully restored to the normal relation of the mind and the body, we can not at will arrest this independent action of the mind, but must wait until our bodily senses are again in full activity. I do not suppose that this phenomenon ought to be explained by the hypothesis that there are certain parts or organs of the brain which are specially concerned in the work of original composition of intellectual matter, and that these organs are not affected by the sleep that is prevailing in other parts of the brain. While it is doubtless true that there are special systems of nerves which proceed from or conduct to special parts of the brain, and by which action is imparted to or received from the other organs of the body, and while some of these special parts of the brain may be in the state of absolute inactivity called sleep, and others are not, I know of no warrant for the hypothesis that the intellectual operations or processes are dependent upon any particular organ or organs of the brain, as distinguished from those from and to which proceed special systems of nerves. If any person, who is much accustomed to that kind of intellectual activity which consists in original composition of intellectual matter, will attend to his own consciousness, and probe it as far as he may, he will not find reason, I apprehend, to conclude that the power of thought and of clothing thought in language resides in any special part of the brain. His experience and introspection will be more likely to lead him to the conclusion that this power, whether it is exerted when he is asleep or awake bodily, is a power that inheres in the mind itself regarded as a spiritual existence and organism, and that the action of the brain, or of any part of it, is necessary to the exercise of this power only when it is necessary, as it is in our waking moments, to use some of the bodily organs in order to give the thought oral or written expression by giving it utterance through the vocal organs or by writing it down on paper. Certain it is that we conceive thoughts in more or less of connected sequence, and clothe them intellectually in language of which we have entire consciousness while the process is going on, without the action of any part of the body.
It may be objected to this view that the intellectual products which we seem to ourselves to be making when we are asleep would, if they could be repeated by an effort of the memory, word for word, just as they seem to have occurred, be found to be of the same incoherent, senseless stuff of which all dreams are made; and that this test would show that the brain is at such times not absolutely and completely in the condition which is called sleep, but that it is only partially in that condition; that it is performing its function feebly, imperfectly, and not as it performs that function when the whole body is awake. In reference to this hypothesis, I will repeat an anecdote which I have somewhere read, which is equally valuable whether it was an imaginary or a real occurrence.
A gentleman of literary pursuits, who was a very respectable poet, was subject to this habit of composition during sleep. One night he awoke his wife and informed her that he had composed in his dream some of the best and most original verses that he had ever written. He begged her at once to get a candle, pen, ink, and paper, and let him dictate to her the new composition that appeared to him so striking. When they read together the new poem on the next morning, it turned out to be nonsensically puerile. But occurrences of this kind, if they could be multiplied, would prove only that we are liable to illusions in sleep, in regard to the comparative merits of our intellectual products, which we imagine ourselves to be creating when we are in that state, as we are in regard to other things. We are under a delusion when we imagine in our dreams that we encounter and converse with another person, living or dead. We are perhaps deluding ourselves when in sleep we compose or seem to compose an original poem. But what is it that deludes itself, either in respect to the interview with another person, or in respect to the new composition? Is it the brain, or is it the mind? Is it a person, or a bodily organ that has the false impression, in the one case or the other? There must be a something that is subject to an illusion, before there can be an illusion. If both brain and mind are in profound sleep, absolute suspension of all action, there can be no illusion about anything. If the brain is absolutely asleep and the mind is not, the illusion is in the mind and not in the brain. That the latter is what often occurs, the experience of the illiterate and uncultivated makes them aware, as well as the experience of the lettered scholar and the practiced writer.[144]
Under the same head, I will now refer to those strange but familiar occurrences which take place when there come to us, in sleep, solutions of difficulties which we had not overcome by all our efforts while awake, and which appeared to us utterly dark when we lay down to rest. These mental phenomena are almost innumerably various. They take place in regard to all kinds of subjects, to lines of conduct and action, to everything about which our thoughts are employed; and they are a class of phenomena within everybody's experience. There is scarcely any one to whom it has not happened to lie down at night with a mind distressed and perplexed about some problem that requires a definite solution, and to rise in the morning, usually after a night of undisturbed rest, with his mind perfectly clear on the subject, and with just the solution that did not come to him when he devoted to it all his waking thoughts. What is the explanation of this phenomenon? If the mind is an independent entity, a spiritual organism, capable of its own action without the aid of the body under certain circumstances, this phenomenon can be explained. If the mind is not a spiritual organism, capable, under any circumstances, of acting without the aid of the bodily organs, this phenomenon can not be explained.
The most probable explanation is this: When we are awake, and devote our thoughts to a particular subject that is attended with great difficulties, we go over the same ground repeatedly—the mind travels and toils in the same ruts. Nothing new occurs, because we look at the subject in the same way every time we think of it. We are liable to be kept in the same beaten path by the associations between our thoughts and the bodily states in which we have those thoughts—associations which are exceedingly powerful. But let these associations be dissolved as they are during perfect sleep—let the mind be in a condition to act without being dependent on the brain or any other bodily organ for aid, or exposed to be hampered by the conditions of the body, and there will be a mental activity in which ideas will be wrought out that did not occur to us while we were awake. The memory, too, may recall a fact which we had learned while awake, and yet we may be unable to recollect how it came to our knowledge. At such times, the fact is recalled; but as the mind is acting in a condition which is abnormal when compared with the waking condition, and is liable to delusions about some things, we imagine that the fact is revealed to us in some wild and supernatural way, as by a person who is dead and who has come to us to communicate it. There is a well-authenticated account of an occurrence of this kind, given by Sir Walter Scott in one of the notes to his "Antiquary," and on which he founds an incident related by one of the personages in his story. The real occurrence was this: A gentleman in Scotland was involved in a litigation about a claim asserted upon his landed estate. He had a strong conviction that his father had bargained and paid for a release of the claim, but he could find no such paper. Without it he was sure to be defeated in the suit. Distressed by this prospect, but utterly unable to see any way out of his misfortune, he lay down to sleep, on the night before he was to go into Edinburgh to attend the trial of the cause. He dreamed that his father appeared to him, and told him that the claim had been released, and that the paper was in the hands of a lawyer in a neighboring town, whose name the paternal shade mentioned.
Before going into Edinburgh on the next day, the gentleman rode to the place which his father had indicated, and found the lawyer, of whose name he had been previously unconscious. This person turned out to be an old man, who had forgotten the fact that he had transacted this piece of business for the gentleman's father; but on being told of the fact that his client had paid his fee in a foreign coin of a peculiar character—which was one part of the story which the father's apparition related to the son—he recalled the whole of the circumstances, searched for the paper, and found it. The gentleman's estate was saved to him; but he became very superstitious about dreams, and suffered much from that cause, as was quite natural. Sir Walter's solution of the whole affair is of course the correct one: "The dream was only the recapitulation of information which Mr. R—— had really received from his father while in life, but which at first he merely recalled as a general impression that the claim was settled. It is not uncommon for persons to recover, during sleep, the thread of ideas which they have lost during their waking hours."[145] Sir Walter makes another observation which is worthy of being repeated—that in dreams men are not surprised by apparitions. Why are we not? Because the mind is in a state of abnormal activity, in which everything that occurs to it seems perfectly natural. The delusion in regard to the mode in which the very important fact was communicated to Mr. R—— in his dream, was substituted in the place of the actual communication made to him by his father during life. The latter he had wholly forgotten, and he had forgotten the circumstance of payment of the lawyer's fee in a peculiar coin, which had also been mentioned to him by his father when living. This remarkable incident, which might doubtless be paralleled by many similar occurrences, proves one of two things: either that the exercise of the memory is wholly dependent upon a waking condition of the brain, or that there may be an abnormal and imperfect act of memory while the brain is in profound sleep, in the course of which a fact becomes mixed with a delusion about the mode in which we are told of the fact. What happened to Mr. R—— was that his mind recalled the fact, but imagined that he then learned it for the first time from an apparition. I do not know how such a phenomenon can be explained, excepting by the hypothesis that the mind is a special existence, which acts during sleep of the body upon facts that are lodged in the memory, but mixes them with imaginary and delusive appearances, so that the mode in which the fact was actually learned is obliterated from the memory, and some supernatural mode of communication takes its place. On the return of waking consciousness, the mode in which the fact was actually learned is still shut out from recollection, and, if the person to whom this kind of delusion has occurred is of a superstitious turn, he will act on what he has imagined was told him by the apparition, because he has no other means of rescuing himself from an evil.
In regard to the mental phenomena which occur without delusions or apparitions, where the thoughts on a difficult subject become clearer and more satisfactory to us when we awake from sleep than they ever were during our waking hours, I suppose the explanation is this: During profound sleep of the body, including the brain, there is an entire suspension of every bodily function excepting the digestion of food and the circulation of the blood. If there is excited in some of the other organs an action of a peculiar kind, by an excitation of the nerves connected with those organs, it is proof that the condition of perfect sleep is not prevailing in all parts of the brain. The state to which I now refer supposes a complete inactivity of the whole bodily organism save in the digestive function and the circulation of the blood. In such a state, the mind, that which thinks and reasons, does not act upon the brain, and is not acted upon by it. It is capable of thinking on any subject which has employed its thoughts during the waking hours; and while, in some cases, it is visited by apparitions and subject to delusions, it is in other cases engaged in ideas that involve no delusive appearances. Freed from all the associations of these ideas with the feelings prevailing in the body when we think of the subject during our waking hours, we are able to perceive relations of the subject which have not before occurred to us. When we pass from the condition of sleep to the full consciousness of our bodily and mental organism, we are intellectually possessed of these new relations of the subject, which we have brought with us out of the state in which we acquired them, and they furnish us with new materials for the solution of the problem that we had not solved when we lay down to rest. It is not, I am persuaded, because the mind was at rest during sleep, and when we become awake is by reason of that rest better able to grapple with the difficulties of the subject, that we do grapple with them successfully; for in the case supposed, which is a very common experience, the thoughts are actually employed on the subject, while the body and the brain are in the absolute rest and inactivity of all the organic functions excepting those of digestion and circulation of the blood. I do not know that it is possible to detect, in a person sleeping, an increased circulation of the blood to any part of the brain which may be supposed to be concerned in the act of thinking, and at the same time to know that thinking is going on, unless such an observation could be made of a person in the state called somnambulism, which is not the state of which I am now speaking. But reasoning upon the phenomenon which I have now described, according to all that we can learn from our own experience or from observation of others, I reach the conclusion that the mind, the thinking and reasoning entity, can and does, in profound sleep of the body and the brain, employ itself upon a subject that has occupied us when awake, and can perceive new relations of that subject, which had not before occurred to us, without the activity of any portion of the nerve-center which is called the brain. Does this hypothesis assume that our thoughts when asleep are more valuable than our waking thoughts? It does, to a certain extent and under certain circumstances, for experience proves that in sleep we acquire ideas which we did not have before we fell asleep, and which we bring with us out of that condition.
That I have now given the true explanation of this familiar experience will appear, I think, from this consideration: There are very few nights when we do not in sleep have many thoughts. The states of perfect unconsciousness are comparatively rare. If the brain were never entirely asleep, if it were always engaged in the physical work of thinking—whatever that work may be—it would be worn out prematurely. But if the brain is perfectly at rest, while the mind is actively employed, the brain undergoes no strain and suffers no exhaustion; and the mind suffers no strain or exhaustion because it is in its nature incapable of wear and tear. It is only when the mind acts on the brain that exhaustion takes place. I speak now of what happens in states of ordinarily good health.[146]
I shall now refer to some of the very peculiar phenomena of somnambulism; and in illustration of their various phases I shall resort to Shakespeare's picture of the sleep-walking of Lady Macbeth, which, although purely imaginary, is a most accurate exhibition of nature. Treating it, as we are entitled to treat it, as if it were a real occurrence at which we ourselves were witnesses, with a knowledge of her character and history, an analysis of the situation in which she was placed when the habit of somnambulism came upon her, and of the mode in which her mind acted upon her body, will enable us to see the phenomena in their true philosophical aspect. We may suppose ourselves present, with the doctor and the gentlewoman of her bedchamber, when she comes forth in her night-dress and with a candle in her hand, and we witness the impressive scene of a disturbed mind overmastering the body while the body is asleep. It seems that, after the murder of Duncan, when she imbrued her own hands with his blood in smearing the faces of his sleeping grooms, the habit of sleep-walking had come over her. As we stand by the side of the awe-stricken witnesses, and hear their whispered conversation, we get the first description of her actions since the new king, Macbeth, her husband, whom she had instigated to murder the old king, went into the field. These first actions of hers, as described by the gentlewoman to the doctor, do not necessarily exhibit the working of a guilty conscience. They exhibit a mind oppressed and disturbed by cares of business and of state; and they are a distinct class of the phenomena of somnambulism. The gentlewoman tells the doctor that "since his Majesty went into the field, I have seen her rise from her bed, throw her night-gown upon her, unlock her closet, take forth paper, fold it, write upon it, read it, afterward seal it, and again return to bed; yet all this while in a most fast sleep." This is merely a description of what the witness has seen, and it might occur to any person of strong intellectual faculties, disturbed by great cares, without the action of a guilty conscience. It makes the situation real when the doctor recognizes the fact of this "great perturbation in nature! to receive at once the benefit of sleep, and do the effects of watching." As they are whispering together, the doctor trying to make the gentlewoman tell him what at such times she has heard her say, which the loyal servant refuses to tell, Lady Macbeth moves forward, with the taper in her hand.
Here we may pause upon the first exhibition of the phenomenon called sleep-walking, which we get by description only, and analyze the nature of the action. It is perfectly apparent that what the poet accepted as true, is the power of the mind to move the body while the body is asleep, so as to make it perform many acts. Experience makes this assumption perfectly correct. I presume it will not be questioned that this phenomenon is described by Shakespeare with entire accuracy, and it is explicable only upon the hypothesis that the mind has some control over the body while the body is asleep. Actions as minute and as much premeditated as those performed by Lady Macbeth "in a most fast sleep," have been witnessed in persons who were undoubtedly asleep, and whose eyes were open for some purposes, but, as in her case, their sense was shut for other purposes.
We now pass to the more awful exhibition of a mind worked upon by a guilty conscience. Lady Macbeth comes out of her bedroom fast asleep, but with a light in her hand. The gentlewoman who interprets her state to the doctor informs him that she has a light by her bedside continuously; and we thus learn that her nights are so disturbed that she can not bear darkness. They notice that her eyes are open, but "their sense is shut." Then begin the terrific manifestations of the control of a guilty conscience over both mind and body, when the memory, alive to certain terrible facts, plays fantastic tricks with itself, and mingles delusions with realities. As she approaches, with the taper in her hand, she performs an action which the gentlewoman says she has repeatedly seen her go through, for a quarter of an hour at a time, endeavoring to rub a spot of blood off from one of her hands. Her hands have been clean, physically, since the time when she first washed them on the fatal night; but the delusion that is upon her is that there is blood on them still. She goes on rubbing them, and her first exclamation is, "Out, damned spot! out, I say!" Yet it will not out. That little hand wears what she imagines to be an indelible stain. After her first exclamation, the memory rushes back to the moment before the murder. She thinks she hears, perhaps does hear, the clock strike—"one, two"; and then, as if speaking to her husband, she says, "Why, then 'tis time to do't." Then there is a pause, and out comes the reflection, "Hell is murky!" This seems to indicate that darkness, in which she and her husband are whispering together just before the murder, is a hell, and so very fit for what is about to be done. Hell is murky, as this chamber is. Then she remembers her husband's reluctance, and fancying that she is still talking with him and bracing him up to the deed, she says: "Fye, my lord, fye! a soldier, and afeard? What need we fear who knows it, when none can call our power to account?" Presently she is looking back upon the deed, and exclaims, "Yet who would have thought the old man to have had so much blood in him!" Then she recurs to herself as if she were another: "The thane of Fife had a wife; where is she now?" Again she thinks of her stained hands: "What, will these hands ne'er be clean?" Are they to wear this horrible stain forever? Instantly she is again at the door of Duncan's chamber, speaking to her husband: "No more o' that, my lord, no more o' that: you mar all with this starting!" Then her hands again, her poor hands; they smell of the blood: "Here's the smell of the blood still: all the perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten this little hand! Oh, oh, oh!" Then, after another pause, she is speaking to her husband, when the deed has been done: "Wash your hands, put on your night-gown; look not so pale!" In another instant she is thinking of Banquo's murder, which occurred after Duncan's, and she says to her husband: "I tell you yet again, Banquo's buried; he can not come out of his grave!" Once more she is back at the door of Duncan's chamber, in the darkness, and the murder has been committed. Speaking to her husband, she says: "To bed, to bed; there's knocking at the gate. Come, come, come, come, give me your hand. What's done can not be undone. To bed, to bed, to bed!" Then she goes quickly toward her chamber and to bed, believing that Macbeth is with her and that she is holding his hand.
How mixed, how wild, how fantastic, how coherent and incoherent are these phantoms of the imagination! If she were awake, things would not thus present themselves to her. Every event in the dreadful story would stand in its true relations, and, however she might be suffering the pangs of a guilty conscience, she would not mix up the scenes through which she had passed, but every fact would stand in its due order. She would be conscious that there was no blood upon her hands, and that they did not need the perfumes of Arabia to sweeten them. She would know that Duncan had been murdered, and would not enact the murder over again. She would remember that Banquo's murder had not been distinctly made known to her, and that she had only surmised it, when at the banquet Macbeth fancied that the ghost of Banquo rose and sat at the table—an apparition which neither she nor any one else saw. But, in that strange scene, it flashed across her mind that Banquo was dead, and to herself she interpreted truly what was passing in her husband's mind, and instantly explained his conduct to the company as the recurrence of an old malady to which he was subject.
If we go back to what had actually happened before the banquet, and then go forward to the condition in which she is seen by the doctor and her attendant, we shall understand how her mind was working, not upon a fact that she knew, but upon a fact which she had truly surmised. In her somnambulistic state, she says to her husband: "I tell you yet again, Banquo's buried; he can not come out of his grave." Had she said this to him before? According to the course of the story, as the text of the play gives it to us, she had not. In the second scene of the third act, where, after Duncan had been murdered and Macbeth had become king, they are preparing for the banquet, to which Banquo was expected as one of the guests, Macbeth and his wife are talking together, and she is trying to get him out of the contemplative and conscience-stricken mood in which he looks back upon what they have done. He concludes one of his mixed and melancholy reflections with these words: